[Editor’s note: The following is The 4th Media’s Editor-in-Chief Prof. Chung’s personal correspondence with one of our very respectful contributors for the Int’l Voices section. In order to help our global readers to understand the DPRK a bit better and for the sake of their “uncontaminated” knowledge and information, The 4th Media decided to post a personal correspondence as it is.]
Hello Prof. Chung,
……
…….
I think that he [Kim Jong Un] has problems with the “old guard” such as his dead uncle and some of the military generals.
I am sure that the former NBA star Rodman is carrying messages and ideas from Washington.
I support Korean [re]unification, but do not want to see North Korea be absorbed by South Korea like East Germany was absorbed by West Germany.
Please let me know what you think.
Best wishes and in solidarity,
M
***
Dear Mr. M,
Glad to hear from you back again!
First and foremost congratulations to your evermore broadened and further deepened work around the globe in addition to your continued writings on a number of global issues.
Regarding the Korea issue in general, the DPRK (aka, North Korea) in particular, I do deeply appreciate your concerns and the specific question you raised in your reply letter.
First it seems many of my progressive intellectual friends around the world, at times, particularly on the “North Korea” issue, seem to have NOT been “completely free from” the Nonstop (for over 60 years and on a global scale) Demonization Campaign as part of the US’s Propaganda War against that most isolated but probably the most staunch (and “could-be most strongest”) anti-imperialist and socialist nation on earth, in my opinion with, of course, conviction.
Please forgive me and allow me of this sort of simplistic characterization of some of my non-Korean intellectual friends’ way of seeing the DPRK.
However, due to the unimaginably cunning, deceptive and distorting degree of demonization campaign against DPRK, the US’s “could-be the most difficult” enemy for over 60 years, many of my friends seem often make, seemingly due to mostly lack of correct and objective information, misjudgment and/or inappropriate analyses on the issue of DPRK unintentionally.
Second, the new leader Kim Jong Un “didn’t have any “personal” problems with his uncle who’d been considered by outside readers of “North Korea” as one of his most close “old guards” or “political patronage.”
Kim, however, like his father, seems to have had very serious “legal, financial, political and even moral” problems with his uncle whose political, legal and financial problems had been known to that society for a long time.
Jang, as the only son-in-low to the DPRK founder, the almost godlike and the most revered leader late President Kim Il Sung and the only brother-in-low to former supreme leader Kim Jong Il the other greatly revered and loved leader by his people and many around the world even after his death, had wielded, in abusive manners and ways, over excessive political power throughout his adult life as almost, in a way, a “non-touchable guy.”
In the latter part of his tragic life, by abusing his family background and power, he even was able to build his own, known as, “small kingdom” within the DPRK society. It’s now a well-known fact that he’d accumulated uncontrollable or unaccounted amount of ill-gotten money/wealth and power close to the end of his life.
Even before he was convicted and executed in 2013, he’d also violated a number of times the sociopolitical, moral and legal rules and principles in that very tightly-connected and morally-strong society, so that he’d been purged twice by Kim Jong Il from his various former powerful positions and gone through “reeducation” processes.
But, again due to his extraordinary family ties and backgrounds, he was able to manage coming back to power again and again during 1990s and 2000s. Anyway the Jang scandal isn’t anything like the “personal feud,” “political in-fight” or “power struggle” within the Korea Workers Party leadership as most outside world have often mistakenly characterized about.
In short, to China, he’d been considered as the “most important China connection” to DPRK. He’d been known as the most powerful “pro-China” figure in Pyongyang. Also he’d been considered the most important (so-called) “pro-Reform” figure by outside world.
However, these sorts of information, rumors, and reports have all turned out to be false, incorrect, disinformation, and/or misinformation.
He’d been in fact the crucial, decisive and most important card for the US “regime change” strategy against DPRK which has been repeatedly concluded by top US military and intelligence officials since early 1990s as the nation which “can’t be defeated militarily by outside force” (according to the William Perry Report in 1999 during the late Clinton era).
What the Jang scandal could mean is the US imperialists and their puppets in Tokyo, Seoul and elsewhere have lost their surest regime change card.
So, Mr. M, there is no need to worry about and be concerned of any sort of “absorption-type of (so-called) reunification” by the South, i.e., by the US.
The North, as it’s been extraordinarily strong in their political and ideological unity ever since it came into being in September 1948, is strong evermore with their even further stronger internal unity around their new supreme leadership.
FYI, let me recommend the following article posted on our site yesterday. It may give you a bit more idea about the present situation with regard to the DPRKorea-US relations:
http://www.4thmedia.org/2014/02/22/dprk-if-obama-doesnt-talk-to-us-we-will-just-wait-for-the-next-president/
In fact, ever since their first successful underground nuclear test in 2006, the DPRK has been extremely busy with their “self-reliant economic development.” They seem, according to a UN report, even now so close to achieve the “self-sufficient level of food production.”
The self-determined, independent and socialist nation, as finally and publicly admitted by US and the western part of the world as late as in December 2012 with the DPRK’s 3rd successful satellite launching, seems to have already achieved the highest, most advanced and sophisticated scientific development in almost every industrial, agricultural and military technology.
Of course, it’s been obtained NOT by outside help BUT by their SOLELY OWN and never-given-up efforts under the most extreme and longest US-led UN sanctions and international isolation in addition to the ongoing Washington’s nuclear military threats ever since the Korean War in 1950.
In order to obtain more direct knowledge and experience, I wish you could sometime in near future visit DPRK.
I hope this hastily-written brief information might give you some help, so that now you could be less concerned about the future of DPRK.
Let’s stay in touch on this issue.
Again I do thank you for the genuine concerns you have with regard to Korea.
Best wishes,
Prof. Chung