The BBC ran an article ‘North Korea’s Kim Jong-un faces ‘paradise on Earth’ lawsuit’ focusing on a currently ongoing legal case in Japan regarding migration of Koreans from Japan to the DPRK between 1959-84.
The Japanese were able to scrape together 5 people for the lawsuit, out of the 90,000 ethnic Koreans who had left Japan to settle in the DPRK during this period. These 5 essentially represent the sum total of imperialist efforts to find defectors willing to go on record as anti-socialist and anti-DPRK dupes and as fodder for imperialist propaganda.
The Western capitalist class hates ‘North’ Korea. The Mainstream Media we get in the West therefore reflects the views of its owners.
It is difficult to comprehend the vicious hatred that the Western propagandists are able to pump out in such voluminous amounts when it comes to the DPRK.
You might be forgiven for thinking that it was the state of the DPRK that committed a mass genocide against the West… As the West did in the Korean war.
You might be forgiven for thinking it it is the DPRK that has carved up some Western country… As the West carved up Korea.
You might be forgiven for thinking that it was the DPRK that encircles the West and prevents Western countries from trading with other nations… As the West does to this day.
Or you may think that it is the DPRK on the borders of Britain or USA or France or Germany, practising “military exercises” as the US military does every year on the borders of the DPRK, during which of course the DPRK has no way of knowing that these “exercises” won’t become a very real invasion. Anyone versed in military history will know that most invasions come under the pretext of military “exercises”.
The reason for this relentless propaganda barrage is a simple one. The DPRK will not bend the knee to anyone.
This small country has bravely defied imperialism, walking through many trials and tribulations with their heads held high, whilst they strive persistently in building up a socialist system against all odds.
Under the delusional world of conservatives and liberals there can only be one model of development and the mere existence of a socialist system is enough to have them sharpening their spears.
The second is that the DPRK, like true internationalists, fought against Western imperialism abroad. In Africa they provided military and civil assistance to Guinea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mali and Tanzania.
In 1973 North Korean pilots flew fighter planes for Egypt in the Yom Kippur War against Israel. In Rhodesia they opposed the white ruled government and gave support to the black African guerilla fighters. They sent thousands of troops and military advisors during the Angolan civil war against the apartheid South African military.
This cannot be forgiven.
So the imperialist media can print whatever it likes about the DPRK, no matter how insane. The BBC tells us that students are required to get Kim Jong Un haircuts. (BBC, North Korea: Students required to get Kim Jong-un haircut, 26 March 2014).
Whilst the New York Post can tell us “North Korean men aren’t allowed to get Kim Jong Un’s haircut” (New York Post, North Korean men aren’t allowed to get Kim Jong Un’s haircut, April 2017).
It’s why there’s so many instances of mainstream media reporting that high profile party or military members have been executed (CNN, Ranking North Korean army officer said to be executed by regime, Feb 2016).
Only for them to turn up alive and well a few months or weeks later. (CNN, North Korean general, reported executed, turns up at party congress, May 2016).
The false reporting might be forgiven if it happened just the once. But it happens constantly and consistently.
The aim of course is to provide a wall of noise against the DPRK. To ensure the captive populations of the West are in thrall to a relentless barrage of Western propaganda that dulls and nullifies their senses.
Allowing the ridiculous types of propaganda to go unquestioned.
The correction is issued some months later but by that time the news cycle has moved on and it has been dropped down the memory hole. The initial report being the one that sticks in everyones minds.
Even as far back as 2015 the Guardian was forced to report, due to the sheer amount of fake testimonies, on why “defector testimonies often fall apart”? (Guardian, Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart?, Oct 2015).
The Guardian summarised that cash incentives for defectors encouraged them to exaggerate their stories. Yet two years later the cash incentives for defectors was upped to a whopping $860,000.(BBC, South Korea boosts reward for defectors from North to $860,000, March 2017). The cash incentives of ‘defectors’ to tell ever more outlandish tales even has Yeonmi Park making absurd claims that north Koreans have to “push trains”.(Joe Rogan Interview, Yeonmi Park Pushes the Train, Sept 2021).
This is despite the fact a train cart weighs between 30-80 tons with a passenger train weighing 4000-20,000 tons.
The BBCs reporting attempts to portray the DPRK as duping ethnic Koreans in moving back to Korea for a “paradise on Earth” rather than their very real push and pull factors of discrimination in Japanese society as well as the opportunity to return home.
Although the article does briefly mention that Koreans in Japan were “discriminated against” and considered “outsiders” these vague references will not help you understand how ethnic Koreans were treated in Japan or why so many of them chose to leave Japan. The Japanese led a brutal and bloody colonisation of Korea as well as enslaving Korean women into sex slaves for Japanese soldiers with the understated moniker of “comfort women”.
The Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida, only a few days ago was honouring convicted war criminals via a ritual offering to a controversial Shinto shrine. (Kyodo News, Japan’s new PM sends ritual offering to war-linked Yasukuni shrine, 17 Oct 2021)
Koreans in Japan even to this day are referred to as Zainichi Koreans, Zainichi meaning “Japan resident”. Only in recent years did Japan come to an agreement with the US occupied South Korea on the issue of “Comfort women” – Women, that is, who were enslaved by Japan and sold into sexual slavery and forced labour.
The province of China, Taiwan, is still awaiting an apology on their “comfort women”. (The Diplomat, Will Taiwan’s ‘Comfort Women’ Get an Apology From Japan?, March 2016)
It is not hard to see why ethnic Koreans in Japan wanted to return home in their tens of thousands. Despite the very real effects and difficulties that the DPRK faced, which were forced onto the Korean nation; decades of colonisation by Japan, world war, civil war, the partition of the Korean nation, the Korean war in the 50s and then endless trade embargoes and blockades.
With the Treaty of San Francisco signed in 1952 the ethnic Koreans formally lost their Japanese citizenship, which rendered them non citizens in Japan. Unable to get any support from the government they were unable to get Insurance certificates, further locking them out from accessing healthcare. Under this treaty “Zainichi” Koreans were required to get finger printed since they had two names: their original name and the one given by the Japanese government. This forced them to reveal their identities as Zainichi Koreans encouraging further discrimination.
This law was only overturned in 1993.
Due to discrimination it was hard for Koreans in Japan to get jobs, whilst locked out from getting jobs in the public sector which was reserved for Japanese nationals. This pushed Koreans into illegal activity such as illegal alcohol production, scrap recycling and racketeering.
In terms of housing many Zainichi Koreans were forced into slums as real estate agents refused to let Zainichi Koreans rent houses.
The Soviets opposed the signing of the treaty as it was the “turning of Japan into a military base for America” and that it was to turn Japan into an instrument aggression of their imperialistic designs.
“The American-British draft apart from widely clearing a path for a revival of Japanese militarism also provides for a conversion of Japan into an American military base…”
“If, however, the Government, of the United States and Great Britain, which have submitted their draft, consider it possible under such conditions to conclude a peace treaty with Japan, this can only be explained by the fact that they have firmly embarked upon the course of signing a separate peace treaty with Japan without the participation of the principal states neighboring with Japan, that their aim is not the establishment of peace in the Far East but the unleashing of a new war, in which they want to use Japan as their instrument and the Japanese people as cannon fodder for the realization of their aggressive, imperialistic designs…” (Andrei Gromyko, Ny Times, Gromyko’s Statement on the Peace Treaty, 9 Sept 1951)
Japan to this day is a military outpost for the United States to spread its tentacles and propaganda. In Japan the United States has created a servile dog. In the 1980s the Japanese economy looked as if it was going to rapidly overtake the USA’s economy. The USA brought Japan to the table to sign the Plaza Accords which amounted to Japan selling USA’s products cheaper in Japan and Japanese exports more expensive in the USA. This led to the following “lost 20 years” in Japan and long period of economic depression in Japan.(Illionois News, The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 7), August 24, 2021)
This is mentioned to highlight exactly how servile Japan is to imperialism even to this day.
In doing so, the highly militarised society of Japan can continue it’s hybrid warfare against the DPRK by pushing this kind of “lawfare” against DPRK by gathering up a few disgruntled useful idiots (five out of 90,000) as a needle to poke the DPRK with.
But the DPRK has been trialled many times and has walked through colonisation, invasion, relentless carpet bombing, economic blockades and the continued military aggression coming from the US occupied south.
This will roll off of them like water off a ducks back.