Comments on: Bleak Signs for North Korea’s Food Situation (Updated)

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:55:07 +0000

I’m browner after a high summer than Dizaei, and I’m an ethnic teuchter. (Just like that other term for African-American spirituals as maybe referred to on The Wire, I can say the T-word… others can’t. Teuchter, teuchter, teuchter, teuchter.)

Even the popular use of Caucasian is based on the social Darwinism of the 19th Century, which saw Europeans (northern, usually) as hailing from one heroic tribe. I also (quite deliberately) cause confusion by reserving this label for Armenians or Georgians or Chechens.

I saw Joshua elsewhere suggest that the underlying biological racism in Juche (which, of course I know, is the term) might predispose the DPRK to tragetting Japanese and Australian beach-walkers rather than Koreans south of the 38th. Others will know better,but my impression is that it’s far too ill-formed for that – like the national socialism which the Showa descended into, it’s from a mish-mash of Buddhism and Shamanism and ancestor worship.

I also wonder if the likes of the odd-Protestant groups in the RoK and, even, Chaebols hails from the same soiurce.

By: Glans

Glans — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:17:27 +0000

The concept of race is so vague. I don’t know about y’all, but I consider Persions white folks. They are archetypical Aryans.

By: Alec

Alec — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:33:12 +0000

The name becomes flesh.

She has published in The International Herald Tribune, Asia Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and TomPaine.

Maybe she also writes for George Orwell inspired organizations, just to hammer it home.

She is [...] former director of the peace program at the Women of Color Resource Center.

This itself is a race-based notion. Individual ethno-social groups, notably black Americans, definitely will be disadvantaged, but to group everyone either non-white/European as a homogenuous and aggrieved mass can only perpetuate division and foster entitlement. A case in Britain was the recent conviction for perjury of Ali Dizaei, Iranian-born senior Police in London who ran his division like he was in Tehran. One of his wheezes was to have been the director of the Black Police Officers Association, when the only thing black about him was his hair-dye.

By: biff

biff — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:38:34 +0000

Ahn doesn’t get a lot of love here. I wonder if she ever stops by? One has to think that if she has even a little bit of intelligence she could come to the realization, based on events of the last couple of years if nothing else, that the “peace mongering” she has been preaching doesn’t really help the North Korean people to the extent it helps perpetuate the regime.

By: Alec

Alec — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:39:19 +0000

I went to North Korea as a peace activist. North Koreans were living in very difficult conditions. Eight-year-old children were loitering around the hotel, shaking because of hunger. Even soldiers were extremely thin.

[...]

One thing that surprised me was the mental strength of the North Koreans. I strongly felt their pride and urge to preserve their system.

Oh, FFS! It’s difficult getting my mind around the near psychotic divorce from reality which is necessarily to segue between these statements, but, as I don’t know about Ahn’s background, I’ll defer from calling her anything more than a muppet.

I ran out of sugar last week. It was terrible.

If you haven’t seen it already, Joshua, here’re reviews on Barbara Demick’s new book:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article7032653.ece

http://www.slate.com/id/2244182

And another which links the Junge religion to the Showa period:

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15579841