Artigo - Korea Resilient Socialism in Democratic Korea

19/11/2017 Korea Resilient!
Socialism in Democratic Korea | Return to the Source
Korea Resilient! Socialism in Democratic Korea
JAN 17
Posted by vincesherman
On December 22 of last year, Fight Back! News (h p://www.ghtbacknews.org/), which often

reects the views of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), published an outstanding
overview of the DPRK and US imperialism in the Korean Peninsula entitled Korea Stands Strong:
Kim Jong-Il in Context. (h p://www.ghtbacknews.org/2011/12/21/korea-stands-strong-kim-jong-il-
context) The piece did a tremendous job outlining the advances made by Korean socialism and the
problems arising from continued Western occupation of the southern half of the Korean nation.
In response to Fight Back!s thorough analysis, along with two other pieces by the Party for Socialism
and Liberation (PSL) and the Workers World Party (WWP), David Whitehouse of the International
Socialist Organization (ISO) released a hit-piece on Kim Jong-Il and dusted o the typical Clite-
Trotskyite arguments against actually existing socialism. Published January 12, Socialism in One
Dynasty rehashes the same anti-communist lines of the ISO that have come to characterize
Trotskyism.
Kim Jong-Ils death prompted a discussion among the left about Democratic Korea again, and with
such a high volume of anti-DPRK propaganda generated by the West, its important for Marxist-
Leninists to accurately represent the successes and challenges facing the Korean revolution. The
simple fact that the DPRK survived the wave of counter-revolution that swept through most socialist
countries demonstrates the strength and resilience of the Korean masses, and Democratic
Koreas perseverance in the face of overwhelming Western aggression demands close study by
Marxist-Leninists in the 21st century.
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19/11/2017 Korea Resilient! Socialism in Democratic Korea | Return to the Source
DPRK troops ghting for reunication
Korea Divided
As the Fight Back! News article points out, Korea is a single nation that was forcibly divided by the
United States immediately after World War II. (1) The DPRK and the Republic of Korea exist as
two separate countries, but the Korean people meet all of the characteristic features of a nation; a
historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory,
economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. (2) Understanding that Korea is
not two separate nations is essential to placing the actions of the DPRK in their appropriate context.
Fearing the widespread popularity of the Korean revolution in both the north and the south, the US
continued to militarily occupy the Republic of Korea after World War II. Koreans were left out of the
decision to divide their country and despite promises of fair nationwide elections aimed at
reunication, the US intervened in the South Korean elections on behalf of the Western-educated,
right-wing nationalist, Syngman Rhee.
Many bourgeois scholars and critics of the DPRK argue that the Korean Peoples Army (KPA),
centered in the north, initiated the Korean War by crossing the 38th parallel, the act that is often cited
as the start to the Korean War. While the KPA did send troops into South Korea on June 25, 1950,
calling this an act of aggression by one sovereign state towards another implicitly legitimizes the
imperialist division of Korea at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Richard Stokes, the British Minister
of Works, put it this way in a 1950 report on the origins of the Korean war:
In the American Civil War the Americans would never have tolerated for a single moment the se ing up of
an imaginary line between the forces of North and South, and there can be no doubt as to what would have
been their re-action if the British had intervened in force on behalf of the South. This parallel is a close one
because in America the conict was not merely between two groups of Americans, but was between two
conicting economic systems as is the case in Korea. (3)
Much like the American Civil War, any so-called aggression by the North was actually an a empt to
re-unite a nation partitioned by a foreign imperialist power. Any critics of the actions of Democratic
Korea in initiating the conict would have to also condemn US President Abraham Lincoln and the
Union Army for sending supplies to reinforce Fort Sumter at the onset of the American civil war,
which was the de facto spark that started the conict.
Of course, Marxist-Leninists support the re-unication eorts of the North in both the American civil
war as well as the Korean war because they were historically progressive and revolutionary. Korea
was occupied by a foreign imperialist government at the time of the KPAs incursion into the south,
just as Japanese colonizers had occupied the nation for the previous 35 years. As such, the KPAs
invasion of southern Korea was a campaign in the larger, protracted struggle for national liberation
that began as an anti-colonial struggle against imperial Japan.
Foreign occupation of Korea continues today, and Marxist-Leninists must evaluate the actions of the
DPRK within the framework of an ongoing national liberation struggle. The 28,000 US troops
permanently stationed in the Republic of Korea a est to the continued imperialist domination of the
southern half of the Korean nation.
Kim Jong-Il reviewing production plans
The Disgraceful Slander of Korean Socialism
Although the ISOs article was full of a acks on Marxist-Leninists and their position on the DPRK, it
presented no actual rebu al of the piece on Fight Back! News, itself a very telling omission. The
closest that Whitehouse could get to refuting that article was the following passage:
FRSO, for example, dwells on a system of social services that includes universal health coverage and
education, as well as free housing. This record is remarkable for a country of North Koreas limited
resources. It is not remarkable, however, for a country where the state controls everything. The state has to
provide health care, education and housing, because there are no institutions outside the stateunless you
count Kims Workers Party, which is bound up with the state and permeates all aspects of North Korean
life. (4)
Notice that Whitehouse does not challenge the factual assertions in the Fight Back! News article
pertaining to Korean socialism. Whitehouse is backed into the uncomfortable position of admi ing
that the record of the DPRKs social services is remarkable, a stunning admission for an organization
whose statement of principles claims that actually existing socialist countries, like Democratic Korea,
have nothing to do with socialism. (5) Instead, the ISO a empts to downplay these remarkable
accomplishments by noting that the state is the only organized entity in Korean society capable of
providing these services.
Of course this begs a number of questions: What other organized entity would the ISO rather have
provide these essential social services in Democratic Korea? Return to the Source, along with the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization and other Marxist-Leninists around the world, support the
decision of socialist governments to use heavily regulated market socialism to develop productive
forces and provide goods and services to the people. However, the ISO explicitly rejects the strategy
undertaken by China and Cuba in the last year as further evidence of the countrys state capitalism.
(6) What then, in concrete terms, would the ISO like to see out of the Democratic Korean state if they
already agree that their services are remarkable, complain that no private entities exist to provide
these services otherwise, but simultaneously reject the application of heavily regulated markets to
socialist countries?
There is an answer to these questions, but the truth doesnt favor the ISO. Trotskyite factions
materialists should never refer to these tiny organizations as parties in the Marxist-Leninist sense
have never led the masses in revolution precisely because they understand socialism and revolution
in utopian terms. The ISO doesnt believe that Democratic Korea is a socialist country because the
WPK doesnt measure up to their abstract, and often dogmatic, catechism of Marx that uses his call
for communists to win the ba le for democracy. (4) They repeat ad nauseum that socialism is a
society in which workers control the means of production, but their idealism clouds them from
recognizing that a revolutionary society like the DPRK, while imperfect, has already achieved that
end.
When examining Democratic Korea, we must critically appraise their successes but only in the
context of the insuerable imperialist aggression they face from the United States and the Republic of
Korea. The DPRK continues to face diculties in socialist construction, but most of these problems
stem from unfavorable external conditions and imperialist aggression. Since the cession of hostilities
in 1953, the US maintained fairly comprehensive economic sanctions against North Korea. (7)
Access to essential goods and food staples is greatly restricted by the US and Japan, who cut o the
shipment of rice to the DPRK in 2003. (7)
While Whitehouses article pays lip-service to the sanctions imposed on Democratic Korea, along
with the continued legacy of destruction brought on by the Korean war, it dismisses these adverse
conditions as a way to excuse the behavior of the regime domestically, waving aside the charge that
it is an oppressive dictatorship. (4) Indeed, the fact that any mention of the Korean war is limited to
four paragraphs in the middle of a 46-paragraph article demonstrates that the ISO is more interested
in slandering the DPRK and pushing their bogus state capitalism line than applying a rigorous,
dialectical materialist analysis of Korean socialism.
As the Fight Back! News article aptly pointed out, you cannot understand the DPRK without a
Marxist-Leninist understanding of the national question, which yields the undeniable conclusion that
Korea is a single nation occupied by an imperialist force after the cession of hostilities in 1953. The
often-misconstrued secrecy of the Korean government makes perfect sense in light of the
overhanging threat of destruction they face across the demilitarized border zone.
Socialist realist art depicting Democratic Korea
Korean Socialism in Action
Marxist-Leninists must study the short-comings of Democratic Korea, but they must also
enthusiastically praise the outstanding gains accomplished by the Korean revolution. As Bruce
Cumings, Professor of Korean History at the University of Chicago, points out in his 2003 book, North
Korea: Another Country, Modern Korea emerged from one of the most class-divided
and stratied societies on the face of the earth, almost castelike in its hereditary hierarchy. (3)
Cumings notes that slavery encompassed anywhere from 60-90 percent of society until its abolition in
1894, in which most slaves were converted into feudal peasants ruled by Korean, and eventually
Japanese, overlords. (3)
The expulsion of Japanese colonialism in World War II and the establishment of socialism in the north
brought these enormous class disparities and abuses by the exploiting classes to an end. Cumings
cites US security reports on the situation in revolutionary Korea to prove that For those dened as
poor and middle peasants, not only did their lives improve but they became the favored class. (3)
The WPKs commitment to bo om-up socialist revolution was reected in their class composition at
the time of its founding, in which laborers constituted 20 percent of the membership, poor peasants
50 percent, and samuwon [white-collar workers] 14 percent. (3)
The Korean revolution gave opportunities to workers and landless poor peasants that
were unimaginable under the past oppressive conditions. Cumings again writes, At any time before
1945, it was virtually inconceivable for uneducated poor peasants to become country-level ocials or
ocers in the army. But in North Korea such careers became normal. (3) He also notes that inter-
class marriages became normal, common, and widespread with the establishment of Democratic
Korea, and educational access opened up for all sectors of society.
On the vital question of land reform, the WPK undertook a gradual but steady process of converting
private land ownership into cooperative organizations. Beginning with the process of post-war
reconstruction in 1953, only 1.2% of peasant households were organized as cooperatives, which
encompassed a mere .6% of total acreage. (13) By August of 1958, 100% of peasant households were
converted into cooperatives, encompassing 100% of total acreage. (13) Ellen Brun, an economist
whose 1976 Socialist Korea study remains the most comprehensive to date, writes that In spite of lack
of modern means of production, the cooperatives with ecient assistance by the state very early
showed their superiority to individual farming, eventually convincing formerly reluctant farmers
into participating in the movement. (13)
Often a point of criticism from left-communists, Trotskyites, and anticommunists, collectivization in

the DPRK did not result in any famine or mass starvation. In fact, at no time during
cooperativization did the agricultural output decrease; on the contrary, the process was accompanied
by a steady increase in production. (13) Citing statistics of food production, Brun shows a sharp
increase from about 2.9 million tons in 1956 to 3.8 million tons in 1960. (13) Stemming from
Democratic Koreas push for self-suciency, the WPK put the nation on a path to increase its food
production steadily and feed the entire country.
Local peoples commi ees, in which any Korean worker could participate, elected leadership to guide
agricultural production and collaborated with national authorities to coordinate nation-wide
eciency. (13) These peoples commi ees were the primary means by which the Party remains in
contact with the masses on the various collective farms, thus enabling it to gauge public opinion on
issues aecting the policies of the country peoples commi ee. (13) In 1966, the WPK introduced the
group management system, which organized groups of ten to twenty-ve farmers into production
units, each of which was then put permanently in charge of a certain area of land, a certain task, or a
certain instrument of production. (13) This represents another instrument of peoples democracy
implemented in Korean socialist production.
No serious antagonism between the countryside and industrial centers developed in the process of
socialist construction in Democratic Korea. Brun notes that tens of thousands of demobiilized men
and many junior and senior graduates as well as middle school pupils went to the countryside in the
busy seasons and rendered assistance amounting to millions of days of work, all voluntarily and
without coercion by the state. (13)
Most importantly, Korean socialist construction reorganized industrial production by and in the
interests of the formerly dispossessed Korean proletariat. Drawing on the mass line the Marxist-
Leninist organizing method that is both the cause and eect of the politicization and involvement of
the masses in the process of economic development and socialist construction the WPK
implemented the Daean work system in December 1961. (13) In contrast to the past system, in which
managers were appointed to oversee a workplace unilaterally by a single party member, The Part
factory commi ee assumes the highest authority at the level of the enterprise in the Daean work
system. (13) Brun further describes this system, and I will quote her at length:
Ways of solving questions aecting production and workers activities, as well as methods of carrying out
decisions, are arrived at through collective discussions within the factory commi ee, whose members are
elected by the factorys Party members. To be eective this commi ee has to be relatively small, its precise
numbers depending on the size of the enterprise. At the Daean Electrical Plant, with a labor force of 5,000,
the Party factory commi ee is made up of 35 members who meet once or twice a month, while the 9
members of the executive board keep in continuous contact. Sixty percent of its members are production
workers, with the remainder representing a cross-section of all factory activities, including functionaries,
managers, deputy-managers, engineers, technicians, womens league representatives, youth league
members, trade union members, and oce employees. Its composition thus gives it access to all
socioeconomic aspects of the enterprise and the lives of its worker.
This commi ee has become what is called the steering wheel of the industrial unit, conducting ideological
education and mobilizing the workers to implement collective decisions and to fulll the production target.
Through its connection to the Party it has a clear picture of overall policies and aims as well as the exact
function of individual enterprise in the national context. In other words, this setup ensures that politics are
given priority. (13)
Far from the simplistic and farcical characterizations of Whitehouse and the ISO of the DPRK as a
country where one man holds dictatorial power and the vast majority of people live in poverty, this
model of socialist organization represents the highest commitment to workers democracy. (4)
Workers have input and supremacy in production and interact dialectically with the state to plan and
carry out collectivist production on behalf of the whole Korean people.
The workplace in Democratic Korea isnt simply a venue for production, but as emphasized with the
Daean organizing method, a center for education and enrichment. After 1950, worker schools
organized at specic workplaces began to emerge, in which laborers would a end middle and high
school education programs while working in industry in order to prepare them to continue their
education in college. (13)
Korean socialism achieved an impressive standard of living for the Korean people prior to the
collapse of its largest trading partner, the USSR, in 1991. As independent scholar Stephen Gowans
points out in his 2006 article, Understanding North Korea, Democratic Korea enjoyed a comparable
standard of living to their neighbors in the south well into the 1980s. (14) Living spartan lifestyles, the
Korean people were nearly self-sucient in terms of light industry and consumer goods by 1967,
with goods like textiles, underwear, socks, shoes, and alcoholic beverages becoming increasingly
available for every citizen. (13)
Heavy industry, however, remained the backbone of the economy, in the words of Brun. She notes
that although assistance from socialist bloc countries may have been substantial at the beginning of
the rebhabilitation period, a few years later after the record year of 1954 this foreign aid began to
decrease and North Korea gradually had to become self-supporting. (13) Because of trade politics
brought on by the Sino-Soviet split, the DPRK gradually lost some of the aid it received from the
Soviet Union. Nevertheless, they managed to develop their heavy industry substantially, progressing
51.7% in industrial output from 1953-1955. (13)
Korean socialism suered tremendous setbacks in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and
most of the socialist bloc. Resilient as ever, the nation persevered through these dicult years despite
facing famine, heinous weather conditions, and blocked access to international trade by Western
imperialist powers. (14) Democratic Korea stabilized and its commitment to genuine workers
democracy continues to remain as steadfast as ever.
Kim Jong-Il, who looked much scarier than he actually was
Kim Jong-Il and the Prime Importance of a Nuclear Korea
Most telling of all is the ISOs choice to not a ack the argument that Democratic Korea acquiring
nuclear weapons was an essential and positive development for the long-term security of Korean
socialist construction. Given that nuclear capabilities were such an important aspect of the Fight Back!
News article, Whitehouses choice to not engage this line of argument was a deliberate and conscious
choice brought on by the inconvenient holes in the ISOs counter-revolutionary political line. From
the Fight Back! News article:
The importance of Democratic Korea acquiring nuclear weapons cannot be overstated. In 2005, the U.S.
presented an ultimatum to both Libya and the DPRK, demanding that both surrender their nuclear weapons
programs and cooperate with Western imperialism in the war on terror. Libyan head of state Muammar
Gadda played ball. Kim Jong-Il gave the U.S. a gurative middle nger. As we near the end of 2011,
having witnessed NATOs brutal invasion of Libya and the toppling of Gaddas government, its painfully
clear who made the right choice. (1)
Even bourgeois journalists like Tad Daley of the Christian Science Monitor concur with this
assessment by Fight Back! News. In a piece from October 13, 2011 entitled Nuclear lesson from
Libya: Dont be like Qadda. Be like Kim, Daley writes:
If Libya had possessed the capability, oh, to obliterate a major American military base in Italy, or to vaporize
an entire American carrier ba le group o the southern coast of France, it almost certainly would have
dissuaded Washington (not to mention Rome and Paris) from military action. If the Libyan regime wanted
to ensure its own survival, then, just like North Korea, it should have developed a nuclear deterrent small,
survivable, and just lethal enough to inict unacceptable damage on any aggressor. (8)
The fact that both of these leaders, Qadda of the Libyan Jamahiriya and Democratic Koreas Kim,
died in the same year in such radically dierent ways provides an interest point of contrast. Qadda
was ousted after a set of imperialist-backed rebels launched a racist campaign to topple a
revolutionary government in North Africa, which succeeded precisely because of NATOs assistance.
He died beaten, broken, sodomized, tortured, and executed in a muddy sewage pipe without trial.
Kim, on the other hand, died peaceably from a heart a ack on a train en route to a factory inspection
and a public meeting with Korean workers. While his death rocked the Korean people with grief,
from Pyongyang to Beijing and beyond, the Korean revolution continues and shows no signs
of wavering. Chinas proximity to Korea is a factor in Democratic Koreas continued security, but
nothing keeps the American military from an all-out war to topple the WPK more than the threat of a
nuclear bomb destroying one of their many military bases across the Republic of Korea. The fact that
the imperialists cannot turn a false-ag operation like the so-called Cheonan incident last year into a
Gulf-of-Tonkin-style cause for a second Korean war is the nuclear deterrence that Kim Jong-Ils
leadership made possible. (9)
The ISO cannot engage this argument. Its objectively true and provides possibly the best evidence for
the revolutionary contributions of Kim Jong-Il to Korean socialism. To harshly criticize the WPK for
aggressively, and secretly, pursuing a nuclear weapons program is to invite even harsher criticism of
their ludicrous line on the Libyan conict, which made the call for ousting Qadda front-and-center
as opposed to condemning NATOs invasion.
Fed by their Clite-Trotskyite ideology, the ISO has a long history of supporting the toppling of
revolutionary governments, which came to a head in 1991 when their sect called the fall of the Soviet
Union an event that should have every genuine socialist rejoicing. (10) Most recently, the ISO spent
the initial stages of the Libyan conict ignoring the blatantly pro-Western direction of the counter-
revolution that started in Benghazi and downplaying the systematic and racist terrorism practiced by
the rebels. (11) After NATO invaded, this Clite-Trotskyite sect continued to push a Qadda Must
Go line as its central focus, which in practice proves again and again to function as a de facto left-
cover for imperialism.
Embarrassingly, the group never retreated from this line and incorrectly summed up the Libyan
counter-revolution as progressive movement co-oped by NATO. Even after Qaddas death and the
inescapable evidence that these rebels were Western-backed counter-revolutionaries from the
beginning, ISO leader Alan Maass still performed logical gymnastics to try and twist their bogus line
into something resembling anti-imperialism, claiming that, despite being the victim of an imperialist
invasion to topple his government, Qadda was actually a puppet of the West. (12)
Anyone reading Whitehouses piece about Kim Jong-Il should sum this up as an admission of defeat
by the ISO for both their Libya line as well as their line towards Democratic Korea. Marxist-Leninists
can advance a criticism of Qaddas government for giving up its nuclear weapons program in the
face of immense pressure from the West, but that means that the choice by Kim Jong-Il to continue
pursuing nuclear weapons was unquestionably the correct path. Daley puts it this way:
But instead, Qadda was seduced by the siren song of the West. Give up your weapons of mass destruction,
they said, and we will welcome you into the international community. Libya did, in late 2003.
And in retrospect, said the North Korean ocial, it was now clear that this had been, by the West, no less
than an invasion tactic to disarm the country. Because as soon as the now-defanged Qadda took actions
that displeased Libyas Western overlords, the mighty military hammer of the developed world came
thundering down upon him. (8)
The ISOs failure to advance any kind of rebu al or any mention whatsoever of the nuclear question
once again demonstrates the ISOs non-materialist understanding of socialism, both in theory and
practice.
Mass outpouring of grief after the news of Kim Jong-Il's death
Mass Grief in the DPRK
Central to the ISOs a ack on the Marxist-Leninist position on Democratic Korea is their critique of
the often-touted cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong-Il. Whitehouse puts it this way:
Its true that Korean ritualsand Koreans in everyday life, for that ma erare emotionally expressive, more
so than Chinese or Japanese ones. But its another thing to say that it was merely traditional to gather
people by the hundreds of thousands in the freezing cold to mourn the death of state leaders in the shadow of
monuments and photos that depict them ten or 100 times life size.
That does seem orchestrated. And what about the soldiers marching in formation with their weapons in
massive columnsdidnt they have to practice? (4)
Of course, the exclusion of any serious rebu al to the Fight Back! News article tells Marxist-Leninists
a lot about the contrived nature of the ISOs political line. Addressing allegations that the mass
display of grief was staged by the Korean Peoples Army (KPA), Fight Back!s article begins with
an anecdote in a Korean restaurant in Beijing, far away from the eyes of the KPA. Here I will quote
the article at length to illustrate the contrast:
The morning of Dec. 19 started like a normal Monday for the Korean sta at the Hae Dang Hwa restaurant
in Beijing. The greeting sta welcomed hungry customers at the front door, the chefs began prepping their
ne selection of kimchi and other Korean dishes and the waitresses and waiters began taking down orders for
their guests. All of that changed when a China Daily reporter mentioned in a conversation with a waitress
that Kim Jong-Il, the head of state for the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), had died that
morning of a heart a ack. In minutes, the entire Korean sta from the waiters to the chefs in the kitchen
broke down in tears and, after apologizing to the customers, closed the restaurant early for the day so they
could grieve the national tragedy together.
Several thousand miles away in Pyongyang, mass sorrow like that experienced in this Beijing restaurant
took the swept the capital as men, women and children from the most esteemed party ocial to the steel
worker took to the streets to mourn Kims death. (1)
This is tremendously inconvenient for the image the ISO wishes to paint. On one hand, it doesnt
make sense that any army could compel an entire nation with near unanimity to weep and publicly
display grief in a public way. However, the restaurant anecdote taking place in Beijing pokes
enormous holes in Whitehouses claim, since these restaurant employees overcome with grief to the
point of closing the kitchen early would face no repercussions for not displaying grief.
Whitehouse a acks the FRSO using a pathetic reconguration of the arguments made in the Fight
Back! News article that one can only classify as the most dishonest strawman. Rather than actually
engaging Fight Back!s argument, he re-writes their argument to make the aforementioned anecdote
look like evidence to certify the democratic credentials of a regime that looks to everybody else like
an autocracy. (4)
While the Fight Back! News article, as well as this author, agree that Korean socialism is supremely
democratic, the last paragraph expresses the central argument of this piece:
Why do Koreans mourn the death of Kim Jong-Il? Its because of his courageous deance of U.S.
domination, his commitment to the reunication and the real accomplishments of socialism. In the face of
those who wage war for exploitation and oppression, Kims decisions represented the aspirations of Korean
workers, peasants, women and children the united Korean nation for freedom. Although Kim Jong Il has
passed away, the Korean people will continue to march forward raising the banner of national reunication,
self-determination and revolution. (1)
Far from simply certifying the democratic credentials of the DPRK, the mass outpouring of grief by
the Korean people demonstrate the widespread understanding of the gains of Korean socialism and
the tireless struggle for national reunication.
Democratic Korea's rehabilitative penal system
North Korean Gulags?
Central to the ISOs anti-communism is a heavy reliance on bourgeois sources that have proven
themselves unable to withstand the most basic materialist scrutiny. For instance, Whitehouse a acks
the Fight Back! News article by saying that the title, Korea stands strong, they are referring to the
strength of the state. It is the same state that keeps 200,000 political prisoners, according to Amnesty
International. It is the same state that shot dead three North Korean citizens who were trying to cross
the border into China in late December. (4)
A more principled examination of the Korean prison system in the north referred to as a gulag by
the bourgeoisie and the ISO alike ironically comes from bourgeois historian Bruce Cumings. In his
2004 book, North Korea: Another Country, he notes that most claims about the Korean penal system are
grossly exaggerated. For instance, he notes that Common criminals who commit minor felonies and
small fry [sic] with an incorrect grasp on their place in the family state who commit low-level political
oenses go o to labor camps or mines for hard work and varying lengths of incarceration, the goal
of which is to reeducate them. (3) This reects a materialist understanding of the roots of crime,
arising in large part from a persons material conditions and incorrect ideas, which can change
through altering a persons conditions. Its important to note that the vast majority of criminals in the
Korean penal system fall into this category and thus the aim is to rehabilitate and reeducate, as
opposed to the punitive aims of the American penal system.
Cumings notes the contrast between Democratic Koreas criminal justice system and that of the
United States, especially in terms of a prisoners contact with and support from their family. He
writes:
The Aquariums of Pyongyang is an interesting and believable story, precisely because it does not, on the
whole, make for the ghastly tale of totalitarian repression that its original publishers in France meant it to
be; instead, it suggests that a decades incarceration with ones immediate family was survivable and not
necessarily an obstacle to entering the elite status of residence in Pyongyang and entrance to college.
Meanwhile we have a long-standing, never-ending gulag full of black men in our prisons, incarcerating
upward of 25 percent of all black youths. (3)
The fact that time in the Korean penal system does not result in social castigation like it does in
capitalist countries reects a stark point of contrast with capitalist penal systems. Using ones family
as a support network, the state encourages political reeducation and opens opportunities for
rehabilitated prisoners to re-enter Korean society as full citizens.
In and of itself, Whitehouses hit-piece on Korean socialism isnt worth the bandwidth it takes up
because it doesnt make any serious arguments against the Fight Back! News piece to which it was
supposed to respond. However, it remains important for Marxist-Leninists to confront the ISOs
unique and disturbing blend of left-anticommunism when it arises and defend the gains of the
Korean people.
Despite its challenges and shortcomings, Democratic Korea is one of the last remaining countries
where workers were able to control society collectively as a class. As one of the socialist countries to
survive the fall of the USSR, Marxist-Leninists must study and learn from the resilience of the Korean
people.
Long live the Korean revolution!
Hands o the DPRK!
One Korea!
(1) Korea stands strong: Kim Jong-Il in context, Fight Back! News, December 21,
2011, h p://bit.ly/uLybSH
(2) Josef Stalin, Marxism & the National Question, 1. The Nation, 1913, h p://bit.ly/tQjf1l
(3) Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country, The New Press, New York, 2004.
(4) David Whitehouse, Socialism in one dynasty, Socialist Worker, January 12,
2011, h p://bit.ly/ysT2e1
(5) Where We Stand, The International Socialist Organization, Socialist Worker, h p://bit.ly/y4ht0W
(h p://bit.ly/y4ht0W)
(6) Ahmed Shawki, China: Dengs Legacy, International Socialist Review, Issue 2, Fall
1997, h p://bit.ly/xapFEV
(7) Dianne E. Rennack, North Korea: Economic Sanctions, Congressional Research Service, January
24, 2003, h p://bit.ly/vpv9NO
(8) Tad Daley, Nuclear lesson from Libya: Dont be like Qadda. Be like Kim, The Christian Science
Monitor, October 13, 2011, h p://bit.ly/w1wO00
(9) Stephen Gowans, US Ultimately to Blame for Korean Skirmishes in the Yellow Sea, whats left,
December 5, 2010, h p://bit.ly/xnID99
(10) Socialist Worker, September 1991; Quoted by Workers Vanguard, No. 866, March 17, 2006,
Parliamentary Cretinism ISO Goes All the Way with Capitalist Greens, h p://www.icl-
.org/english/wv/866/isogreen.html (h p://www.icl-.org/english/wv/866/isogreen.html)
(11) Socialist Worker, editorial, March 9, 2011, The US is no friend to the Libyan
uprising, h p://socialistworker.org/2011/03/09/no-friend-to-libyan-uprising
(h p://socialistworker.org/2011/03/09/no-friend-to-libyan-uprising)
(12) Alan Maass, Lance Selfa, Washington celebrates Qaddas death, Socialist Worker, October 24,
2011, h p://bit.ly/z8Df7r
(13) Ellen Brun, Jacques Hersh, Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development,
1976, Monthly Review Press, New York and London
(14) Stephen Gowans, Understanding North Korea, whats left, November 5,

2006, h p://bit.ly/AyDa8q
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Posted on January 17, 2012, in Actually Existing Socialism, China, DPRK, Libya, Miscellaneous.
Bookmark the permalink. 17 Comments.
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flobdob | January 18, 2012 at 9:28 am

Fantastic work exactly what is needed in face of such ridiculous Trotskyist slander. Keep it up!
BJ Murphy | January 19, 2012 at 5:34 am
Brilliant article, as always, comrade Sherman! Though, Id like to make a slight critique on, what I
believe to be, an unintended error on your part (a natural occurrence to all of us, obviously). You
made a certain comment in which, when reading between the lines, makes one to believe that the
DPRK did, indeed, start the Korean war:
Many bourgeois scholars and critics of the DPRK argue that the Korean Peoples Army (KPA), centered in
the north, initiated the Korean War by crossing the 38th parallel, the act that is often cited as the start to the
Korean War. While the KPA did send troops into South Korea on June 25, 1950, calling this an act
of aggression by one sovereign state towards another implicitly legitimizes the imperialist
division of Korea at the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
Whats quoted is an important topic to get into, but whats in bold came to interest me the most
regarding said topic. Like Id said, it gives one the impression that the DPRK did, in fact, start the
Korean War (not to imply that it was your intention to deliver said impression).
Fact of the ma er is that, despite popular belief, the DPRK didnt start the Korean War, nor was
the sending of troops in June of 1950 the rst action of said war. Before troop deployment into the
south initiated, the RoK had already sent paramilitary forces i.e. Northwest Youth in a acking
several villages located in the north.
Before the north was even remotely able in deploying their troops into the south, the south had
already made plans in invading themselves. These plans were materializing as the RoK military
began carrying out several large massacres of those who were suspected in being secret
communists. All of which, as one would easily come to the conclusion, was done so in preparation
of a future assault, which were to be initiated against the north.
h p://www.iacenter.org/korea/skorea070608//
While your comment that Id quoted isnt necessarily wrong quite the contrary! my only
objection was in how you worded it. Wording your articles is just as important as the content
itself. Though, again, it was absolutely a brilliant article and cant wait to re-publish it onto my
news blog, The Prison Gates Are Open
dasarkita5sila17845 | February 15, 2012 at 3:47 pm

Dear comrade Vince Sherman.
We just posted your tremendous article in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language), as (again)
another a valuable lesson for us and (hope) to our readers regarding a hit-piece on Kim Jong-Il
and dusted o the typical Clite-Trotskyite arguments against actually existing socialism
have never led the masses in revolution precisely because they understand socialism and
revolution in utopian terms pushing their bogus state capitalism line than applying a
rigorous, dialectical materialist analysis of Korean socialism, left-cover for imperialism
demonstrates the ISOs non-materialist understanding of socialism, both in theory and practice
blend of left-anticommunism things which in our opinion dominated those so called
leftists in Indonesia at the moment.
Terima kasih banyak kamrad Sherman. Salam merah!

(Many thanks comrade Sherman. Red salute!)
People or Sheeple? | April 14, 2013 at 10:17 pm

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Socialism in Democratic Korea | Return to the Source

Korea Resilient! Socialism in Democratic Korea

On December 22 of last year, Fight Back! News (h p://www.ghtbacknews.org/), which often

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(14) Stephen Gowans, Understanding North Korea, whats left, November 5,

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flobdob | January 18, 2012 at 9:28 am

BJ Murphy | January 19, 2012 at 5:34 am

dasarkita5sila17845 | February 15, 2012 at 3:47 pm

Terima kasih banyak kamrad Sherman. Salam merah!

People or Sheeple? | April 14, 2013 at 10:17 pm

alaska heli skiing | January 31, 2014 at 4:12 pm

bit.ly | April 19, 2014 at 4:02 am

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