El Wall Street Journal se hace eco de dos publicaciones recientes sobre Corea del Norte.
The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters
In attempting to understand North Korea, Mr. Myers argues, outsiders almost invariably get it wrong. The country's dominant ideology is not Communism or Stalinism or Marxist-Leninism. Nor is it Confucianism or even the regime's governing doctrine, called Juche Thought, usually translated as "self-reliance."
The real North Korean worldview, Mr. Myers notes, is based on a belief in the unique moral superiority of the Korean race. The closest analogy is the fervent nationalist ideology that governed prewar Japan and influenced North Korea's founding fathers. Having grown up in colonial Korea, they embraced Japan's propaganda methods after coming to power in 1948. Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea—the North's full name—even had himself photographed, Hirohito-like, astride a white stallion.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
But what about the vast rest of the population? A reading of Barbara Demick's "Nothing to Envy," about the lives of "ordinary" North Koreans, indicates that many of them no longer buy into the regime's propaganda. The author, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, profiles six North Koreans who are now living in the South. All survived the "Arduous March," the propaganda machine's name for the famine of the mid-1990s that killed perhaps as many as two million, or one-tenth of the North's population. All made the dangerous decision to flee their country and build new lives in South Korea.
"Nothing to Envy" depicts a society in chaos, where people have lost confidence in their government but don't yet have the will or the tools to rebel. Ms. Demick doesn't offer a view of what the future holds for the totalitarian regime that has oppressed North Koreans for six decades. But the growing discontent can't bode well for the regime's long-term health.
(HT: Marginal Revolution)
