A good read with some good insight on north
Korean propaganda and indoctrination. Just taking this at face value we
can make a couple of conclusions. On the one hand if people are
openly criticizing the government it appears there would
be resistance potential that could be exploited to undermine the Kim
Family Regime. And people with these attitudes will be important in a
post regime collapse scenario. If the author is correct and there are
20-30% of the population who still believe in the north's propaganda (and note
the reference to anti-Japanese partisan warfare and Kim Il-sung liberating
Korea and giving birth the Guerrilla Dynasty) then in a post Kim Family Regime
scenario we can expect that there will be significant resistance to the ROK
efforts to reunify the Peninsula as 20-30% of the population is between 4 and 6
million people (out of approximately 23 million). In addition to
targeting the 2d tier leadership in the influence campaign as well as the 17 to
19 million these 4 to 6 million people need special attention in terms of
influence and it is not too early to begin that now.
V/R
Dave
Rations? Only after the grains are
“cooked, eaten and pooped”
Ask a North Korean: "These days, many
North Koreans criticize their government in front of other people."
BY MINA YOON , OCTOBER
23, 2013
Every week we ask a North
Korean your questions, giving you the chance to learn more about the country we
know so little about. This week Jin W. from London asks:
Do North Korean people really
believe North Korea is the center of the world and its leader is superhuman?
I would say in North
Korea, there are simply two sorts of people: people who have no doubt that
North Korea is the center of the world and its leader is for sure superhuman
and people who simply do not think this is true. You might wonder, then, what
the ratio is like between these two groups of people.
Unfortunately, I can’t
give you a clear cut number on this. That’s because in North Korea it is very
hard to know what others are really thinking about. Because of the strict
regulations on free speech, people cannot exchange their frank opinions with
others openly, so we do not know what other people are really thinking about.
However – from my very subjective impression – around 70 to 80% of North
Koreans probably disagree with the idea that North Korea is the center of the
world and that the country has a superhuman leader.
Let me tell you why I
assume like this.
“Before 1994 people believed that they
were enjoying the happiest life on earth”
Before 1994, when North Korea was ruled by Kim Il Sung, people were distributed food rations from the government. At that time, you really didn’t have much to be worried about when you finished all your given work for the day. People believed that they were enjoying the happiest life on earth in reward for their consistent loyalty to their leader. At that time, the government’s propaganda seemed to be working pretty well.
However, the situation
has since changed. Far from receiving regular food rations, these days even the
water and electricity supply is limited. People have to manage on their own
through the markets, instead of depending on the government like they once did.
Furthermore, there is too much information coming in now from the outside. As
such, people don’t believe everything told to them by the government as
they once did.
However, I would assume
that 20% to 30% of North Koran people still take the propaganda from the
government as the complete truth. I myself used to be a living proof of the propaganda
education. My father, who was a military officer, raised his kids as radical
communists. Because what I learned at school exactly matched with what my
father told me, I did not have to question anything.
“I myself used to be a living proof of
the propaganda education”
Father used to tell me that we North Koreans had been liberated from Japanese colonization and American threats only because the people had worshiped their leader so sincerely. He said without our leader, Kim Il Sung, we would have had to live miserably just like the Japanese or South Koreans – who were deprived of all basic dignities as human beings.
Growing up I once heard
horrible stories about a Korean girl who went to school in Hanbok (Korean
traditional costume) and had her Hanbok ripped off with a knife by her
Japanese classmates. I also heard about South Korean kids who had to shine
shoes of American soldiers to earn their own tuition. Listening to those
stories of our fellow Koreans, my little heart was broken with sympathy and I
often thought about possible ways to bring all those people to North Korea. But
my father told me that it was because of the South Korean government and the
U.S. that these people could not come to North Korea even though they wanted
to. He concluded that this was why we should drive the U.S. military out of the
Korean peninsula as soon as possible and reunify Korea. That was the only
way that North Korean people and South Korean people could prosper together, he
told me.
When I was a kid, in my
eyes my father was truly a great person. He always put other people’s happiness
before his own and he lived his life primarily for the community, society and
nation that he belonged to. I was deeply proud of my father, who was so
different from others. I often thought I wanted to be an even greater person
than him and from time to time, I pictured myself becoming a party officer or
an army executive member, even though I was a girl.
“My conclusion was that I should be
loyal to the government”
Looking back, thanks to my father’s education, I was inspired to think thoroughly about the real definition of our society, community and nation, and agonized over what is a meaningful and valuable life to live. My conclusion from all those thoughts was that I should be loyal to the government. I believe this conclusion contributed to my later decision to serve in the military army with a gun on my shoulder. Even though the decision was a complex outcome of many different factors, I felt great pride and satisfaction working my nation’s military.
You might wonder what kind of satisfaction it
was. I know it may sound a bit silly but we – I would like to use the North
Korean military ‘we’ to express what I felt part of – felt good that our work
had a visible influence on the attitudes of the South Koreans and Americans.
To be more specific, I was told that when we took a strong stance in
developing cutting edge nuclear weapons, then the U.S. would often propose a
return to negotiations in response. At those talks we could then ask the
Americans to provide us with rice or other scarce resources, or lead them to
unlock the economic blockade against us. That’s what I read from the education
material, too. In short, I learned that ‘Our leader’s courage and audacity
conquered the world.’
(Continued at the link below)
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