Respected Comrade Leader Episode 334
One interesting thing is that some view the progress of minority parties such as the Nationalist Party and Descendants of Goguryeo (hereafter referred to as the Descendants of Goguryeo) as part of the growth of right-wing parties that have been rising internationally since 2015.
At that time, North Korea was no longer a closed mutant communist country like in the past, except for the singularities of dictatorship and division, it was one of the ordinary (?) Asian emerging countries that cried and laughed at the rise in oil prices and fluctuations in the dollar exchange rate. It is natural for domestic politics to change.
Therefore, in order to properly understand the growth and context of right-wing parties and politicians such as the Nationalist Party and Successor Party, it is the opinion of this researcher that the above-mentioned international factors and domestic factors within North Korea must be considered in combination.
Looking back on the international situation, which can be said to be the first factor, this report deviates from the original topic for a moment and provides an overview of Iraq, where the civil war continues in 2020, and Islamic fundamentalism, its main driver, as well as the protector and iron fist of Iraq’s secular forces against it. Another dictator who wields the
3. 1. External factors: the effect of changes in the international situation and increased instability over the past decade
The disastrous defeat in the Gulf War that will remain in the minds of middle-aged Koreans as a shocking image of an armored car with artificial flags and an armored car with the Stars and Stripes running side by side against the backdrop of a burning Kuwaiti oil field. He was a dictator with a stable power base.
Even at the time of the ‘Arab Spring’ in the early 2010s, triggered by economic instability and high unemployment rate, which brought down a large number of dictators in the Middle East and North Africa, Saddam Hussein was a stranger to both economic and military powers: the National Oil Corporation and the reconstructed Republican Guard.
Although relations are not good, in many respects as a Middle East Islamic country ruled by a hereditary dictator, when the flames of the revolution that spread in Syria spread a little, only another bloody suppression, mass arrests, and assassinations continued. Hussein’s Iraqi kingdom seemed to last forever.
However, the victory of North Korea in the Civil War in North Manchuria in 2015, or more precisely, the independence of Yanbian Korean-Chinese Autonomous Prefecture, which followed China’s defeat and regime change, began to shake the system of this dictator who had been in power longer than Kim Jung-hwan.
The fact that the Chinese Communist Party and other authoritarian regimes are almost hysterically sensitive to the independence of ethnic minorities within their own country is that if one ethnic group is allowed to become independent, other peoples learn the precedent, leading to the domino-style independence movement and separatism. Because it can easily lead to civil war.
And in 2015, such an assumption was made to be true: the Chosun-jok ethnic minority became independent from China for the first time in history, and the resignation of the Boshirai regime, which was the most lacking in legitimacy and tyranny among all Chinese regimes.
So, on the surface, ‘the case of a minority nation winning free independence against a huge and oppressive government’ has once again ignited a fire throughout the Middle East via social media and other advanced media.
Immediately after the defeat in the Yanbian Civil War, the new Chinese leadership, led by the new general secretary Hu Jintao, refrained from the seemingly endless policy of expansion and entered into a policy of priority for internal affairs, which can be summarized as ‘return to the provincial strategy of the Deng Xiaoping era’. did.
Yanbian, the eastern part of the three sides of the empire, had already been defeated, and after prioritizing the remaining two sides, between the western Afghan-Uyghur region and southern Hong Kong, in the order essential to the survival and interests of China (and the Communist Party), there It was decided that the current capabilities should be focused on the stabilization of
And, as everyone could have expected, the number one priority among western Afghanistan and southern Hong Kong was Hong Kong, which could become a time bomb for the Chinese Communist Party for a short time, even when the umbrella protests faltered.
In addition to its importance as a global financial center and the meaning of overcoming the humiliating history of the Opium War, this region was a region that the Chinese Communist Party had to hold on to in order to seize hegemony in the South China Sea and, above all, take the initiative in cross-strait relations with Taiwan. Because.
The problem, however, is that as soon as the People’s Liberation Army ends the military government in Afghanistan and hands the ball over to the civilian self-governing government composed of pro-China moderates, the Islamic extremist forces, who took this as a signal of ‘defeat’, are spreading not only in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq and the Middle East. it happened
– Exactly as expected and feared by the CCP leadership, ‘Now China, the Communist Party is over! The Communist Party has already lost support from the majority of the people, and if we push a little bit further, we can win the war and even achieve independence!’ Well, it’s a cliché that these minority extremists often think of, but it’s only when they have the capacity to become an alternative force and gain support from the international community… … .
(Excerpt from an interview with an informant)
Islamic extremists are spread all over the Arab world, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to Syria in North Africa. The reason Iraq is specifically mentioned in relation to the Yanbian civil war is because, as we all know, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein and China had a secret relationship. .
It is a well-known fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tried to improve relations with Saddam Hussein by blaming Deng Xiaoping’s forcibly retired Deng Xiaoping’s unilateral ignorance from the previous war as soon as Jiang Zemin came to power. .
At the time, China, which was in the midst of economic growth at the time, needed a country that would take its side rather than the United States in the Middle East to secure oil supplies, and Saddam Hussein’s personal feelings. There was nothing bad about the existence of
In this way, Iraq and China, the two dictatorships, have united as one under the pretext of hegemony in the Middle East and anti-Americanism and have been in international solidarity for the past 20 years. He was one of the few heads of state that actively defended China.
Of course, no matter how different sects and ethnicities were, such a move would not have been reflected very well by the anti-Hussein Islamic fundamentalists (mainly Shi’ites) in Iraq, and such a policy would make them believe that Hussein was ‘betraying Allah and ‘betraying Allah’ It only helped promote as a dictator who sells the country to
– Shut up the Chinese dog Saddam Hussein! Give us back the Qur’an!
Until 2015, Hussein seemed to have well suppressed these domestic Islamic extremists (through bloodshed and assassinations) and continued to defend the title of a secular nation unstained by religious extremism along with Turkey in the Middle East.
However, as with all political changes, China’s defeat was not the only factor that shook the Hussein regime, which had been strong for decades, from its roots.
One of these complex factors was the shale gas revolution led by North Korea and the United States in 2016, when massive resistance to the Hussein regime began.
As the global oil price fell sharply, the status of the existing Middle East oil producing countries weakened, which also worsened the economic situation of Iraq, which was an oil-dependent economy similar to other Middle Eastern countries.
And the deteriorating profitability of the state-run oil business, which was the biggest source of financial resources for the secular nationalization policy that broke away from the theocratic state such as antagonism Iran, and the defeat of China caused a synergistic effect, exploding the dissatisfaction of the people and Shiite Islamic fundamentalists that had been suppressed. .
-Give me a job and bread! People are hungry! We want religious freedom and bread!
– No need for pagan laws! We don’t even need Western culture! Saddam Hussein, a corrupt apostate and dictator who betrayed Allah and attached to a foreign country, is put to death!
– Get out of China! Get off America! All heathens to hell! There is only one God!
And the anti-dictatorship that has arisen in this way has already been in a similar situation since around the Arab Spring, and joined up with some Syrian rebels who had flowed into Iraq while fighting their own dictator Bashar al-Assad and rebelled all over Iraq.
Also, unfortunately, the current reality is that the Iraq civil war, similar to the previous Syrian civil war, is flowing into a final battle between extremists and government forces following the dictator, between evil versus evil, It has contributed to a large-scale Middle East refugee crisis.
Boat people such as Yemen and Syria have arrived in East Asian countries such as South and North Korea, which until recently thought that accepting refugees from the Middle East was only a matter for others. All.
In particular, in the North, where the exclusive nationalist is still the mainstream, it is causing a considerable hysterical reaction, as can be seen in the case of ‘Pyongyang, human filth from the Middle East that pollutes Joseon’ that caused a great controversy on social media a while ago. Experts agree that it is providing an ideological basis for the advancement of far-right parties such as the Nationalist Party and the Successor Party.
3. 2. Domestic factors: North Korea’s economic and industrial structure, the high unemployment rate, and the resulting social dissatisfaction.
Read at noblemtl.com
Now, let’s look at the domestic factors behind the political instability in the Middle East, the refugee crisis, and the rise of far-right political parties around the world.Regarding the economic structure of North Korea and its development, it can be summarized in the remarks made by Kim Jeong-hwan, the former general secretary at the time of the Great Inter-Korean Compromise at the end of the 20th century, at an enlarged meeting of the Party Central Committee in 1999, which has now become famous even among the South Koreans through various media. .
-To be honest, until now, our republic has been a pawn with nothing but oil. However, the situation will be completely different this time after absorbing and digesting production resources such as facilities and technologies of South Korean companies that will take root in our republic.
-So, our party’s goal for the next 20 years is simple. It follows the Polish military militarily, economically a mixed Canadian and Taiwanese structure, and politically following the Singapore model.
Although the context of this famous general secretary Kim Jeong-hwan’s remarks varies slightly for each media and citation, the citation purpose is largely the same. It is cited for the purpose of realizing how important two factors are in the national industrial development.
Some (currently scattered throughout the North and South) admirers of Kim Jung-hwan even cite ‘the importance of securing dictatorial power to enable the leader to pursue his vision in the long term’ as the third factor, causing much controversy. though.
Apart from that, the fact that a leader named Kim Jung-hwan had a very accurate and sober grasp of the country’s situation and future vision at the time, and that he undeniably had a solid foundation of power, was proved with the North Korean people (only now). As it turns out), it is a blessing for the country called Korea.
In the case of a stable foreign currency earning means such as oil in dictatorship countries, when the core of the regime or the dictator individual secures it, there is an 80% chance that it is used as a source of income for the dictator and his neighbors or as a source of income in populist politics to temporarily quell the people’s dissatisfaction there are very many,
In fact, if you look at various government documents before the North-South compromise, North Korea will be like Saudi Arabia in the future – on the stable economic basis of oil, the king named Kim Jeong-hwan and the Workers’ Party executives who worship him form a kind of aristocratic class to disregard the people’s dissatisfaction with generous money each time. There are many things to be concerned about.
Of course, it was only now that everyone understood that General Secretary Kim had no intention of being satisfied with such a state at all, but most people said the above ‘Poland+Taiwan+Canada+Singapore model’ remarks. In many cases, they did not know that they had done it.
-The past 10 years have been spent laying the groundwork for a leap forward by correcting a backward state, changing diplomatic routes, and introducing a competitive system into the economy. Now, the next 10 years should be spent catching up with other countries, and the next 10 years should be invested in getting ahead of others.
In fact, no matter how young it was to become an oil-producing country, North Korea’s economic or national production capacity at the time, when only 10 years had passed since the introduction of the market economy, was far behind developed countries such as Japan and the United States as well as neighboring South Korea.
And during the financial crisis, in a state of excess investment and production, liquid funds dried up, and South Korea, which had the same language and ethnicity, was a suitable partner for North Korea at the time, hard to find.
The only obstacle was the tension between the two Koreas, which was still there at the time, and Kim Jung-hwan also extended the tension according to his own political necessity, which is the wise and bold relationship between the leaders of the two Koreas and the activities of Mr. could be resolved by decision.
Of course, even after that, there were many economic pitfalls, such as differences between the countries set as role models and the situation in North Korea.
Taiwan, a country that North Korea has used as a manufacturing model, has disadvantages such as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) running the national economy, poor high value-added manufacturing and brand value, and decisively vulnerable to external variables. .
A domestic market population that is 50% larger than that of Taiwan, a location where oil and intermediate trade with China and Russia are possible, Korea, another market with a population of 50 million sharing the same ethnic background, and above all, how to maximize these factors by combining them well. It was a leader I knew, Kim Jeong-hwan.
-The three major axes of the Republic of Korea’s economy are mining, finance, and electronic equipment manufacturing, centering on the oil refining industry.
And this industrial development strategy has been very effective in modern times, and the North has succeeded in modernizing the overall industry and attracting high value-added industries in only 30 years.
However, as has already been demonstrated in the South, another expression of ‘high-tech industrialization’ is ‘automation’, which means a reduction in the demand for manpower at worksites, that is, unemployment.