Volume 1, No. 7, September 2000

Kim Jong II and Kim Dae Jung embraced each other on June 13th 2000.

The curtains were, infact, set to fall on the North Korean downslide much earlier, when Kim Il-Sung himself was around. But he spared himself the ignominy of such an event when he died of a heart attack in July 1994, just a few weeks before he was to meet his southern counterpart. Then, the ex-president of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, had persuaded him to pull down the "iron wall" which had divided the Korean nation in 1953. However, this task was destined for Kim junior, and he is continuing in the footsteps of his father.

The June 2000 summit is the end of a process of betrayal of socialist ideals. The downslide had started during the days of the Great Debate when Kim Il-Sung, like Ho Chi Minh, averred that the Great Debate was nothing but a fight between two communist brothers who had fallen apart over some petty matters. Both the leaders did not appreciate the significance of the great experiment of the GPCR, made compromises on principles and, like all centrists, their parties slid down the path of revisionism into the Soviet camp. From 1964 itself, for all his propaganda on the Juche Idea (self-reliance), he bargained away not only principles, but also North Korea’s freedom, in return for large financial bribes from Brezhnev. As history would have it, Kim Il-Sung himself was to enact a silent counter-revolution against his own socialist convictions and was destined to fall down against the power of Dollars, though he had once braved Japanese and American imperialism, militarily.

That is a historical chapter now, but for the present, let us start from 1989 when the East European revisionist regimes were falling down, one after the other, in quick succession, and Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika were ready to pull asunder Soviet Social imperialism.

On the heels of the East European collapse, i.e., in 1991, North and South Korea signed a Basic Agreement on Reconciliation and Non-Aggression. On the part of North Korea this, however, with the collapse of Soviet social imperialism, marked a shift towards a new pattern in the West. Soon after, in 1992 the North Korean Parliament amended the constitution of North Korea and dropped all references to Marxism-Leninism. In the same year, both the states signed a Joint Declaration on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Throughout the later years, the US accused North Korea that had ignored both these agreements. The purpose of talks with North Korea was to hasten its demise a la East European style. But, finding no discernible opposition within North Korea, the United States Administration sought the services of Ex-president Jimmy Carter. Carter went to Pyongyang to make North understand the ‘futility’ of its nuclear program in the face of American might and offered to rebuild its nuclear plants, in a way that would generate very little plutonium for making nuclear bombs. Kim Il-Sung, now without any backing form Russia or revisionist China for its defence efforts, acquiesced in and accepted the American offer and agreed to the inspection of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The US Administration wanted this agreement to be signed in a summit meeting between North and South Korea. The stage was set for the summit, but suddenly Kim Il-Sung died and Kim Jong II got the throne in a hereditary fashion, superseding many a senior leader in the Workers Party of Korea. In fact, he was already being trained for this job for many years and was described as a "loyal heir" to his father’s philosophy of self-reliance as enshrined in the Juche Idea.

Though Russia stopped helping it after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China’s market socialism resulted in it selling rice, fuel and other commodities at international prices, yet Kim Il-Sung refused to learn. His compromising approach took a heavy toll even of his Juche Idea. Now there was no revisionist state to look up to and the pressure of American military might was so strong that coping with it was getting impossible. Instead of relying on the strategy of people’s war in case the US attacks it, the North Korean State had been developing its nuclear and missile technology putting great pressure on its economy, leaving little for raising the level of productive forces in other fields. The strategy of people’s war needed a continuous revolutionisation of the political consciousness of the masses and arming of the entire masses, which alone would have been the only deterrent against the most modern killer machine of the world — American Imperialism. Reliance on the fighting spirit of the masses would have saved North Korea heavy expenditures on developing high-tech armaments. Moreover, the high-tech preparations were bound to fail in the face of the most powerful state on earth with a rabid reactionary nature. As a result, North Korean strategy crumbled and Kim Il-Sung’s Korea started looking for a thaw in relations with its Southern counterpart and its imperialist master. Agreements on Reconciliation and De-nuclearisation were done for a price, resulting in the 1994 agreement (reached before, but signed after Kim Il-Sung’s death), which, by all accounts, was a national humiliation.

The 1994 agreement envisaged the destruction of the two North Korean nuclear plants and, in their stead, building of two new ones to be funded by South Korea and Japan. These were to be constructed under the supervision of top American and Japanese technical personnel and managers so that the production of plutonium for the North’s nuclear bombs could be curtailed. South Korea and Japan committed 4.2 billion dollars for this purpose. The 1994 deal also required North Korea to open up its other nuclear facilities and stockpile of material for inspection (spying) by the US dominated IAEA inspectors. In return, North Korea was offered the lifting of US sanctions, which had been in force since 1953. Thus, in the 1994 agreement, North Korea bartered off its right to national defence.

North Korea then abandoned the stress on high tech defences and thought of plans to shift over to the modernisation of industry, Deng-style. The priority shifted, but the approach remained the same, i.e., not relying on the initiative of the masses. It started looking towards the imperialists for capital and investments. First, bartering national interests for dollars, then, abandoning self-reliance for foreign investments and gradual opening up to imperialist penetration. The de-militarized zone had been rendered futile against the capitalist onslaught from South Korea and the imperialists, America and Japan. Events have traversed a full circle since then. The North, which had once out done the South during the first two decades after liberation in the field of economic development and in raising the standard of life of its population, has picked up the begging bowel.

The West built up South Korea as a part of its worldwide strategy to contain the spread of socialism by funding hundreds of billions of dollars and raising it to the level of an economic tiger. Left to itself, South Korea would have found it impossible to survive and might have been swept away by revolution. But billions of dollars and nearly half a lakh US forces, armed with the most modern weapons and a big stockpile of nuclear warheads, succeeded in curtailing the advance of revolution in the South. Every protest in the South was suppressed with ruthlessness, denying democratic rights and making it a criminal offence to even praise and support the then socialist north. The US forces stayed on in the South after the UN withdrew its ‘peace forces’ although the former were a part of the overall UN ‘peace keeping efforts’. Later, the US not only refused to pull out but also established permanent military bases through agreements with handpicked dictators. South Korea’s conflict with the north continued even after the latter turned revisionist. Both, being in opposite camps during the cold-war contention between the two super powers, South Korea and the US forces stationed there acted as a bulwork to contain Soviet influence spreading to South East Asia. In the process, the ruthless suppression of the revolutionary masses and all kinds of dissent on the one hand, and channeling of huge amounts of imperialist capital on the other, made South Korea what it is today — a bastion of reaction and imperialist cultural decadence.

The two nuclear power plants to North Korea, whose construction is still underway, was a "gift" for signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty as per the 1994 treaty, thus, abandoning its right to defend its sovereignty and borders.

Moreover, it demanded $ 500 million to stop its missile sales to other countries and more money to cap its missile program. From a defence priority the restriction on the production of missiles has been changed into a commodity for exchange, and this barter is achieved through its surrender to imperialist pressures.

It also demanded $ 8 billion from Japan in reparations for the occupation of the whole of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, thereby claiming to be the sole custodian of the Korean nation, at a time when the North had itself abandoned its nationalism for capitulation to imperialism.

It wants its infrastructure to be built by the MNCs to prepare itself for the unbridled imperialist exploitation. But the US imperialists want this job to be done by the South Korean capitalists as it would require huge long term investments, while they themselves prefer to go directly for the exploitation of the cheap North Korean labour and its natural resources.

Already, a new (tourist) sector of the economy has been introduced in the North by the South Korean company, Hyundai, which will pay $ 1 billion to the Northern government, over six years, for developing tourism. Until now it has shipped 100,000 South Korean tourists to the North Korean Mountains on pleasure trips. The rising number of tourists and the existence of a large force of US and Japanese experts and managers, together with a huge number of South Korean labourers (engaged in the construction of nuclear facilities), require pleasure facilities in the North. To meet this requirement, a foreign company has been allowed to build a chain of casinos in North Korea at a cost of $ 1.6 billions, two years ago. Casinos will provide gambling, and much more, for the pleasure seekers. The US itself is a big gambling den of the world, where common people lose $ 50 billion every year on state lotteries and gleaming casinos. Now this evil is being welcomed to North Korea.

Since the last two years, hundreds of North Korean technocrats have been sent to America, Australia and other imperialist countries to study the rules and functioning of the market economy.

Immediately before the Korean summit, Kim Jong II visited Beijing and expressed his desire and readiness to reform the North Korean economy on Chinese lines. To ensure that a catastrophic upheaval of the East European kind is avoided for the ruling class in Pyongyang, a more controlled outlet to free the capitalist forces is being effected. The supremacy of the Korean Party bureaucrats would be secured in the new emerging economic scenario. The Chinese revisionists, on their part, have long been advising North Korea to initiate economic reforms. Kim Jong II has a lot to learn from the Chinese renegades and is all praise for them. Although Chinese capitalist reforms have, till yet, prevented the collapse of the party and state bureaucratic machine there, yet it is not certain that North Korea will be able to do like-wise.

The peasants and party officials at the village-level have been allowed to sell agricultural produce in the market for profits, as a precursor to a full-blown unleashing of the market forces. Moreover, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been set up in North Korea, regarding which the west says that these are "pallid versions" of the Chinese SEZs. The west, in fact, demands more freedom to exploit the North Korean labour and natural resources and want all restrictions to go. Kim Jong II, of course, will oblige them.

The new slogan in North Korea is: "Prosperous Country, Strong Military", a Korean version of the Chinese ones, i.e., "To Become Rich is Not Bad" and "Four Modernisations." Economic reforms accompanied with such slogans are meant for the poverty stricken masses to accept and yield to the blind forces of the market. The people are not to look for the real causes of stagnation in economic performance, which would have definitely pointed to the bourgeois political and ideological trends in the North Korean Party and Govt. The new North Korean slogan is directed against the socialist achievements of the past and gives the impression as if socialism were anathema to prosperity and the strong defence of the country. It is a cowardly attempt of the revisionist rulers of North Korea to conceal their own failures. They have pushed the North Korean society into dire poverty, under-employment, high corruption, stagnation, and, of course, a dictatorship of the worst kind where people have no rights and renegade cadres and Govt. high officials enjoy all the privileges.

Amid reports of widespread famine and malnutrition throughout the nine years since 1991, the North’s leaders are being rebuked by the western media that they are maintaining the fifth largest army in the world while they are ignoring the plight of ordinary people. Every argument is being put forward to make it accept the new schemes. Drought and floods in the past 6-7 years have taken an additional toll. There are reports that some 100,000 North Koreans have crossed over the Chinese borders into the North Eastern Territory. To prevent the influx of refugees, China has increased its border security along Tumen River that separates the Korean peninsula from Mainland China.

China supplies North Korea with 250,000 tons of grain yearly and fuel for its armed forces and industry. Since 1994 Japan has been supplying North Korea huge quantities of rice "to ward off hunger and famine". Japan stopped its shipments in 1998 after North Korea test-fired its Taepodong-1 rocket across Japan. Now, these supplies have again been resumed. In April 2000, Japan signed an agreement with North Korea to ship 100,000 tons of rice to it in one year. And 90% of the UN food aid to North Korea comes from the US.

Some of the UN food agencies are already distributing small loans to the people to breed, pigs, chickens, goats and rabbits, as if these things need capital and are impossible to achieve with the mobilisation of people’s initiative. The UN has taken up the job of initiating free market capitalism to pave the way for an all-out onslaught of imperialist capital. It shows how parasitic the bureaucratic setup has grown in North Korea where cash incentives are needed to bring the people around for such a rudimentary form of economic activity. Even then, its king boasts that "North Korea is a great land of socialism founded on the principle of Self-Reliance". Both the Kims (father and son) declared that North Korea was "not afraid of the US and Japanese reactionaries," and that the "Korean people will achieve victory over the imperialists one day." With the prevailing state of affairs in North Korea, such propaganda material lays bare the hollowness of its leaders, especially, when they themselves are afraid of an "eventual collapse" and are desperate to save themselves.

North Korea is also dependent upon South Korea for big quantity of grains, fuel and fertilizers. The aid and opening up of the agricultural sector are going on, hand-in-hand.

Although no formal agreements have been reached during the summit, yet a number of reports indicate that the imperialists and the South Korean capitalists are making frantic efforts to enter into a ripping off and grabbing up of North Korea.

Roads, bridges, transport, energy, telecom and other infrastructure projects are to be taken up by South Korean companies. Obviously, tanks and armoured vehicles won’t roll down these roads towards the South to ‘liberate’ it from "the evil clutches of the imperialists and capitalists". A free flow of capital and profits is going to become the order of the day.

Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung and LG are preparing to rush towards the North to exploit its cheap labour.

The South Korean government has set aside $ 500 million to meet the emergency needs of a sudden collapse of the northern regime in case the people of the North stage a mass rebellion against their leaders. Or, for a future reunion of the peninsula, when, as the South thinks, it will have to bear the cost of the reunion, as West Germany "had to do" when the Berlin Wall fell. South Korea also has plans to invest $ 2 billion per year over a span of 10 years to make the north a viable economic region. Though the North and South have struck a deal under US patronage yet the Seoul govt. and the west have no praise for Kim Jong II. For them he is a "desperate tyrant and global menace" whose downfall they fear as well as cherish. They are apprehensive that "periodic upsets may come again as happened in the past" and they don’t hesitate to warn the North of destruction in case it "miscalculates", as it is "no match for American power." Threats and doles are being carried out side by side.

To minimise the danger of any serious upsetting in future, which is almost out of question now, South Korea is persuading the North to become a part of imperialist institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Bank for Research and Development (IBRD). The South Korean government is sending an "Investment Feasibility Mission" from the Federation of Korean Industries to size up the opportunities and possibilities for investments in the North. The South is also planning to lay down a stretch of 15 kilometers of railroad through the demilitarized zone that will facilitate the North’s freight traffic to Europe saving enormous costs of shipping by sea-lanes.

American mining companies are planning major projects in North Korea as the North Korean renegades are encouraging them to take control of its gold, copper, zinc and magnesite mines in Hangyong, which lie on the east coast.

A UN agency is introducing crop-diversification techniques that are meant to transform the North’s agriculture in accordance with the necessities of globalisation. It will leave the fate of millions of North Korean peasants in the hands of the imperialist agricultural sharks.

The wholesale commodification of the economy has lead to the commodification of labour as well as the bodies of women. The Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese economies testify to this where alienation and dehumanisation of the human being has touched a nadir with red light areas cropping up in all the cities, coupled with poverty, destitution, widespread unemployment, corruption, crime and gangsterism.

The Korean land was divided into two, with the intervention of huge American forces and mighty arms in the South after World War II. Ever since, it has remained a burning desire of the Korean people to unite their land into a single country. The revolution in the North and its socialist achievements once were a matter of great hope and pride for the South Korean working people and anti-imperialist youth and students. Hundreds of struggles were launched in the South during the past four and a half decades since the forced partition of the land. The presence of American forces has been a powerful factor for the anti-imperialist and unification movement, which has always targeted it. Once, the movement for unification represented the anti-imperialist rage of the Southern masses. But with the betrayal of the northern leaders unification has changed its character. It no longer represents the revolutionary aspirations of the people nor is it a step forward for them. Now it represents the gobbling up of a whole people by the capitalist forces of reaction. What the US could not do with its massive death machine is being done by the force of capital. Those who were responsible for dividing the land of the Korean people have now become the chief protagonists of unification. Their objective, though, has not changed. But, the grounds for this shameful gobbling up, primarily lies in the betrayal of the North Korean leaders who have fallen flat before the Satan.

The summit will be remembered as a culmination of a process set in motion by renegades to the cause of national liberation and socialism, where a ‘document of principles’ was signed by abandoning the best principles humanity has ever had. The leaders of North Korea are no longer concerned with the deprivation of the North Korean masses as they sit at the helm of a state that is fascist in nature and as inhuman as a reactionary state can be. Socialism has long since ceased to inspire them. They only masquerade as saviours of the people, while in reality, they work against their interests.

<Top>