AN APOLOGIST'S MANIFESTO

The Obsessions of Kim Jong Il: America should focus less on Kim Jong Il's eccentricities and more on his ideology, which has nothing in common with Soviet-style communism. (B. R. Myers, 5/19/03, NY Times)

There was a time when the specter of communism frightened Americans into digging bomb shelters in their backyards. Today, improbably enough, the frequent characterization of North Korea as a Stalinist or hard-line Communist nation appears to be having a calming effect, perhaps because it evokes a happy time when all America's enemies were cold-hearted materialists who could therefore be reasoned with.

If it takes misperceptions to get everyone talking, then maybe they're not such a bad thing. But it would be dangerous for America to believe that it has negotiated successfully with Kim Jong Il's kind before. Mr. Kim is not a Stalinist in any relevant sense, and his party's "juche" ideology has nothing in common with the Soviet-style communism his father espoused during the Korean War. [...]

While communism was always an internationalist movement, juche (literally, self-reliance) sees the world in ethnic terms. North Korean propaganda makes no distinction between American capitalists and American workers; the entire "Yankee" race is presented as inherently evil, degenerate and ugly. Dictionaries and textbooks suggest that Americans be described with bestial attributes ("snout" for nose, for example).

The central villain of Han Sorya's novella "Jackals" (1951), the country's most enduring work of fiction, tells of an American child who beats a Korean boy so brutally that he ends up in a hospital--where he is murdered by the American's missionary parents. Since the South Korean government began pursuing its policy of rapprochement, the North's ethnocentric world view has become even more stark; the United States is now presented as being exclusively responsible for all tensions on the peninsula.

This propaganda appears to be effective even among North Koreans opposed to the rule of Kim Jong Il. When I visited a resettlement center for refugees near Seoul last year, many of those to whom I was introduced as an American recoiled in terror or glared at me in hatred.

The glorification of spontaneous violence, sweeping hatred of the American people, and a budding nuclear capacity: the combination is liable, as P. G. Wodehouse would say, to start a train of thought. Perhaps some in Washington can sleep better by believing that Kim Jong Il has an urbane and sensible take on the political culture he inherited from his father in 1994. But none other than Mr. Kim was at the head of the party's propaganda apparatus when it went into overdrive in the mid- to late 1960's. Too much is made of his much-publicized love of pizza and Hollywood videos; while his hedonism may make him a hypocrite, it's highly unlikely that it signifies any real affection for the West.

In short, Mr. Kim stands for more than just a desire to stay in power. America should focus less on his eccentricities and more on his ideology, especially since the anti-Americanism at its core is as heartfelt and popular as the anti-Americanism that led to 9/11 and other terrorist attacks. Diplomacy cannot succeed until the Bush administration begins addressing the historical basis for this hatred.

A good start would be a public apology for the excesses of the American air campaign in the Korean War: the saturation bombing of North Korean cities, the use of napalm, the attacks on irrigation dams in order to cause flooding.

We too would suggest that Mr. Bush offer an apology--to the people of North Korea for not liberating them fifty years ago. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 21, 2003 10:24 AM