Korea / 조선

"The DPRK is continuously cast as a villain in international politics. The “hermit kingdom” is painted as tyrannical, repressive, and dynastic. In this essay, I want to argue the opposite: North Korea is a deeply democratic country, and this is reflective of its socialist values."

Absolutely love the DPRK Explained channel, can only recommend!

March 21st marks the 50th anniversary of taxation abolition in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), making it the first state in history to do so.

This move, enacted by the Supreme People’s Assembly on March 21st, 1974, completely eliminated the tax system, which had been gradually phased out since the mid-1960s.

President Kim Il Sung emphasized that this decision aligned with the socialist system's principles and liberated the working class from exploitation.

Unlike in capitalist nations, where taxes continuously rise, DPRK's unique socialist approach prioritized people's welfare by eliminating taxation entirely. This bold step underscores the DPRK's commitment to socialism.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3966387

A few months ago when I was sifting through the garbage dump r/EuropeanSocialists (Once in a while they have good translated DPRK resources otherwise very hard to find) I came across a mention of a site called Yaegihaja. The name means "Let's Talk" in Korean and apparently it was a forum which claimed you could talk with actual north Koreans. It also claimed to be affiliated with the DPRK government. The site has also been mentioned on a few youtube channels, such as one called "SunhiPlays" which posts music videos and one just called "Yaegihaja" which uploaded a DPRK movie. Apparently the URL used to be yaegihaja.com but the website is now shut down and the Wayback Machine's latest snapshot of the website is from April 2022, only showing the home page. Such a place existing is so bizarre and I can't find more information on what it actually was. If you've heard of Yaegihaja please tell me everything you know because I am very curious about this matter.

Also apparently Uriminzokkiri had a Discord server? The DPRK rabbit hole goes deep.

WEBSITES:

•Explore DPRK: https://exploredprk.com/

•Korean Friendship Association (KFA): https://korea-dpr.com/

•Rodong Sinmun (The official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea): http://rodong.rep.kp/en/

•Media Ryugyong: http://mediaryugyong.com.kp/movie?lang=ko

•KoreanBooks: http://www.korean-books.com.kp/en/

YOUTUBE CHANNELS:

•PhuongDPRKDaily: https://youtube.com/@PhuongDPRKDaily?si=NCAdxY-dckm_DlVH

•Jaka Parker (lives and works in DPRK part time): https://youtube.com/@jakaparker?si=nxj8Ep_PZSVSq5C7

•Songun007: https://youtube.com/@SONGUN007?si=S-TtbaiTFbiNFmux

•Explore DPRK (Youtube): https://youtube.com/@ExploreDPRK?si=AIam3xAu9yQAHN2y

•DefendKorea: https://youtube.com/@DefendKorea?si=Wy7lIf8XTVb9YVxA

•Juche Gang: https://youtube.com/@shanelawrence86?si=mUzTU7RrafDq-HdA

•DPRK News Room: https://youtube.com/@dprknews1912?si=jelvzKW2L_Sjbp1x

RECOMMENDED DOCUMENTARIES:

•My Brothers and Sisters in the North, 2016 (incredible documentary, my favorite): https://youtu.be/IBqeC8ihsO8?si=tPxzw3hts1Bjpu7g

•Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul (really interesting interviews of defectors): https://youtu.be/ktE_3PrJZO0?si=_GX1jS6-uxtMI5MX

•We went to North Korea to Get a Haircut, 2017 (This one is short, hilarious, and enlightening): https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E?si=0imYM0n9kvureN3k

•An African American's Journal Inside North Korea ,1994: https://youtu.be/NTi5Ma1F7zM?si=_7XMaRX9cLPHzy4h

•My socialist country, 1992 (DPRK made documentary): https://youtu.be/EBDubna1oro?si=O1E34SYTQXOzEVtI

BOOKS & OTHER REPORTS:

•In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report (1949) -Anna Louise Strong https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/strong-anna-louise/1949/in-north-korea/index.htm

GOOGLE DOC SOURCE DUMP:

• Notes on the DPRK: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1ewrcRerI8lyXpykMX11EyMoCFii1Hafakq7t0976eYQ/mobilebasic

Alternative link for "Notes on the DPRK": https://pdfhost.io/v/zkfDlL45e_NOTES_ON_THE_DEMOCRATIC_PEOPLES_REPUBLIC_OF_KOREA_Google_Docs

BEIJING, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s top leader Kim Jong Un on Monday jointly designated 2024 as the China-DPRK Friendship Year and launched a series of activities.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and Kim, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the DPRK, made the announcement in their exchange of New Year greeting messages.

In his message, Xi pointed out that China and the DPRK are friendly neighbors connected by mountains and rivers, saying that the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK was forged by the older generation of leaders of the two parties and two countries, cemented in the revolutionary struggle, and continuously deepened in the course of socialist construction.

In recent years, Xi said, the traditional friendly cooperation between China and the DPRK has entered a new historical period with joint efforts.

The two sides have maintained close strategic communication, deepened practical cooperation, strengthened coordination and collaboration in multilateral international affairs, pushed forward the continuous development of China-DPRK relations, safeguarded the common interests of the two countries, and maintained regional peace and stability, Xi added.

Under the new situation in the new era, the CPC and the Chinese government have always viewed China-DPRK relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, and it is China's unwavering policy to maintain, consolidate and develop the long-standing friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries, Xi said.

China is ready to work with the DPRK to take the 75th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations and the China-DPRK Friendship Year as an opportunity to carry forward the long-standing friendship, deepen strategic mutual trust, enhance exchanges and cooperation, and ensure that bilateral ties move forward with the times for greater development so as to better benefit the two peoples, and continuously make new contributions to safeguarding regional peace and stability, Xi stressed.

In his message, Kim noted that 2024 is a significant year marking the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the DPRK and China, saying that socialist construction in the two countries has at the moment entered a new stage of progress and the international situation is undergoing complex changes.

The two parties and governments have decided to designate this year as the China-DPRK Friendship Year, and further promote the traditional relations of friendship and cooperation between the two sides in accordance with needs of the times, which conforms to the common expectation and desire of the people of the two countries, Kim added.

The unbreakable DPRK-China friendship, forged and consolidated in the struggle for socialism, will be fully displayed this year, he said.

Through the activities during the friendship year, the two parties and governments will further promote exchanges in all fields, including politics, economy and culture, further deepen the bonds of friendship and unity, and step up cooperation in the joint efforts to safeguard regional and global peace and stability, thus writing a new chapter in DPRK-China relations, Kim said.

“I'm with Men's Solidarity” Man in his 20s arrested for assaulting female employee at convenience store - Nov. 5, 2023 (article in Korean)

[Machine translation + slight editing]

A man in his 20s who assaulted a woman in her 20s working at a convenience store was caught by the police. He told the police, ‘I am a member of the Men’s Solidarity. He is said to have said, “Feminists must be beaten.”

Jinju Police Station in Gyeongsangnam-do announced on the 5th, “We have applied for an arrest warrant for Mr. According to what the police said, Mr. A was drunk at around 0:10 a.m. on the 4th and acted unruly, including throwing items he had chosen at a convenience store in Hadae-dong, Jinju.

It is said that a female employee in her 20s who worked at a convenience store stopped him, but the throwing of objects continued. Mr. A took the mobile phone of an employee who was trying to report it to the police, put it in the microwave, and beat the employee who tried to stop him from doing so. Mr. A even assaulted a customer in his 50s who tried to stop him. The police responded to the scene following a report from a passerby and arrested Mr. A.

The police said, “Mr. A, who was being investigated, said, ‘I saw that (the convenience store employee) had short hair and thought she was a feminist. “I said, ‘I am a member of the men’s solidarity and you should be beaten,’” he said.

“Why does a woman have short hair?” A 20-year-old who indiscriminately assaulted a part-time worker at a convenience store. (article in Korean)

[Machine translated excerpts]

A man in his 20s who indiscriminately assaulted a female part-time worker at a convenience store because of her short hair was caught by the police.

Mr. A is accused of assaulting Ms. B, who was in her 20s and was working part-time at a convenience store in Hadae-dong, Jinju, by punching and kicking her

He assaulted Mr. C, a customer in his 50s who tried to stop the assault, several times, and also hit him with a chair provided in the store.

As a result of Mr. A's crime, Ms. B suffered a sprain, ligament damage, and an ear injury, and Mr. C suffered fractures in his shoulder, forehead, and nose.

At the time of the crime, he was found to have made remarks to Mr. B, saying, "When I see a woman with short hair, I see a feminist" and "I am a Men's Solidarity member, feminists should be beaten."

Summary: PDP gave a speech in front of US embassy in Seoul and a speech in front of the White House in Washington DC. The speech expressed that only when Palestine is liberated can the conflict be resolved, and that the "US and Israel are one body and it is public knowledge in the whole world that the US aggression forces are behind the indiscriminate bombing and aggression of the Palestinians" and "the imperialist powers led by the United States have turned the world into a powder keg of war" using Zionism in the Middle East, NATO in Europe, Japanese militarism and the formation of an "Asian version of NATO" in Asia, strengthening the war alliance against DPRK and plotting a war in East Asia.

The speech concludes: "the deeper imperialist aggression becomes, the stronger a unity of anti-US independent forces become. The Palestinian people, who seek independence and justice, will defeat the aggressive US imperialist and win their liberation. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"

Link to English statement

"The combined number of those seeking to stay in China and those wanting to return to the North is actually greater than those hoping to reach South Korea."

"The more South Korea and the international community get involved in defector issues with their own political agenda, the more likely it is to end up further cementing our national division."

Lee Sung-hwan (pseudonym): "I hate being called a ‘defector.’ I didn’t leave because I’m opposed to the politics in North Korea. I’m just someone who left to earn money, and I plan to return once I’ve made some."

Note: Hankyoreh is a center-left liberal newspaper from South Korea.

Excerpts:

Since 1997, Cho has met with North Korean defectors primarily in China’s Yanbian prefecture and the North Korean-Chinese border region. Other than last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to visit China, he has met with defectors virtually every year for the past two decades or so. Based on his meetings, they presented quite a different image from the one commonly perceived in South Korea, he said.

For example, Cho administered a survey to 100 female North Korean defectors whom he had met with three or more times between August 2001 and October 2003. Forty-one of them said they wanted to travel to the South, while the other 59 did not: 34 wanted to return to North Korea, 21 hoped to remain in China, and four wanted none of the above. Indeed, Kim Ryon-hui, the so-called “Pyongyangite in Daegu,” has demanded repatriation ever since she arrived in the South in 2011, insisting that she only came because she had been “deceived by a broker.”

Lee Sung-hwan (pseudonym), one of the defectors who hoped to return to the North, is quoted as saying, “I hate being called a ‘defector.’ I didn’t leave because I’m opposed to the politics in North Korea. I’m just someone who left to earn money, and I plan to return once I’ve made some.”

Pak Kyong-hwa (pseudonym) is a native of Onsong, North Hamgyong Province, whom Cho met in the Chinese city of Yanji in 2014. “If it’s someone who left after committing a crime, someone who’ll be punished if they go back, you’ll never hear them talk about going back to North Korea. But people like us just quickly earn money and go back,” she explained.

“Certain brokers, NGOs and missionary groups have been orchestrating and expanding North Korean defections to South Korea for political purposes. And as certain far-right and conservative media in South Korea and Japan have either parroted the things they say or actively orchestrated things themselves, things have really crossed the line,” Cho said.

The primary victims of actions like these are the defectors themselves. Orchestrated defections lead to intensified controls on the North Korean-Chinese border, leaving far fewer options available to those who seek to remain in China or return to the North.

Some defectors, NGOs and missionary groups have also taken advantage of this “defector myth” to perpetrate fraud. As a representative example, Cho mentioned the Yerang Mission incident, which the Supreme Court declared a case of fraud in 2008. Beginning in the early 2000s, the mission appropriated over 2 billion won (US$1.8 million) in donations raised through internet posts about “risking death to evangelize in North Korea” and the “martyrdom and defections of North Koreans.” In 2006, the church was tried amid accusations by congregation members, and most of the messages it posted were found to have been false.

“The more South Korea and the international community get involved in defector issues with their own political agenda, the more likely it is to end up further cementing our national division,” he warned.

Related:

• Nearly 1 in 5 North Korean defectors say they regret coming to South Korea
• Interview: A North Korean mother’s quest to return home to Pyongyang
• [CW: Child abuse, SA] S. Korean pastor under investigation for molestation at the boarding school he established for N. Korean defectors
• "Spy Nation" (2016): Film Shines Light on South Korean Spy Agency’s Fabrication of Enemies
• Unreliable witnesses: The challenge of separating truth from fiction when it comes to North Korea
• The insidious threat of fake news surrounding North Korea

The name has been almost permanently ruined. Whenever people hear of it, they always think of no food, 1984, worshipping the leader, getting your entire family arrested for not doing so, all that stuff. And if you say otherwise, they just call you a propagandist who is hiding the truth. And even if Korea's government does anything like build a water park, people say that it is just to "fool the world into believing they are good". Like they can't even build an entire village without people saying that they are just building it to deceive people.

At least China is taken seriously by a lot of people.

When so many people think of a real life example of 1984's Oceania (fuck you anyway, orwell), the most common one is North Korea.

So how could one easily disprove all these claims?

I believe this is the survey being discussed.

Some quotes from the article:

Survey results showed that 18.5% of North Korean defectors expressed that they “regret” moving to South Korea.

Those who regret settling in the South reported experiencing difficulties due to cultural differences, psychological isolation, and economic issues.

Based on her analysis of North Korean defectors’ adaptation to life in the South, IPUS senior researcher Choi Eun-young Christina explained that 18.59% of the 312 defectors surveyed who had left North Korea between 2017 and 2019 answered in the affirmative when asked whether they “regret coming to South Korea.”

Among those who reported regretting their decision, 84.48% complained about struggles with cultural differences, 70.69% with psychological isolation, and 65.52% with economic issues.

“Given that the suicide rate for defectors is over double that of South Koreans and there has been a recent rise in defectors leaving the South — including those returning to North Korea — we need to be looking more closely at the problems that defectors are experiencing in South Korea,” she suggested.

People’s Korea is the most independent country in the world. It has no foreign military bases and is not a member of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, WEF and APEC. There is no Mcdonalds’ or KFC in the DPRK. People’s Korea is a proud independent country that says and does what it likes.

People’s Korea has free health care, education, housing and low-cost food. It abolished taxation 49 years ago.

For all the above reasons People’s Korea is worthy of support with No Ifs and Buts. Today People’s Korea is under physical aggression from US imperialism and the reactionary puppet fascist regime in south Korea. Also, it faces psychological warfare and information terrorism by the US and world imperialism. Therefore we must step up many-sided and multi-dimensional campaigning in support of People’s Korea and not just on Twitter, Facebook, telegram etc but in actual meetings and on the streets.

We need KFA UK members to come to our picket of the south Korean fascist embassy on Saturday 4th of March and we need KFA UK members to come to our meeting but also to come to demos and different events with KFA stuff and DPRK flags because this is how we can build the organisation up.

I read some of this article today, it is looking at a policy speech and going over the economic development and future outlook for DPRK. This website writes from a south Korean perspective with a fairly positive view of DPRK (it's illegal to praise DPRK).

They compare DPRK's expected growth rate of 7% to OECD countries and found that only Ireland is higher than DPRK, and that DPRK's growth is higher than China's.

Ireland 9.94%

Turkiye (Turkey) 5.24%

Estonia 4.12%

Israel 3.85%

Poland 3.84%

For reference, Korea is 2.44%, the US is 1.98%, Japan is -0.20%, China is 6.74%, India is 4.00%, and the global average is 2.42%.

In this comparison, if North Korea's goals are realized, North Korea can be said to be the country with the fastest economic growth except Ireland. In particular, it is noteworthy that the level is higher than that of China, which leads the world economy with its high economic growth rate.

The article also mentions that Ireland's high growth rate can be attributed to foreign capital investment, and the article notes that when countries invite foreign capital in, they tend to get looted, and so DPRK is trying to grow without doing this. They also mention that DPRK's growth would likely be more rapid if sanctions were removed.

The article also looks at what sectors DPRK is developing, and compared DPRK and ROK's economic sectors, as well as the U.S.

Looking at the industrial structure [of the United States] as of 2020, the manufacturing sector accounted for 11.2%, while the service sector accounted for a whopping 80.1%. The country's economy is immersed in the service industry. This deformed economic structure is the root cause of today's economic crisis in the United States.

Later in the article, they talk about the policy of pursuing balanced regional development, and mention how it is often said that only people in Pyongyang have a high quality of life. The article grants that it's hard not to notice the development of Pyongyang which has grown to be a bustling city. However, the article points out the promotion of regional and rural development is being emphasized.

In his address to the city administration, Chairman Kim Jong-un said, “We should open up a new era in which regions change and develop on their own by promoting local industries across the country.” The idea is that local industries should be established so that the provinces can develop on their own without central support.

In addition, Chairman Kim Jong-un said, “We need to strongly push forward the business of modernizing local industrial factories in Kimhwa-gun and expanding the practical experience of ensuring demand within the military with its own raw material source to cities and counties across the country.”

North Korea has set Kimhwa-gun as a model for regional industrial development this year. The goal is to produce consumer goods necessary for the region in a factory that has realized modernization and automation using raw materials from their own region.

On rural development:

North Korea also has the idea of ​​developing Samjiyon City to make rural areas across the country like Samjiyon. Large-scale greenhouse farms such as Jungpyeong Namsae (vegetables) Greenhouse Farm and Ryeonpo Greenhouse Farm are also being developed one after another. Thousands of apartment complexes were built in the Geomdeok district as an example of mountain villages and Gwangsan villages.

The article compares DPRK's program of regional and rural development to south Korea's, where an imbalance between the capital and the regional areas also exists, and points out that although many approaches have been tried to improve the balance of development in the south, the concentration in the cities is still getting worse, and so it will be worthwhile to keep an eye on DPRK's plans and developments in this regard.

The article then moves on to the topic of wealth inequality:

North Korea has a policy that aims to distribute the results of economic development evenly to the entire nation.

The article points out that wealth disparity is a chronic issue in capitalist countries, and adds that south Korea's situation is further complicated by the presence of foreign capital:

In South Korea, unlike other capitalist countries, the issue of foreign capital is added. Since a lot of foreign capital is coming into Korea, foreign capital takes a large part of the profits, and the domestic chaebols take a lot of the rest, so very little goes back to the common people. So, as of 2021, Korea's gross domestic product is ranked 10th in the world, but few people feel that they are living well economically.

The article then mentions that while some socialist countries have used the tactic of reform and opening up to increase their economic growth, it has resulted in some wealth inequalities in their countries, then notes that it seems that DPRK's policies aim to avoid that outcome in their own development strategies.

If you see inaccuracies in my summary compared to what the article says, please let me know.

Excerpts from article:

Between the end of the Korean War and the early 1990s, more than one million Korean women were caught up in a state-controlled prostitution industry that was blessed at the highest levels by the U.S. military. They worked in special zones surrounding U.S. bases—areas licensed by the South Korean government, reserved exclusively for American troops, and monitored and policed by the U.S. Army. These camp towns were known to the Koreans as kijichon.

The system was designed to strengthen the U.S.-South Korean alliance, which was formalized in a 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty; its less formal mission was to boost morale for the thousands of U.S. military personnel stationed on the peninsula after the Korean War. It was the same for South Korea, where prostitution was encouraged as a woman’s patriotic duty to the state. Dongducheon, with some 7,000 registered prostitutes at its height, was the largest of the kijichon, and the strip of camp towns stretching from the DMZ down to Seoul was known as “GI Heaven.”

The Monkey House was a virtual prison for sex workers. It was built during a series of camp-town “cleanup” campaigns first launched by the South Korean government and the Pentagon in the 1960s. Their object was to ensure the sexual hygiene of American troops; rates of venereal disease among the GIs in South Korea were then far above the norm for American military installations in Japan and Europe. [...] Korean and U.S. security forces combed through the towns searching for women suspected of carrying STDs. Once in custody at the Monkey House, the women were inspected, shot up with penicillin supplied by the U.S. military, and confined inside its walls until they were “cured.” Then they were sent back to service their American customers.

In a sweeping decision in February 2018, Lee [a South Korean judge] ruled that the Korean state “operated and managed” the military camp towns to contribute to the “maintenance of a military alliance essential for national security” and abetted the industry “through patriotic education praising prostitutes as ‘patriots who bring in foreign currency.’” He directly referenced the Monkey House detention facilities, and concluded that the government had violated the human rights of its citizens. Specifically, he denounced the practice of segregating “camp town prostitutes in forced internment facilities or through the indiscriminate administration of penicillin, which carries serious physical side effects.”

The “overwhelming majority” of prostitutes in the camp towns were either orphans or abandoned children [...] The sex workers in the camp towns typically experienced a combination of “poverty, low-class status, physical, sexual and emotional abuse even before entering the kijichon world.” Once inside, “they were no longer treated as a person but as merchandise,” Kim Tae-jung, a counselor at Durebang, the support group for sex workers, explained at the forum in New York.

Eventually, the camp-town industry bulked up into a nationwide franchise operation. Kijichon zones were established around 31 U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy bases in South Korea. In Gyonggi province, which extends from south of Seoul up to the DMZ and was home to the majority of U.S. bases, some 10,000 sex workers were registered every year from 1953 to the late 1980s. They were part of a major industry: Moon estimates in her book that at the peak of U.S. troop strength in the 1980s, the kijichon economy contributed 5 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product.

One former sex worker starkly laid out the conditions faced by many kijichon women in a documentary film produced by Durebang. “A pimp sold me to a U.S. camp town,” she recalled. “Inside a warehouse, I was raped. The police sent me to the Monkey House, where American medics gave us injections” of penicillin and other drugs to prevent the spread of STDs. After her release, she was required to wear a plastic badge showing she’d been tested—“c**t tags,” she called them. All sex workers and bar owners were required to hang these registration certificates on the walls of their establishments as well.

If the comfort women for Japan were kidnap victims, the U.S. camp-town women were victims of sustained economic coercion—much like indentured servants or tenant farmers. Once they were recruited to the camp towns, women found themselves trapped. They carried out their sex work in rooms they had to rent from the bar owners. They also had to buy all their supplies, including their bed, their clothes, and the phonographs they set up to entertain their American clients. “From the get-go, you have a pile of debt,” Choi said. “You try to pay your way out, but it’s a never-ending story.”

By and large, however, the Korean public has refrained from treating the kijichon women as victims of a heartless imperial power, in the manner of the comfort women. Instead, many Koreans see the camp-town prostitutes as “fallen women bringing shame to the nation,” said Park Jeong-mi, a professor at Chungbuk National University who was an expert witness in the 2014 lawsuit against the South Korean government. But Park argues that this sentiment is misleading and unfair, and in her research she has found a direct historical link between the Japanese and American systems that supplied Korean women to their troops.

During the years of direct U.S. occupation from 1945 to 1948, the U.S. military government created an administrative state that was dominated by Koreans who had collaborated with Japan’s colonial rulers. The leaders of this first occupying regime outlawed prostitution, but got around the prohibition by building brothels for U.S. troops. These outposts were dubbed “comfort stations” after the Japanese wartime model, according to documents Park recently unearthed from South Korea’s Ministry of Health. The shift from Japanese- to American-coerced sex work was an easy transition, she said: “High-ranking Korean officials who served under Japanese colonial rule were familiar with the comfort station system.”

Excerpts:

The Korean success is due to several factors: a high degree of intervention from the State (which has steered the process with an iron hand), substantial U.S. technical and financial support (in the form of grants), a radical land reform carried out from the start, a 25-year period during which the industrialisation model based on import substitution was gradually converted into export substitution (the latter being impossible without the former), state control of the banking sector, the enforcement of authoritarian planning, strict control of currency exchange and capital flows, state-enforced prices for a wide range of products, and not least, the protection afforded by the U.S., allowing Korea to implement policies that it condemned elsewhere. The Korean government has also made great progress in education, thus ensuring a ready supply of highly skilled manpower to private enterprise.

Paradoxically the scarcity of natural resources has been an asset in the country’s development in that it has not attracted the greed of transnational corporations or the US. The U.S. saw Korea as a military strategic zone to counter the communist bloc, not as a strategic source of supplies (as is the case for Venezuela, Mexico or countries in the Persian Gulf). Had Korea been endowed with large oil fields or other raw materials, the country would have been treated as a supply zone and would not have been allowed the same margin of flexibility to develop its powerful industrial network. The U.S. is not prepared to deliberately promote the emergence of powerful competitors possessing large natural reserves as well as diversified industrial activities.

South Korea benefited from massive US external aid. Only very few other countries have received the same kind of preferential treatment: Taiwan and Israel are two of them.

General Park Chung Hee implemented an accelerated industrialisation policy underpinned by the strictest planning. The first five-year plan was launched in 1962. Korea took a firm protectionist stand with regard to its agricultural production (a ban on rice imports) and industrial output. [...] The State favoured the development of chaebols, vast conglomerates bringing together a number of private companies [Samsung, Hyundai, Lucky Goldstar, Daewoo, Kia, etc.] [...] The State planned the country’s economic development with an iron hand. In a sense, it was the State that created the Korean capitalist class.

Throughout Park’s dictatorship, in spite of repressive measures, large protest movements developed at regular intervals, often ignited by students. [...] [In response to the Gwangju uprising,] several hundred students and inhabitants were killed. Repression was carried out with the blessing of Washington and of the U.S. army. In the following months repression struck all over the country. According to an official report dated 9 February 1981 over 57,000 people were arrested during the ’Social Purification Campaign’ that had been launched in the summer 1980. Some 39,000 of them were sent to military camps for ‘physical and psychological reeducation’. In February 1981 dictator Chun Doo Hwan was received at the White House by the new U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

The dictatorship prevented the working class from developing independent trade unions and used harsh repressive measures. One of the components in the Korean miracle was the exploitation of workers.