Reddit reviews The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves - and Why It Matters
We found 29 Reddit comments about The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves - and Why It Matters. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Penguin
First this comment ignores that North and South Korea as separate entities didn't exist until 1945 when the US enforced a border. There are no "twins" to speak of. Then this comment ignores that the US bombed the shit out of North Korea under UN aegis. Then this comment totally ignores both North Korea's economic success up to the 1960s (higher GDP than South Korea). This isn't "North Korea = Best Korea" 4channing, since clearly North Korea is a de facto absolute monarchy with immense levels of fucked-upness, it's the fact that the "uppity US" is not some neutral party that gave Namhan a bit of help here and there. For the level of shitholery, I speculate that Kim Jong Un and whatever his support base may be is eyeing a large amount of reform on the Chinese model. I also speculate that with the migration between North Korea and China, for one thing, average North Koreans know more about the world and South Korea's standard of living than we're led to imagine from NK government propaganda.
As for Namhan's help, South Korea had US-backed dictators from the end of the Korean War, with significant popular movements that finally brought the dictatorship down in 1987 along with massacres and mass imprisonments up to that point, and still is part of the US empire of military bases. The party of the current president is a successor of the groups that ran South Korea under the dictatorships. It is still illegal to say things that interpret history or the current situation differently, e.g., blame the US or SK elite instead of NK for the division of the peninsula, particularly when talking to other recruits in that mandatory military service (the "National Security Act".
East Germany today has massive unemployment compared to the West, a burgeoning neo-nazi movement (alongside electing many members of the current incarnation of the former ruling party to the Bundestag in the hopes of restoring some of the things they lost) and depopulation. It's not all hugged out. East and West Germany was a far more unnatural division for Germany than North and South would have been, but they had the experience of being a patchwork of states for centuries, unlike unitary Korea. Gorbachev had a lot more to do with the ending of the Cold War than that "uppity American dude" Reagan.
Also, you seem to view North Korea and North Koreans as children because of your "personification" approach to history. (Although I do really want to read The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, which from reviews I've read claims North Korean internal propaganda is heavily influenced from Imperial Japanese propaganda and that the propaganda presents the ruling Kim as a maternal figure and the North Koreans as a race childlike in their innocence - indeed, too childlike for this world)
> North Korea isn't hiding shit. Everyone knows it's horrible there. Everyone knows about the camps and brainwashing and horrendous garbage. Just because it's not the topic at hand doesn't mean they've pulled any wool over any eyes.
They deny the existence of their concentration camps and claim it's a state that offers freedom of religion. So I think it's safe to say they hide things.
And I did acknowledge everyone knows about the camps and the brainwashing. I said as much in my post and I'll quote it again here:
> There is so much information out there about how horrible and dangerous North Korea is but the international community doesn't receive pressure from their constituents to do anything about it because everyone looks at North Korea as a joke.
But the point is there's no pressure to actually take steps in dismantling the country because they know exactly what to say and do to relieve that pressure.
> Just because it's not the topic at hand doesn't mean they've pulled any wool over any eyes.
I disagree. I think they have because people have a terrible grasp of North Korea. I see misinformation about DPRK all the time, both on the Internet and in my regular life, and the crazy thing is that it all derives from DPRK state propaganda. My friends involved in the North Korean liberation movement have always told me that the misinformation is by far the biggest obstacle they face when trying to raise awareness about what the DPRK is actually like and how they operate.
Even world leaders don't understand the DPRK which is why the DPRK has been able to run circles around them in negotiations. In many ways, it's also the difficulty that the West has in dealing with and understanding China. Western political scientists have constantly been proven wrong with all their predictions about China. First it was assuming that there's no way a communist country can adopt capitalism. Then when that was clearly wrong, it was believing that a capitalist society could not co-exist without a one-party state (in other words, that capitalism and democracy are inevitably paired). Then it was that a one-party government cannot possibly eliminate corruption. Well, that's being proven wrong now, too. Just this month, Zhou Yongkang was arrested on charges for corruption, charges that are over a decade old. This guy was a member of the politburo, the highest political authority in China. It would be like Dick Cheney getting arrested and tried for war crimes. A few years ago, something like this was completely unthinkable, but it's because the West's view of China was wrong yet again.
North Korea is no different. In fact, it's an even more extreme example. They're able to keep up this charade because the DPRK understands how the West works. Their elites are educated in western institutions. Kim Jong Un spent his entire adolescent life in Swiss boarding schools.
> Portraying this as about the movie and not about Americans getting pushed around and being told what they can and cannot do by NORTH KOREA is dishonest.
I don't think a private movie company deciding to pull a movie can be compared to relationships between nation states.
> This could be Spongebob Squarepants being canceled there would still be outrage. This could be some shitty porno flick being canceled there would still be outrage. It's not the what, it's the why.
Well I wasn't debating the what or why. I was pointing out that the DPRK is fully aware of how ridiculous they sound and it's an intentional PR move to continue propping up the regime, and the international community is playing right into it. There are horrible things happening in North Korea right now and everyone knows it, but it's shoved into the back of everyone's heads now because it's so much funnier and entertaining to keep talking about the DPRK as cartoon villains.
Like I said, this is the nation that has successfully brainwashed and oppressed 24.9 million people for almost 70 years. If you think they're not self-aware or the statements they make to the West are not calculated mind games, I don't know what to tell you except that you're playing right to their toon. Brainwashing is a lot more than drilling you with state slogans in school and waterboarding until you recite the right answers. It's also about conditioning subjects by preying upon their biases and prejudices, then reinforcing those things.
Think about what the controversy about this movie and the DPRK's statements just did. Think about how much more press and angry responses this has gotten over even the CIA torture reports or the countless news stories we've seen about human rights abuses in North Korea. When people think of North Korea for the next few years, what are they going to think about? Are they going to think about the concentration camps, hostage abductions, forced abortions, gulag gang rapes, and summary executions? Or is the first image that pops into their mind going to be pornos and some funny movies?
That is brainwashing. That is indoctrination.
> The level of protest over this movie is... Getting angry about it on the internet. Just like with the CIA report. This is just the news cycle. Things get replaced with the next big bit of news. Ferguson to Garner to Torture to North Korea.
Except Ferguson, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner had palpable effects. People marched against police brutality. They organized against it. The president pushed forth legislation for police body cameras because of it.
But with North Korea? Crickets. Because people don't take it seriously. If you don't want to take my word for it, talk to anyone from LINK. Read to Dr. Andre Lankov. Read to Dr. Bruce Meyers. Read The Cleanest Race. This is not some fringe theory. There is a very clear difference between what North Korea tells the world and the internal propaganda their citizens receive and it's because the DPRK knows how to play both sides of the fence.
> You're trying way too hard to make it look like people care about the movie itself more than anything else in the world.
Let's do an experiment. Googling CIA Torture Report comes up with 78.4 million results.
Googling The Interview gives us 914 million results. Nearly 1 billion results.
I didn't have to try very hard to demonstrate that yes, people really care about this movie.
Jag vet att folk gillar nordkoreansk propaganda, men varför inte läsa något ur en nordkoreans perspektiv istället för samma trötta charterresa? Det bor över 20000 nordkoreaner i Sydkorea, och en majoritet av dem har flytt dit under det senaste decenniet.
Här är några bokrekommendationer:
Re: the supernatural aspects. It seems this was an evolutionary process. For example, in the early days it was normal to refer to Stalin in NK propaganda and put him on a similar pedestal as KI-S. but as time went on and the policies proved egregious, it became more pressing to present Kim as a sort of spiritual leader/demigod as well. All mentions of Stalin were quietly retired. At the same time, the pictures and stories about Kim start to become more and more godlike - he has supernatural ability to understand what a factory's problems are and solve them in 2 seconds. So things like the story of how he kicked Japanese ass near Mount Pikchu started evolving too, because that further demonstrates how godlike he is and how his destiny was mapped. Then, when KJ-I needed to be groomed for the leadership position, stories about his 'birth at Mount Pikchu' started circulating, and his astonishing output of important Juche/Communist essays started getting larger.
When KJ-I went to uni, he seems to have kept himself aloof and was always intensely private. So he didn't show up in photos, or was largely inconspicuous in the background. But when he was coming to the fore as future leader, suddenly we need to explain why he's not in the centre of the photos!! Ah! We have the answer! He was so humble (echoes of Jesus here?) that he refused to be in the centre, no matter how much his astonished classmates begged him. So they first make a virtue out of it, then that transforms into proof that he's the Chosen One.
So it was a slow process, and probably wasn't intentionally planned or mapped out. Circumstances demanded further 'proof' of why it was absolutely imperative for the Kims to stay in power, and one easy way to do that is take advantage of the fact that the communist ideology had suppressed traditional religion by substituting it with a Kim religion - all the while increasing The Kim political grip on the country as shit gets worse and worse. You should read Bradley Martin's Under the Care of the Fatherly Leader. Also see B. R. Myers The Cleanest Race for a discussion of the propoganda. It's short and scary as hell.
Hope that sets you on the track! It's fascinating and extremely disturbing to read.
Edited for clarity as the kind aubgrad11 pointed out.
B.R. Myers (author of this book and this book) would argue that North Korea is much closer to being a fascist state than a communist one. It successfully co-opted communist imagery and rhetoric, but Juche is a sham ideology devoid of content, and references to Marxism-Leninism are now more or less absent from North Korean rhetoric and founding documents. Juche exists to cover up the country's right-wing nature, including veneration of a "parent" leader who is believed to have supernatural powers (Myers would argue this is directly borrowed from fascist imperial Japan), ethnocentrism (the reverence of the Korean people as morally pure but needing a strong leader to protect them), erratic, belligerent military posturing aimed at projecting an image of strength to their citizens, and so on. The fascist state has survived, it seems, by convincing the world that it is not fascist at all.
I would be interested to know from other North Korea experts whether Myers' thesis is generally accepted.
For Korea in general I took a lot of East Asian history courses, including courses on relations with the west, in college. I studied abroad in South Korea for a time where I studied Korean history (ancient and modern) as well as Korean culture and sociology (mostly South Korea). I also had the pleasure of speaking with someone from North Korea.
But if you're interested to know more, these are some sources I can personally recommend...
Books:
And there's more that I have not read yet. If you only read one book out of these, I'd say Nothing to Envy is a great place to start. It gives the most complete picture, in my opinion.
Documentaries:
And there's a whole bunch more that I have not seen yet.
And there's a whole bunch of essays and journals/photo collections floating around the internet as well.
> Japan may have helped, but certainly not in the way you're wondering about.
Certainly not? BR Myers, who's studied North Korean propaganda for decades, wrote a whole book on his thesis of how North Koreas system and cult of personality are a direct descendant of the Imperial Japanese rule that preceded it. Mt Baekdu taking on a similar mythological role to Mt Fuji, one that it hadn't had earlier in Korean history.
He also makes a lot of arguments that North Korea is not at all "Confucian". To mention some, they usually refer to their country as the "Motherland" or more literally "mother homeland" (even if it's more often "Fatherland" in KCNA English-language propaganda). How does that fit with Confucianism, where a mother is subordinate to even the youngest of her sons? Or the fact that Kim Il-Sung, in the 1980s, wrote paeans to his son and to-be-successor. That's also at odds with the Confucian father-son relationship.
> What is a "police state" please define that using historical materialist evidence that isn't literal CIA propaganda.
How about as defined by literal North Korean refugees?
Brought to you by the CIA shills over at the Washington Post.
> Which border? The one propped up by Americans using the fascist Syngman Rhee as a puppet?
Yeah, TIL Rhee Syngman is just as bad as Kim Ilsung who appropriated Japanese imperial propaganda to portray himself and his family as divine rulers.
> That'd be the dictatorship of the bougeoisie in America.
TIL the United States is literally worse than North Korea.
By the way, how does your precious revolution against the bourgeoisie (you should spell your own buzzwords correctly) stack up against the communist elite who live large in the west and send their kids to the top European boarding schools in the dirty, imperialist west?
I guess some people are just more equal than others, comrade.
> How are they not a bastion against imperialism? What have they done that could be considered imperialism literally anywhere on Earth? They supported Assad against US imperialism, Yemen against Saudi imperialism, and Libya against French and US imperialism all within the last decade.
So I guess concentration camps are fine as long as you hate America.
> "Something about American imperialism" haha yeah no big deal that American imperialism. Am I supposed to take this dudes opinion seriously?
Dude, you're a tankie.
So what is your experience? This is nothing worth fighting over, but in my experience, I have witnessed many interracial marriages between Japanese and foreigners, yet almost none of Koreans and foreigners. There are countless stories of Korean parents who disapprove of their sons/daughters dating non-Koreans.
There is even a book:
https://www.amazon.com/Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves-Matters/dp/1935554344
I understand this is talking about North Koreans, but culturally North Koreans and South Koreans still share significant overlap in cultural values. After all, they only split off in 1950.
My experience: Lived in Taiwan for 6 years of my life, speak fluent Mandarin, have many Korean and Japanese friends, including Caucasian expats living in both Korea and Japan, and have been to Seoul twice (actually just got back a week ago) and Tokyo 3 times.
This exact strategy is outlined in The Cleanest Race, though it's more to give him legitimacy by making him physically resemble his predecessors. Rumors are even plastic surgery was involved.
>After a bloody revolution, usually came a bloody war, followed by years of bloody repression, before the bankrupt regime finally crumbles, resulting in more hardships.
USSR: broke the Tsar state, turned a backwards feudal country into a modern one, universal education greatly raised literacy, universal healthcare wiped out typhus, cholera, and maleria - greatly raising quality of life and increasing life span by decades. Played a vital role in defeating Nazi Germany, which would not have been possible without the advances caused by Communism.
Cuba: Broke free of Batista. Universal health care and a very high doctor output. Universal education with complete literacy. Low birthrates. Have you compared Cuba to much of Latin America?
NK: Not even close to Marxism. Juche is out of whack in almost every way, and more of a Japanese fascism then communism.
There is much to criticize... but don't act as if there weren't positive effects of these struggles. Regardless, didn't other liberal democratic revolutions fail or break down at first? You don't hear many people denouncing the French Revolution, for example.
If you're interested in learning more about the history of North Korea check the book reading list at r/northkorea.
For the question of what is Juche and is North Korea really communist, I highly recommend a book called The Cleanest Race by B.R. Myers. It was released in 2010, so before the time of King Jong-Un but still very relevant to understanding the two previous leaders.
I don't know if this helps, but: "The Cleanest Race". About North Korea
This itself is actually a myth. The DPRK does not have a divine cult surrounding the Kim family, and indeed is actually quite careful to not make any statements in its domestic propaganda that go against its people's common sense and experience.
The Kims and the Party obtain their legitimacy from two things: The threat of an invasion by the "barbaric, rapacious Yankees", and a kind of Korean racial supremacist ideology that portrays Koreans as a maximally pure and morally perfect "child race" that requires the motherly protection of the Party and the "Dear Leader" in order to survive in a cruel world.
The whole "crazy North Korea" trope is actually from DPRK foreign propaganda, which deliberately attempts to portray the regime to outsiders as insane and confusing in order to mask its true ideology and to string the outside world along in attempting sanctions, threats, negotiations and aid to get the DPRK to "open up". All these attempts play into the hands of the DPRK elite in their strategy to retain power over their people. Negotiations and aid are spun as reparations or tribute payed by the inferior, apologizing Americans to the superior, pure Koreans, and threats/sanctions are spun as proof of the urgent Yankee menace, as well as the supposedly innate American tendency to be treacherous.
A good book on this subject is The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters by Brian R. Meyers.
Korean race issues are REALLY interesting. A pure-blood race mythos fuels their nationalism, their history, their inferiority/superiority complex. And in the north, that baggage is exploited by the Kim dynasty to keep the population in line. Recommended reading: The Cleanest Race
This book is my favourite, it demonstrates how the North Koreans can excuse getting aid, whilst also being hostile. (The propaganda states that North Korea is a perfect child. It is always precious and righteous but needs protection and help due to it being a child) TBH I think the best situation would be for internal politics in the region to collapse. Any sort of revolt would most likely be crushed by the (relatively) massive army that North Korea has.
it's great, and when you're done with that, the Cleanest Race is also good.
Oh and Hitchens is not just basing it off his one experience with a tour guide. He's also basing it off of the book that the article is reviewing: The Cleanest Race, which is a great read. It convincingly argues that North Korea is misunderstood in the West--it isn't really a communist state so much as a totalitarian racist hate state. The point of this article is the book, so he's talking about what the book talks about. He just uses his experiences to put his review in perspective.
>How about as defined by literal North Korean refugees?
>
>Brought to you by the CIA shills over at the Washington Post.
Defector stories can't be trusted. That's coming from imperialist media. And WaPo is hardly trustworthy when it comes to railing against US imperialism. They've been pro-war for well over a decade including Iraq.
>Yeah, TIL Rhee Syngman is just as bad as Kim Ilsung who appropriated Japanese imperial propaganda to portray himself and his family as divine rulers.
Yes Syngman Rhee was a literal fascist who committed genocide and supported US imperialism as a means to gain a foothold in Korea. Can you find any firsthand evidence from any actual piece from the DPRK that states they're divine rulers of any sort?
>TIL the United States is literally worse than North Korea.
Glad I could teach you something.
>By the way, how does your precious revolution against the bourgeoisie (you should spell your own buzzwords correctly) stack up against the communist elite who live large in the west and send their kids to the top European boarding schools in the dirty, imperialist west?
Yeah those stores are for people who come from overseas. There's a reason why they're cash only. It's almost as if the DPRK has faced embargoes and sanctions for literal decades keeping it at the position of a developing nation and not the home of the absolute finest institutions in the world compared to nations that have been built on literal Nazi gold. Excuse me for making a spelling error, but a word that's been used for literally over a century in mainstream Western nations is hardly a "buzzword."
>I guess some people are just more equal than others, comrade.
The end goal is to end that system. I suppose supporting inherent inequality is much easier for you though seeing as how the vast majority of Asian Americans are wealthy and come from well off families.
>So I guess concentration camps are fine as long as you hate America.
From that article, "The report is based on testimony from North Korean defectors." Well as I've demonstrated earlier DPRK defectors are hardly reliable witnesses or evidence to anything significant so without actual material proof (we as leftists tend to hold historical materialism to a much higher regard.
>Dude, you're a tankie.
I don't know how liberals got a hold of this word but it's hilarious to see. Define "tankie" if you would.
https://sinonk.com/2016/06/08/north-korean-nationalism-lessons-from-pyongyang/
https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/13071
http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/02/11/north-koreas-race-problem/
https://www.amazon.com/Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves-Matters/dp/1935554344
http://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/michael-day/north-korea_b_15896118.html
This is an old interview, as Christ0ph mentioned, but I thought I might add a couple things to update this and make the most a little more helpful. Kim Han Sol has a leadership page on nkeconomywatch here (though take note the compendium link is broken and the permalink url is wrong--i.e. you're looking at his only page there). That has newer news (e.g. the Sciences Po thing in 2013) but nothing significant.
He was only 18 in the interview too, so while an adult, he isn't fully up to speed on how the world works and his perspectives are not particularly helpful except to indicate what extreme elites and their families are exposed to. On the interview, things I noticed were:
Edit: formatting
Edit2:
I forgot to add a funny tidbit after this came out: He apparently was reported missing by his friends link and later found. The same thing happened after the execution of Jang Song-thaek.
I've read similar synopsis of propaganda in this book, interesting read www.amazon.com/The-Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves/dp/1935554344
The short answer is "yes". The longer answer is still yes, but requires a little more meat.
/u/zxz242's comment portrays authoritarian communist states as being fundamentally fascistic in their basic nature. This is in line with an increasing trend in alt-right circles towards re-framing the USSR in a "fascist" light. See Kerry Bolton's "Stalin: The Enduring Legacy". North Korea is no exception to this line of thought, even if you accept the notion that it is an orthodox example of Stalinism at work.
"The Cleanest Race" is a fascinating book, based on a meticulous analysis of available North Korean primary sources. It convincingly argues that the North Korean regime subscribes to an ideological pedigree that boasts Japanese fascism - not Russian communism - as its primogenitor. Repeatedly and emphatically, the propaganda portrays the Korean people as a unique and exceptional race. The Party views its primary mission in terms of preserving the purity, the "cleanliness" of that race. This book is unique in that it takes the North Koreans at their word, instead of interpreting their actions in the context of an outdated cold war dichotomy.
Finally, /u/AgainGlummest's whistle-stop review of Kim Jong-Il's "On The Juche Idea" ought to give you enough grounds to make up your own mind, and come to the same conclusion as the other two sources listed in this post.
North Korea is fascist. Or at least, as fascist as it is possible to be without actually being Italy in the 1930s.
It's a one of a kind state. Hard currency is brought in through Various illegal operations with aid by the Swiss who help them keep it safe and make it "cleaner"I still plan on going, I look at it as this, the tourist money is a drop in the bucket. And the cult aspect is shrinking slowly, I feel one of the DPRKs top generals and pals will try to take over at a opportune moment. They're no fools, and media gets smuggled across the border from China now, giving them a glimpse of the "hellish imperialist world"
Also interesting is how closely some of their ideology is to WW2 era Japan.
Check out The Cleanest Race B.R. Meyers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1935554344?pc_redir=1412261523&robot_redir=1
They wouldn't ever let the American defectors have Korean wives. They kidnaped a Romanian woman for James Dresnok. A Japanese for another, and I forget the other 2.
Any suggested docs or books on NK? Check out the cleanest race. Great work.
Try this book
> fascism is a political position where democracy and modern culture are rejected as degenerate and some arbitrary time in the past is considered to be the prime of humanity
Something like primitive communism? I think your understanding of fascism is pretty bad since it's easily applicable to Marxism, Qutb's Islamism or Haredi Judaism among countless other things.
>ಠ_ಠ uhhh no. China is basically capitalist, but socially they're authoritarian.
No, China is not capitalist, despite the liberalization of some sectors the economy in selected parts of the country. At the same time, Chinese Communist Party is definitely Fascist in nature as of right now, and began it's transition to Fascism during Mao's Cultural Revolution, when xenophobia and Nationalism became core parts of its ideology.
>North Korea is a dynastic monarchy.
The fact that Communist North Korea has been ruled by what is effectively the Kim dynasty has nothing to do with Fascism or Communism. But Juche is for sure not your garden variety "workers of the world, unite!" socialism, and the Party is extremely nationalist and racist (for more on this you should read The Cleanest Race, or watch this at least)
In The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans see themselves the author describes the Kims as going for an a somewhat female/motherly appearance as this appeals to the people.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves/dp/1935554344
Here's a link to an NPR interview when i think the author discussed this: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/29/144449823/a-look-at-north-korean-ideology
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves/dp/1935554344
Read this. Also... book a trip to the NK. You will see for yourself, if you can watch.
Nazis were softcore in comparison to the NK citizens.
Did you think nobody was going to try to verify your bullshit? Haha.
This happened:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joseph_Dresnok
>After Bumbea's death, Dresnok married his third wife, the daughter of a North Korean woman and a Togolese diplomat. They had a son, Tony, in 2001. The family lived in a small apartment in Pyongyang, provided along with a monthly stipend by the North Korean government.
Nice lie tho.
>But I guess since they're not white they can't be racist, right?
Gotta love the white victim complex. North Koreans are alleged to be all kinds of things on reddit but according to this white victim, North Koreams are actually spared anti-racist denunciations because they aren't white.
Never mind that one of the best-selling books on North Korea explores in-depth the racial aspects of the ideology:https://www.amazon.com/Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves-Matters/dp/1935554344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517452406&sr=8-1&keywords=cleanest+race
Oh no, that book never existed.