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Fear and Loathing Across the Tumen, Part 2

Two new reports today describe the accelerating outing of dissent in North Korea. The first, from the Washington Post’s Blaine Harden, cites this new study by Marcus Noland based on surveys of refugees from 2008, this study by the International Crisis Group, which I’d previously blogged, and more recent reports since The Great Confiscation:

There is mounting evidence that Kim Jong Il is losing the propaganda war inside North Korea, with more than half the population now listening to foreign news, grass-roots cynicism undercutting state myths and discontent rising even among elites.

A survey of refugees has found that “everyday forms of resistance” in the North are taking root as large swaths of the population believe that pervasive corruption, rising inequity and chronic food shortages are the fault of the government in Pyongyang — and not of the United States, South Korea or other foreign forces. The report will be released this week by the East-West Center, a research group established by Congress.

Read the rest on your own.

The second report comes from the L.A. Times’s Barbara Demick, from the Chinese-North Korean border, and much like yesterday’s Times Online report, finds evidence that North Korea’s food situation is deteriorating rapidly, food and other goods have vanished from stores and markets, and that popular discontent is rising rapidly. Beyond the widespread tendency for people to blame and lose faith in the regime, Demick found that not all of those she interviewed expressed or directed their discontent in the same ways:

“People are outspoken. They complain,” said a 56-year-old woman from the border city of Musan who gave her name as Li Mi Hee. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: “My son thinks that something might happen. I don’t know what, but I can tell you this — people have opinions. . . . It is not like the 1990s when people just died without saying what they thought.” [….]

“We were told that somebody decided he would burn the money instead of giving it to the government. The money had the picture of Kim Il Sung, and because he burned it he was shot to death for treason,” Song Hee said. [….]

Although Su Jong held North Korea’s own economic policies at fault, she said she had not lost her l”People are outspoken. They complain,” said a 56-year-old woman from the border city of Musan who gave her name as Li Mi Hee.

Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: “My son thinks that something might happen. I don’t know what, but I can tell you this — people have opinions. . . . It is not like the 1990s when people just died without saying what they thought.”ove for Kim Jong Il. “If [Kim] was a good leader, we wouldn’t see children starving, people wandering the streets in rags, the markets with no food,” she said. “But I don’t doubt his good intentions. It is the people under him who are corrupt.”

It’s now quite possible that more people in Berkeley than in North Korea who blame America for North Korea’s misery. This is progress.

11 Responses

  1. As someone who spends a great deal of her time in Berkeley, I couldn’t agree more with you Joshua.

  2. Yes, Berkeley. What a place. Home to communists, closet homosexuals, PC brigade, affirmative action loonies, feminist treehuggers and gay dads.

  5. Re Christine Ahn and a message to her if she’s listening:
    I’m actually glad that Christine Ahn’s article was published here at OFK (thank you Joshua) and while many assertions are not, in my opinion, factually based, her passion is obvious and not dissimilar to the those who are quietly trying to effect change in NK for the better (religious conservatives and liberals alike), but Christine, please, if you are listening, take a look, in the same critical context as your article is posed, at what the politicians in the democratic party have done (or not done).
    “Tightening the noose around North Korea via sanctions and further isolating it has not worked before and will not work this time to improve the human rights of the people living in North Korea. What sanctions may do is force more Koreans, especially Korean women, to cross a dangerous border to face a highly exploitative system that has developed in the area to take advantage of these vulnerable people.”
    As Jack pointed out earlier in another post, why isn’t the Obama administration whom you rightly criticize, at the very least, engaging the “vulnerable” to the same extent as they are “trying” to engage the wrong people in the NK regime – furthermore, I agree that our policy is a losing game and one has to wonder, why are we deluding ourselves into thinking that the NK regime will come our way when “the North Korean regime understandably sees (our policy) as a regime-change policy designed to bring about the collapse of their regime through economic pressure.”
    Finally, yes, I do feel some solidarity with Christine as an Asian American and would hope that she, too, will wake up to the abhorrent hypocrisy among certain politicians within the democratic party (and certain left-leaning media pundits).
    For starters, Christine, why didn’t former President Clinton allow for the immediate admittance of the “vulnerable” North Koreans during the “famine” of the 1990’s, similar to what John F Kennedy did for many Chinese during Mao’s great leap forward “famine” – what is behind their recent policy to limit the number of northeast Asians in our country through various insidious means, to well under 1%…furthermore, wake up to the fact that there is indeed a “link” BETWEEN the rampant political bashing scapegoat tactics used by politicians of the democratic party and by every presidential candidate including Gore and Obama (I witnessed several campaign speeches where this was evident fueled by certain media pundits), AND the riots in Los Angeles where Koreans were targeted – to this day, have never recovered AND the senseless murder of Vincent Chin in Michigan where former employers of an auto plant murdered him as he was celebrating his birthday at a “Chinese party” AND countless suppressed unheard stories (thanks to the left-leaning media) of, yes, oppression by democratic party – ask my husband, he knows I cringe every four years listening to the democratic political speeches designed to “rally support” when in fact, they fuel hatred towards Asians. How they (democratic politicians) have the gall to accuse other parties of hatred and race-baiting, or, own up to their own brand of fear mongering is beyond me… Holier than thou attitudes among some liberals not only make me distrustful of them but are downright dangerous.
    Just some food for thought, Christine, if you’re listening.

  6. @ Ernst: As I recall, you commented that $250, 000 was not alot of money for the Liberty House project – in promoting this idea, I’m asking you publicly to make the Liberty House a priority for your foundation and help make this a reality – isn’t that the least you can do?

  8. To Irene : in case I suggested $250k is a pittance, then let me take that comment back as I am sure Liberty House can do something very worthwhile with that sort of cash.

    It is a pity they dropped to 10th place now, but I am sure there will be other ways for them to obtain funding, good luck to them.

  9. @ Ernst: In case you didn’t hear me the first time, please refer to my message to Christine (hint: “For starters….”) and I repeat, isn’t that the least you can do?!

  10. Irene, I could be wrong, but in case you’re confusing me with a politician then I am sorry to disappoint, since I am not. So, therefore these well intentioned words to Christine, may apply as well to anyone else here commenting on OFK. And by the way, ‘writing to Christine’ will probably fall on deaf ears anyway, as she’s just another tool of the vanity brigade. I might as well write ‘an urgent letter’ to Ban Ki Moon ‘demanding immediate action on NK’, which is probably just as fruitful.