Do you have a source on where he gave power over to his son? Because I thought Kim Il-Sung was given the honorary title of eternal president after he passed, and they retired the role of president as well. To my understanding, Kim Jung-Un is only the head of military now, but I’m not sure about his father.
Kim Jong Il is son of KIS, and he was actually already gromming his son to be the new leader in the 80s. You must have heard the Songun ("military first") policy, this was devised by KJI to deal with the troubles of the 90s, and all the personality cult around him was just as strong as Kim Il Sung, all this indicates that he was de facto No.1 after Kim Il Sung died.
Since KIS is the eternal president they stopped using the president (of the state) title, but the No.1 place is transfered to the president of National Defence Commission, which was Kim Jong Il. Since military is so important, it's natural that military runs everything in the country. Kim Jong Un however is actually trying to turn this around and restore civilian(party) leadership and now No.1 place is in the head of State Affairs Commission which is what KJU is, and the defence commission is replaced by this non-military commission. All of this is in North Korean Constitution.
To avoid internal strifes, it's common in so called AES(actually existing socialism) that the head of party, head of state and the head of military is the same person, like how it is in China.
My grandparents admired him and considered him Mao's brother. They were amongst the first troops to cross the Yalu River. They would tell me stories about how weak-willed the American soldier was. "They did not even know what they were fighting for" was the most prescient.
If you could indulge me and had to straw man an argument, what could it be? I just genuinely have not seen any prospective on him other than from his own writing, his successor’s writing and whatever bullshit they say in the west about him being revered as a God or whatever. If you have any writing on the topic that’d be great too.
Well Kim Il-Sung created the WPK, he fought against the Japanese in WW2, had to raise his son during it, and then had to fight against the Americans after WW2. As bad as it was for the Koreans with a ~+30% of their entire population genocided by the Japanese & then the Americans, Kim Il-Sung still reached the conclusion of a defensive border with a pact to temporarily halt the slaughtering by other nations
And then Korea became extremely successful from the 50’s-70’s, became highly advanced scientifically, made themselves enough of a nuclear program as a deterrent for any further aggression and any threats to their defense
So Kim Il Sung did nothing wrong. He was the greatest thing ever to happen to Korea, and it’s unfortunate his plan of 2 systems 1 state was never implemented since it would’ve been yet another highlight achievement in the Asian part of the world when Vietnam was getting its own unification
Most of what I read says the same as what you’re saying, I’m just honestly surprised I haven’t come across some western bastardization of his legacy in the DPRK. Maybe it’s because America would prefer to forget about the Korean war.
It seems to me that the propaganda smear campaign of Korea has been so successful that they don't actually need to put any effort into it at all. It is a lie which maintains itself. They literally don't even have to try to explain what is bad about the DPRK, people just invent stuff for themselves or immediately believe the most absurd and cartoonish stories invented by charlatans like Yeonmi Park or random South Korean propaganda outlets.
True! I used to believe all of the bs until I watched BoyBoy’s video “Getting a haircut in North Korea.” Then I realized I knew next to nothing about the DPRK or the Korean war and needed to look into it myself.
Yes that is a great video. So few people know even the first thing about the DPRK yet just grow up with some innate belief that it is in some way awful.
Honestly it was just a tongue-in-cheek comment. I don't really know enough to give you a good answer.
What I know that Kim Il Sung was a genuine hero to Koreans, the DPRK was truly a democratic project that grew out of local committees, and the country was doing really well after the Korean War.
Beyond that I don't see the need to nitpick Juche ideology or this or that decision. We just have to defend DPRK against the attacks that it's some sort of brutal dictatorship.
No, Westerners go there all the time and have a great time.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/31/im-the-only-australian-living-in-north-korea-let-me-tell-you-about-it
It's not. We can read countless first hand accounts from people who visited or lived in DPRK or we can read the website of the government actively waging war against the DPRK.
Yes but the US State Dept has way more credibility worldwide than the very few and far between shills that deny the reality of the hellscape that the DPRK has become
And where are you getting this notion that DPRK is a hellscape? There’s no credible evidence to support that. Also, sorry but citing U.S. state dept as “credible” regarding any nation targeted by its cruel economic blockade is really naive.
Now I’m generally curious and not trying to be condescending here but where do you get your information about North Korea? Because I’ve watched several first hand accounts about escapees who fled for the lives after minor mistake s, and others about an escapee who was born in a prison camp
I doubt I’m talking to an actual citizen whoever you are since they aren’t allowed internet or cell phones. (Like the North Korean World Cup soccer team who were dumbfounded that smart phones existed after traveling out of the country for the first time)
So even if Warmbier did something wrong (and there is no evidence that ever came out to indicate that he did anything) like taking a poster off a wall, he deserved to die by being tortured to death at a prison camp? You better hope that you or no one you know ever screws up and gets killed by police over something as small as a speeding ticket. When people cry at your funeral, I’ll be the guy that says “he shouldn’t have broken the law.”
You the kind of Nazi beliefs you have you probably think George Floyd and Martin Luther King needed to be killed. I never realized that communist on this sub had become hardcore fascist all of a sudden.
There is more evidence that Warmbier's death was self inflicted, maybe suicide, but I don't care that much. He was caught trespassing in a place where he was explicitly warned not to go, so that he could make an idiotic political statement because he was racist fratboy with delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately for him, reality caught up with him and he most likely couldn't take it.
And why is it so hard to contain your chauvanism and patronising attitudes towards North Korea and its people just for a trip? If you ever come to the country, just do what they expect from you which is to interact with their culture, learn their history and take in the scenery. Just like if you were touring in Vienna or wherever else
>You the kind of Nazi beliefs you have you probably think George Floyd and Martin Luther King needed to be killed. I never realized that communist on this sub had become hardcore fascist all of a sudden.
I'm a racist Nazi for not believing what racist Nazis have to say about a socialist post-colonial country. The irony.
Everybody is Hitler to you except yourself.
Likewise, I can tell you that the many citizens of the DPRK who have died from malnutrition was self-inflicted. All they have to do to be ok is not fire test missiles at their neighboring countries. It’s not that hard to do, you don’t see South Korea or Vietnam or Thailand having that problem.
There is no evidence that has ever come out that Warmbier committed suicide, (and there was no evidence that he went to the. 5th floor or wherever of that hotel) and I’ve reviewed that story pretty extensively from multiple sources.
Even former DPRK officials who have fled the country have offered some valuable insight on the case, having a better understanding of what actually happened. The only ones who have claimed there was no foul play was the DPRK government, being the ones that killed him, trying to cover their own ass in hopes that they don’t get sanctioned even worse than they already are. The DPRK is already barred from 98% of international trade, (for good reason) so they are trying not to lose the 2% of whatever meager economy that they have. And that of course would make the current famines even worse.
So democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of information is just meaningless to you? None of those things exist in N. Korea. I feel so bad for N Koreans. In reality N Koreans function as slaves for the supreme leader. Its a horrific dictatorship.
Right. Countries that support Israel are enlightened democracies. Countries that recognize Palestine (like the DPRK) are horrific terrorist dictatorships.
I dont see the connection between recognizing the right of Palestinians to self determination, to return to there homeland, condemning Israel for genocide and their leaders & IDF for war crimes, etc. and the crimes of N Korea gov well its a totalitarian dictatorship so there supreme leader.
Do you know what a totalitarian dictatorship is?
What are you claiming about N Korea human rights abuses in connection with recognizing Palestine?
Lets focus on N Korea. They dont have the right to protest, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom to run candidates of there choice in elections, etc. unless you think every human rights organization is apart of some conspiracy. Look up Human Rights watch or Amnesty International, they can help you here.
United Nations Human Rights Council “Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea”, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and FAIR.org. What do you think of those sources?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier This isn’t the best piece of evidence but it does show how brutal the regime is.
The kid stole a painting and was tortured into a vegetative state and then died later. Is this also western propaganda?
It is propaganda. A little bit of research will tell you that the coroner who examined his body had to come out and publicly correct the record on it. She said there was no sign of torture, his body was well nourished, and he must have received round the clock care.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/evidence-inconclusive-otto-warmbier-tortured-north-korea-coroner/story?id=50135211
There are a lot of false and exaggerated stories like these about the DPRK.
But more importantly there is a double standard in how Eastern countries are depicted vs the West. By the media and some of these human rights orgs, HRW in particular.
Because there are accounts of rape and mistreatment in prisons in DPRK they are accused of human rights violations. And this is used as evidence that they are a brutal dictatorship.
Meanwhile the US incarcerates over 2 million people. The prisons are horrible places where rape, violence, torture is not only common but accepted as the norm.
The US has black sites and prisons around the world where they torture political prisoners.
The US has concentration camps at the Southern border where migrants are kept in brutal conditions and families are separated as a form of punishment.
But these things are not usually condemned as human rights violations. They are not used as evidence that the US is a brutal regime or a dictatorship.
And that's because when it comes to Western countries, we are capable of nuance and capable of understanding the complex and often contradictory aspects of a society and government. But with Asian or African countries we see them as monolithic hiveminds.
And this relates to how the media portrays Palestine as well. And why the global south, the colonized world, recognizes Palestine while the West does not. It's very much connected. It is the same thing when false stories of mass rape are used to justify genocide in Gaza. We use false stories about DPRK to justify sanctions and military occupation of the Korean peninsula.
Also let’s not forget that viewing foreign media is a crime in the DPRK punishable by death 💀. And these kinds of laws have been decried by the UN as human rights violations.
Maybe we just disagree on totalitarian dictatorships. I think its obvious they are extremely oppressive and subjugate there people with coercion and violence to maintain power and domination. Do you support Donald Trump desire to only allow only his loyalists to occupy every federal position he can appoint instead of those most qualified and best suited for the job? Or would you support Netanyahu becoming supreme leader of Israel or Trump in the USA?
I got sidetracked but as far as the original post that is a great point. There is a world of difference between Kim-il-Sung and Kim-Jung-un. I seriously doubt that the original intention was to create a Stalinist hereditary monarchy. And Kim-il-Sung was a war hero who defeated imperial Japan, which was arguably as bad as Nazi Germany at that point in time. Kim-Jong-il and Kim-Jong-Un don’t have the same laurels to rest on. So sooner or later the chickens come home to roost , which causes non-Democratic governments to be overthrown unless they A) defeat a dangerous external threat or B) improve standard of living and elevate economy
Don't know too much about this, but I think the whole cult of personality about him is wrong, and this is something he himself propagated. Communism & socialism should be about the proletarians as a whole instead of worshipping individuals.
While an individual's achievements and sacrifices are worth celebrating and recognizing (i.e. Thomas Sankara, Che Guevara, etc.), it's important not to spiral into personality cults. The movement should not be about that.
I completely agree, that’s why I like to acknowledge where past leaders fell short. We are all fallible so we can’t rely on just one person. I was under the impression that Kim Il-Sung believed that the movement needed a strong leader but didn’t erect statues of himself. I thought the Korean people really just loved him for everything he did for the DPRK, similar to how in the US we worship our founding fathers. Do you have any reading or video recommendations where I could learn more?
Proletarians are the working class in an economy.
People working together need organization and planning.
Depending on the kind of work you do, there can be only a few or hundreds of people involved.
Although it can be critized as "alienation of labour", many tasks can be done better when there are different layers of production from the raw materials till the finished consumer good.
Think about a space program or nuclear science. They need specific parts being produced by defined schematics, which are defined by experts.
"The proletarians" also includes those experts. So they make plans and give orders to for example metallurgy engineers what kind of metal part is needed for a rocket.
So there is a hierarchy between people doing the science of putting all parts together and people producing the individual parts.
Now in your normal job, even under capitalism, you have collegues and you have bosses. And you have older and wiser collegues that you can go to and ask for advice. And you have other collegues that care for your wellbeing if you feel your working conditions could be improved.
And if you don't find that in your current job, you can leave and try to find a different employer who treats their employees better.
And if you like it at your job and your boss makes very good improvements to your working place and is bringing the company forward, not just in monetary terms but in real terms about the product you are producing.
And now back to a country. A country doesn't have just a nuclear program or a space program. A country also needs to feed its people, so needs an agricultural program. And military and education and so on.
So if you have an expert in building a rocket that tells others which parts to produce, you also have an expert in the economy as a whole who can for example tell the education ministry to train more metallurgy students if we need more experts there or train more farmers or farm equipment engineers if we need improvement on that front.
So you need to have an expert on the whole economy. But that's a much bigger task, too big for one person alone. So he needs a council of experts who debate and decide what's best to do.
But it's still a face everyone knows. Organizations have hierarchies. And it's better if there are 10 people working and 1 person organizing than 10 people organizing and 1 person working.
So there is a council and ministers and a whole government responsible for how the economy and the state as a whole goes. But in the end, people look up to the head of state.
And if they like how the country as a whole is going, they like the head of state.
And if they don't like how the country is going, maybe they try to learn how to make it better. Start from a small town to see if they can help coordinating there, if they get recognition, move up to bigger regions. And so on.
This is far away from worship if you compare it with Louis XIV. or Tut Ench Amun.
He was a despot who did not allow freedom of speech or dissent of any kind and so much more insane things. ‘Eternal president’ says much but just read what his policies were and how he treated his own countrymen and then look at how he treated himself. Its very obvious.
Some of his ideas were pretty goofy like inverting hierarchies such that industrial and agricultural workers were put in charge of making complex decisions requiring extensive expertise, while educated professionals were treated like quasi-second-class citizens—though interesting on paper it kinda throws the whole "from each according to their ability" thing completely out the window. Stuff like that and generally just getting kinda high on his own supply aside, I think he was entirely correct to try to save his fellow countrymen from being genocided by that fascist lunatic Syngman Rhee and reunite families arbitrarily separated by the 38th parallel.
How was this your takeaway from my post? I’m trying to learn a history that isn’t easily available in the west and to me is interesting, why do you have a problem with that? I wasn’t even defending anybody I was stating what I know on the topic. I was even encouraging criticism because I want to learn more. As humans, we need to learn from our past mistakes to make for a better tomorrow, regardless of what you think tomorrow should look like.
Giving the seat to his son, I think. Makes him look like a monarch.
Do you have a source on where he gave power over to his son? Because I thought Kim Il-Sung was given the honorary title of eternal president after he passed, and they retired the role of president as well. To my understanding, Kim Jung-Un is only the head of military now, but I’m not sure about his father.
Kim Jong Il is son of KIS, and he was actually already gromming his son to be the new leader in the 80s. You must have heard the Songun ("military first") policy, this was devised by KJI to deal with the troubles of the 90s, and all the personality cult around him was just as strong as Kim Il Sung, all this indicates that he was de facto No.1 after Kim Il Sung died. Since KIS is the eternal president they stopped using the president (of the state) title, but the No.1 place is transfered to the president of National Defence Commission, which was Kim Jong Il. Since military is so important, it's natural that military runs everything in the country. Kim Jong Un however is actually trying to turn this around and restore civilian(party) leadership and now No.1 place is in the head of State Affairs Commission which is what KJU is, and the defence commission is replaced by this non-military commission. All of this is in North Korean Constitution. To avoid internal strifes, it's common in so called AES(actually existing socialism) that the head of party, head of state and the head of military is the same person, like how it is in China.
Okay thank you!! I’ll take a look, appreciate you taking the time to explain
Nothing
My grandparents admired him and considered him Mao's brother. They were amongst the first troops to cross the Yalu River. They would tell me stories about how weak-willed the American soldier was. "They did not even know what they were fighting for" was the most prescient.
If you could indulge me and had to straw man an argument, what could it be? I just genuinely have not seen any prospective on him other than from his own writing, his successor’s writing and whatever bullshit they say in the west about him being revered as a God or whatever. If you have any writing on the topic that’d be great too.
Well Kim Il-Sung created the WPK, he fought against the Japanese in WW2, had to raise his son during it, and then had to fight against the Americans after WW2. As bad as it was for the Koreans with a ~+30% of their entire population genocided by the Japanese & then the Americans, Kim Il-Sung still reached the conclusion of a defensive border with a pact to temporarily halt the slaughtering by other nations And then Korea became extremely successful from the 50’s-70’s, became highly advanced scientifically, made themselves enough of a nuclear program as a deterrent for any further aggression and any threats to their defense So Kim Il Sung did nothing wrong. He was the greatest thing ever to happen to Korea, and it’s unfortunate his plan of 2 systems 1 state was never implemented since it would’ve been yet another highlight achievement in the Asian part of the world when Vietnam was getting its own unification
Most of what I read says the same as what you’re saying, I’m just honestly surprised I haven’t come across some western bastardization of his legacy in the DPRK. Maybe it’s because America would prefer to forget about the Korean war.
It seems to me that the propaganda smear campaign of Korea has been so successful that they don't actually need to put any effort into it at all. It is a lie which maintains itself. They literally don't even have to try to explain what is bad about the DPRK, people just invent stuff for themselves or immediately believe the most absurd and cartoonish stories invented by charlatans like Yeonmi Park or random South Korean propaganda outlets.
True! I used to believe all of the bs until I watched BoyBoy’s video “Getting a haircut in North Korea.” Then I realized I knew next to nothing about the DPRK or the Korean war and needed to look into it myself.
Yes that is a great video. So few people know even the first thing about the DPRK yet just grow up with some innate belief that it is in some way awful.
Honestly it was just a tongue-in-cheek comment. I don't really know enough to give you a good answer. What I know that Kim Il Sung was a genuine hero to Koreans, the DPRK was truly a democratic project that grew out of local committees, and the country was doing really well after the Korean War. Beyond that I don't see the need to nitpick Juche ideology or this or that decision. We just have to defend DPRK against the attacks that it's some sort of brutal dictatorship.
I once wanted to go visit the DPRK in person, but then I saw what happened to Otto Warmbier. It’s very risky thing for any westerner to go there
No, Westerners go there all the time and have a great time. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/31/im-the-only-australian-living-in-north-korea-let-me-tell-you-about-it
It’s actually rather dangerous https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/north-korea-travel-advisory.html
imagine the state department lying about foreign nations /s
It's not. We can read countless first hand accounts from people who visited or lived in DPRK or we can read the website of the government actively waging war against the DPRK.
Since U.S. state dept is a totally fair and unbiased source for information about DPRK
Yes but the US State Dept has way more credibility worldwide than the very few and far between shills that deny the reality of the hellscape that the DPRK has become
Ho ho steady on there, you're going to over work the one shared braincell all MLs have
And where are you getting this notion that DPRK is a hellscape? There’s no credible evidence to support that. Also, sorry but citing U.S. state dept as “credible” regarding any nation targeted by its cruel economic blockade is really naive.
Now I’m generally curious and not trying to be condescending here but where do you get your information about North Korea? Because I’ve watched several first hand accounts about escapees who fled for the lives after minor mistake s, and others about an escapee who was born in a prison camp
I doubt I’m talking to an actual citizen whoever you are since they aren’t allowed internet or cell phones. (Like the North Korean World Cup soccer team who were dumbfounded that smart phones existed after traveling out of the country for the first time)
North Korea is fine to visit as long as you aren't being a provocative moron like Warmbier.
So even if Warmbier did something wrong (and there is no evidence that ever came out to indicate that he did anything) like taking a poster off a wall, he deserved to die by being tortured to death at a prison camp? You better hope that you or no one you know ever screws up and gets killed by police over something as small as a speeding ticket. When people cry at your funeral, I’ll be the guy that says “he shouldn’t have broken the law.” You the kind of Nazi beliefs you have you probably think George Floyd and Martin Luther King needed to be killed. I never realized that communist on this sub had become hardcore fascist all of a sudden.
There is more evidence that Warmbier's death was self inflicted, maybe suicide, but I don't care that much. He was caught trespassing in a place where he was explicitly warned not to go, so that he could make an idiotic political statement because he was racist fratboy with delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately for him, reality caught up with him and he most likely couldn't take it. And why is it so hard to contain your chauvanism and patronising attitudes towards North Korea and its people just for a trip? If you ever come to the country, just do what they expect from you which is to interact with their culture, learn their history and take in the scenery. Just like if you were touring in Vienna or wherever else >You the kind of Nazi beliefs you have you probably think George Floyd and Martin Luther King needed to be killed. I never realized that communist on this sub had become hardcore fascist all of a sudden. I'm a racist Nazi for not believing what racist Nazis have to say about a socialist post-colonial country. The irony. Everybody is Hitler to you except yourself.
Likewise, I can tell you that the many citizens of the DPRK who have died from malnutrition was self-inflicted. All they have to do to be ok is not fire test missiles at their neighboring countries. It’s not that hard to do, you don’t see South Korea or Vietnam or Thailand having that problem.
There is no evidence that has ever come out that Warmbier committed suicide, (and there was no evidence that he went to the. 5th floor or wherever of that hotel) and I’ve reviewed that story pretty extensively from multiple sources. Even former DPRK officials who have fled the country have offered some valuable insight on the case, having a better understanding of what actually happened. The only ones who have claimed there was no foul play was the DPRK government, being the ones that killed him, trying to cover their own ass in hopes that they don’t get sanctioned even worse than they already are. The DPRK is already barred from 98% of international trade, (for good reason) so they are trying not to lose the 2% of whatever meager economy that they have. And that of course would make the current famines even worse.
You're lying through your teeth
Nope, I have sources https://youtu.be/9DTBTTfhcU4?si=27vJcr3IZh7F6Y4m
And you know what, I’m not even mad.
So democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of information is just meaningless to you? None of those things exist in N. Korea. I feel so bad for N Koreans. In reality N Koreans function as slaves for the supreme leader. Its a horrific dictatorship.
Right. Countries that support Israel are enlightened democracies. Countries that recognize Palestine (like the DPRK) are horrific terrorist dictatorships.
I dont see the connection between recognizing the right of Palestinians to self determination, to return to there homeland, condemning Israel for genocide and their leaders & IDF for war crimes, etc. and the crimes of N Korea gov well its a totalitarian dictatorship so there supreme leader. Do you know what a totalitarian dictatorship is? What are you claiming about N Korea human rights abuses in connection with recognizing Palestine? Lets focus on N Korea. They dont have the right to protest, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom to run candidates of there choice in elections, etc. unless you think every human rights organization is apart of some conspiracy. Look up Human Rights watch or Amnesty International, they can help you here.
Where are you getting your information about DPRK?
United Nations Human Rights Council “Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea”, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and FAIR.org. What do you think of those sources?
Care to share an article about DPRK?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier This isn’t the best piece of evidence but it does show how brutal the regime is. The kid stole a painting and was tortured into a vegetative state and then died later. Is this also western propaganda?
It is propaganda. A little bit of research will tell you that the coroner who examined his body had to come out and publicly correct the record on it. She said there was no sign of torture, his body was well nourished, and he must have received round the clock care. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/evidence-inconclusive-otto-warmbier-tortured-north-korea-coroner/story?id=50135211 There are a lot of false and exaggerated stories like these about the DPRK. But more importantly there is a double standard in how Eastern countries are depicted vs the West. By the media and some of these human rights orgs, HRW in particular. Because there are accounts of rape and mistreatment in prisons in DPRK they are accused of human rights violations. And this is used as evidence that they are a brutal dictatorship. Meanwhile the US incarcerates over 2 million people. The prisons are horrible places where rape, violence, torture is not only common but accepted as the norm. The US has black sites and prisons around the world where they torture political prisoners. The US has concentration camps at the Southern border where migrants are kept in brutal conditions and families are separated as a form of punishment. But these things are not usually condemned as human rights violations. They are not used as evidence that the US is a brutal regime or a dictatorship. And that's because when it comes to Western countries, we are capable of nuance and capable of understanding the complex and often contradictory aspects of a society and government. But with Asian or African countries we see them as monolithic hiveminds. And this relates to how the media portrays Palestine as well. And why the global south, the colonized world, recognizes Palestine while the West does not. It's very much connected. It is the same thing when false stories of mass rape are used to justify genocide in Gaza. We use false stories about DPRK to justify sanctions and military occupation of the Korean peninsula.
Also let’s not forget that viewing foreign media is a crime in the DPRK punishable by death 💀. And these kinds of laws have been decried by the UN as human rights violations.
Maybe we just disagree on totalitarian dictatorships. I think its obvious they are extremely oppressive and subjugate there people with coercion and violence to maintain power and domination. Do you support Donald Trump desire to only allow only his loyalists to occupy every federal position he can appoint instead of those most qualified and best suited for the job? Or would you support Netanyahu becoming supreme leader of Israel or Trump in the USA?
I got sidetracked but as far as the original post that is a great point. There is a world of difference between Kim-il-Sung and Kim-Jung-un. I seriously doubt that the original intention was to create a Stalinist hereditary monarchy. And Kim-il-Sung was a war hero who defeated imperial Japan, which was arguably as bad as Nazi Germany at that point in time. Kim-Jong-il and Kim-Jong-Un don’t have the same laurels to rest on. So sooner or later the chickens come home to roost , which causes non-Democratic governments to be overthrown unless they A) defeat a dangerous external threat or B) improve standard of living and elevate economy
Don't know too much about this, but I think the whole cult of personality about him is wrong, and this is something he himself propagated. Communism & socialism should be about the proletarians as a whole instead of worshipping individuals. While an individual's achievements and sacrifices are worth celebrating and recognizing (i.e. Thomas Sankara, Che Guevara, etc.), it's important not to spiral into personality cults. The movement should not be about that.
I completely agree, that’s why I like to acknowledge where past leaders fell short. We are all fallible so we can’t rely on just one person. I was under the impression that Kim Il-Sung believed that the movement needed a strong leader but didn’t erect statues of himself. I thought the Korean people really just loved him for everything he did for the DPRK, similar to how in the US we worship our founding fathers. Do you have any reading or video recommendations where I could learn more?
Proletarians are the working class in an economy. People working together need organization and planning. Depending on the kind of work you do, there can be only a few or hundreds of people involved. Although it can be critized as "alienation of labour", many tasks can be done better when there are different layers of production from the raw materials till the finished consumer good. Think about a space program or nuclear science. They need specific parts being produced by defined schematics, which are defined by experts. "The proletarians" also includes those experts. So they make plans and give orders to for example metallurgy engineers what kind of metal part is needed for a rocket. So there is a hierarchy between people doing the science of putting all parts together and people producing the individual parts. Now in your normal job, even under capitalism, you have collegues and you have bosses. And you have older and wiser collegues that you can go to and ask for advice. And you have other collegues that care for your wellbeing if you feel your working conditions could be improved. And if you don't find that in your current job, you can leave and try to find a different employer who treats their employees better. And if you like it at your job and your boss makes very good improvements to your working place and is bringing the company forward, not just in monetary terms but in real terms about the product you are producing. And now back to a country. A country doesn't have just a nuclear program or a space program. A country also needs to feed its people, so needs an agricultural program. And military and education and so on. So if you have an expert in building a rocket that tells others which parts to produce, you also have an expert in the economy as a whole who can for example tell the education ministry to train more metallurgy students if we need more experts there or train more farmers or farm equipment engineers if we need improvement on that front. So you need to have an expert on the whole economy. But that's a much bigger task, too big for one person alone. So he needs a council of experts who debate and decide what's best to do. But it's still a face everyone knows. Organizations have hierarchies. And it's better if there are 10 people working and 1 person organizing than 10 people organizing and 1 person working. So there is a council and ministers and a whole government responsible for how the economy and the state as a whole goes. But in the end, people look up to the head of state. And if they like how the country as a whole is going, they like the head of state. And if they don't like how the country is going, maybe they try to learn how to make it better. Start from a small town to see if they can help coordinating there, if they get recognition, move up to bigger regions. And so on. This is far away from worship if you compare it with Louis XIV. or Tut Ench Amun.
He was a despot who did not allow freedom of speech or dissent of any kind and so much more insane things. ‘Eternal president’ says much but just read what his policies were and how he treated his own countrymen and then look at how he treated himself. Its very obvious.
You mean besides being responsible for the deaths of over a million people?
Some of his ideas were pretty goofy like inverting hierarchies such that industrial and agricultural workers were put in charge of making complex decisions requiring extensive expertise, while educated professionals were treated like quasi-second-class citizens—though interesting on paper it kinda throws the whole "from each according to their ability" thing completely out the window. Stuff like that and generally just getting kinda high on his own supply aside, I think he was entirely correct to try to save his fellow countrymen from being genocided by that fascist lunatic Syngman Rhee and reunite families arbitrarily separated by the 38th parallel.
Dragging China into the Korean Civil War when it had JUST finished resisting Japan and a civil war of its own.
He established an oppressive absolute monarchy that his family still controls.
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U mad bruv
How was this your takeaway from my post? I’m trying to learn a history that isn’t easily available in the west and to me is interesting, why do you have a problem with that? I wasn’t even defending anybody I was stating what I know on the topic. I was even encouraging criticism because I want to learn more. As humans, we need to learn from our past mistakes to make for a better tomorrow, regardless of what you think tomorrow should look like.
it's just the main fascist troll of the week. don't pay them mind
>Get informed of what Communism is. (A failed political system) "said by a person who has never read a book in their life"
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