Quote: Source: http://www.kcna.kp/kcna.user.article.retrieveNewsViewInfoList.kcmsf As many people freak out of this instance, they overlook the main fact that Jang Song Thaek was plotting to overthrow the government which is a traitorous act in every country. It would be no different in the United States if a faction was attempting to overthrow the president, they would be dealt with swiftly. In this situation, its the DPRK which is a highly misunderstood country and all of their actions are blown out of proportion to make them seem like the bogeyman that the west paints them out to be. ![]()
That was quick! A few days ago he was being accused of womanising and now it's changed to him planning on overthrowing the government?!
Last week, I'm sure I read that two other party members had been executed as well. That's some fast-track executions! Now what is this…
Soviet cogitations: 12389
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 18 Apr 2010, 04:44 Ideology: None Philosophized
"Thrice cursed"! I'd love to be the guy who writes up these official state announcements. Seriously, this guy must sit around all day reading ancient Roman panegyrics. I wonder how I could get in on this line of work?
Dynastic politics in the Realm of the Wonder Kims is taking on a new and deadly turn. Although, to be fair, this was hardly unexpected. After all, IN THE END, THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE. Miss Strangelove: "You feed giants laxatives so goblins can mine their poop before the gnomes get to it."
Does anybody here have any faith in the legal process in the DPRK? Do they believe he is really guilty as charged? Surely they can see through this show trail. It’s absurd. Come on, how naive must you be to believe he is/was guilty as charged? Far from misunderstanding North Korea we can see it for what it really is; a fascist regime.
Normally the official press releases from the regime are unintentionally hilarious but this time I’m not laughing. Szabo wrote: Womanising Treason Dropping litter Not cheering enough at the end of a dear leaders speech Watching a foreign film Does the charge really matter? If the regime wants to eliminate you then they find an excuse.
I don't care. He certainly deserved it anyway by being in the highest echelons of power in that anti-worker and anti-human ruling party.
North Korea isn't even trying to keep up the pretense of being different from how its western critics portray it. Reading the full transcript of the announcement they openly talk about how only the Kim family can ever lead North Korea and debate etc is actively discouraged. Under Kim Jong Il this would all have been done hush hush so the North could deny it ever happened at all. Hopefully this is a sign of the regime unravelling.
I'll just reiterate a comment I made elsewhere:
Quote:
Soviet cogitations: 12389
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 18 Apr 2010, 04:44 Ideology: None Philosophized
In the days of the Roman Empire, whenever a new Emperor was elected, one of the first tasks of the Praetorian Guard was to locate and destroy as many of that Emperor's relatives as possible (outside of his immediate family and offspring). A wholesale slaughter of uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins, and in-laws was the norm. It's no surprise that dynastic politics in modern DPRK follows upon the same principle.
Miss Strangelove: "You feed giants laxatives so goblins can mine their poop before the gnomes get to it."
Comrade Gulper wrote:Except, of course, none of that happened when Kim Jong Il took power and there's no evidence that any other family members of Kim Jong Un will be purged. The West has been speculating for the past two years that his uncle had a "mentoring" or otherwise controlling role over him. It's likely more people will be arrested, but some observers tend to take the "DPRK is a monarchy" analysis a bit too literally.
North Korea is reportedly recalling its business people situated in China to return to NK. It's been suggested Kim Jong-un may be "purging associates of Mr Chang, who was in charge of economic ties with China".
Now what is this…
The Trots over at WSWS speculate that purging Jang is a move towards a rapprochement with the USA, which is hard to believe. More likely is that purging the pro-market/pro-Chinese faction allows Kim to be more assertive in his dealings with China, which has long since wanted to open up the DPRK's economy and have it adopt a less "defiant" foreign policy course. Jang had privately fallen from grace in 2004 under Kim Jong Il only to be rehabilitated two years later, which suggests this faction has had considerable influence.
Quote: That's exactly what I thought as well. Given the types of people who are mourning Jang and the effects of market "reforms" on places like Laos, Vietnam, and of course, China; I will have no pity for him. Though I do wonder how long Pak Pong-ju (Who IIRC was associated with Jang) will continue to have his job. ![]() He's turned out to be a frightful little shit. Couldn't he have just put the guy in prison? I take it those businesspeople in China being recalled are not going to be in a hurry.
Soviet cogitations: 12389
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 18 Apr 2010, 04:44 Ideology: None Philosophized
Is China under any sort of compulsion to forcibly return these people if some of them prefer instead to stay there, perhaps becoming "DPRK policy experts"? I also wonder if China might turn a blind eye if some of them end up choosing to fly to ROK, Japan, or some other destination instead of obeying Kim's summons.
Miss Strangelove: "You feed giants laxatives so goblins can mine their poop before the gnomes get to it."
Quote: Why? So the West can try to induce Korea to free Jang from prison so he can do what his partner Hwang Jang-yop failed to do? So that if they invaded the North or Kim Jong-un and/or the Worker's Party was otherwise overthrown, that he would restore capitalism and turn it into a rescource neo-colony to Western, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and South Korean corporations? I've read Alejandro Cao de Buenos' blog a while ago and the impression I have had of Jang (based on that and other articles I've read about this) was that of a would-be oligarch who used his party position to serve and enrich himself. If you want to condemn Korea for executing a counter-revolutionary who was most likely trying to restore capitalism to the North, then don't be a hypocrite and start condemning Stalin for killing Vlasov and Bukharin. For that matter, condemn every single communist who ever executed counter-revolutionaries. Now I'll let everybody get back to mourning the latest innocent man to fall victim to the horrors of totalitarian communism. Quote: Do you have any evidence for this other than from North Korean newspapers and Spanish stooges for the DPRK government? At least Hwang Jang-Yop defected to South Korea and has openly conducted anti-DPRK activity there. We know from sources independent of the DPRK government (and western media before you start) that Hwang is anti-DPRK. If I'd asked you a month ago what you thought of Jang Song-Thaek you would never have accused him of all of the things you now accuse him of. And speaking of self-enrichment, what do you make of Kim Jong-Un's wife and her penchant for Dior handbags? What about Dennis Rodman's descriptions of Kim's "seven star" lifestyle? If he's lying and trying to slander the DPRK, why does Kim continue to allow him back into the DPRK and have access to high-level meetings and events (including with Kim himself)? Quote: Because if you read it in a North Korean press release it must be true! Quote: Luckily, North Korea is nothing like what a socialist or communist society should be. They don't even call themselves communist or Marxist anymore! It's just a king executing a member of court. Misuzu wrote: Good to see you again. I really missed posts like this. It takes a special kind of delusion to argue that "they" could "invade the North" any time in the near future. But anyway, you've caught me with my pants down: yes, I totally want the DPRK to become a "resource neo-colony" (nice terminology: it's like Lenin never existed, and imperialism is not the highest stage of capitalism, but just resource extraction) for western, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and South Korean corporations. Right now, it's mostly Chinese and South Korean corporations, and in the spirit of the free market, it would be incredibly unfair for others to miss out. I don't doubt that Jang's political and economic intentions were as outlined by the fat Spanish aristocrat. But how odd that a sneaky capitalist-roader could have hid himself in the National Defence Commission, right next to Kim Jong-il, for so long. Oh wait, it's not that odd at all, because that was just part of "reforms" that were being conducted very openly. It must have been quite a chore to erase him from all the pictures that placed him right next to both Kims looking at things. Whatever political errors Jang may have made, Kim Jong-il must have been equally guilty of them. Yet one guy is now a corpse riddled with bullets, while the other is a corpse hailed as the Eternal Leader. And King Joffrey doesn't come out smelling of roses either, considering Jang's role in his succession and the fact that he continued to elevate Jang up until very recently. I suppose it must have been the unenthusiastic clapping, the refusal to build more monuments, and the sexual deviancy that made him worse than a dog, rather than his crime of building a bridge to China. I don't know why you bring up Bukharin. You must have confused me with someone who backs every single execution of the Stalin period to the hilt, but that's not me. Some right-oppositionists were simply well-intentioned, but wrong-headed or opportunist types, who had to be stopped somehow, or they would have accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union, which happened anyway, despite all the killings. A different matter entirely (and it's typical political immaturity to fail to see the distinction) is out-and-out fascist traitors like Vlasov, whom even the most ardent opponents of the death penalty will admit will not be missed. In any case, that was then, and now is now. We can think of any number of justifications for Stalin-era purges, but in 2013 AD (or Juche 102, if you will) the bottom line is that anyone on the left with a modicum of principles categorically rejects capital punishment. Even when it comes to "executing counter-revolutionaries", it didn't work, it would not have worked even if they had gotten around to killing Khrushchev, and it won't work today. The Jangs, Dengs, and Khrushchevs of this world should not have gotten to their positions in the first place. They should have been fought and defeated by the working class politically, rather than bureaucratically by a name on a death list, otherwise new versions of them will simply take their place. Quote: What is your evidence that the North his reverted to capitalism? Is it because of the Lenin and Marx portraits? Portraits prove nothing as China has never removed Mao's face from Tienamen Square and his face is still on every single renminbi note. Because they work with and trade with capitalist countries? By that logic, Stalin must have restored capitalism to the USSR when he entered into numerous joint ventures with Western corporations. These joint ventures were necessary to build the USSR's industry, and similar measures are required by Korea today to modernise its energy, industrial, and technological capabilities and to obtain hard currency for basic essentials. As long as private property remains outlawed in the DPRK, then I will say that capitalist relations has not been restored. Quote: Plenty of opportunists were able to worm their way into high position of power so that they can be misused; after all, it is very common to mis-judge somebody's character. People like Deng and Gorbachev gained power precisely because the purging mechanisms were too weak to stop them. Quote: Capital punishment will be necessary, at least during a revolution to remove dangerous people from society. I am not somebody who advocates mass killings, I am just realistic about the costs of revolution. Quote: It was necessary to execute Jang because he was a ringleader of a conspiracy to overthrow the DPRK government that has been going on since at least the mid-1990s. Now that both him and his ally Hwang Jang-yop are dead, the pro-capitalist faction has lost their major leaders. Quote: That's an extremely easy thing to say when you live in a first-world country that isn't being sanctioned by the Imperialist UN Security Council, and is primarily being threatened by three countries, the United States, South Korea, which has its military spending partially subsidised by the US, and Japan, whose Prime Minister and his associates have a bad habit of denying that there a nothing wrong with what Japan did in the 1930s and early 1940s. How is it anything unlike the situation faced by Stalin in the 1930s? I don't deny that the North Korean government has committed excesses, just as the Soviet government committed its own excesses during the Great Purge. In order to truly what is happening in North Korean society, it is necessary to see why these excesses were/ are being committed in the first place. Quote: It doesn't have to revert to anything since it wasn't socialist in the first place. Quote: No as the USSR, likewise, had never been socialist. Quote:I don't think that's the main point in what defines say capitalist relations of production. In NK you have wage labor and commodity production, alienation of producers from the products of their labor and any sort of influence on planning, accumulation and so on all coupled with unprecedented military-party tyranny and disrespect of basic human and democratic rights. Quote: Deng and Gorbachov were almost universally supported by their parties when they came to power so they could not have possibly been "purged" since they were doing what the rest of the party wanted. And that little fat bastard is an opportunist par excellence, since he gained power by his father's wish and not because he did something useful. Quote: No one but hardcore Jucheists believes that crap. Quote: That wasn't about "excesses , it was a planned campaign of organized murder. |
Alternative Display:
Mobile view
|
||||||