Image is from this CNN article.
The DPRK’s history has been a rollercoaster, with admirable highs and heartbreaking lows, most notably the Korean War and the fall of the USSR. Its steadfast commitment to Juche, a variant of Marxism-Leninism that focuses on self-sufficiency, has both made the DPRK a target for imperialist genocidal powers, and allowed them to survive these attacks.
Lately, we seem to be seeing a transition from surviving to thriving. China and the DPRK have always had a much more complicated history than Western education and media allows its population to know, with periods of quite strong disagreement - it’s not the case that China is somehow the DPRK’s master. Russia is the DPRK’s other neighour that isn’t US-occupied, and while they obviously differ substantially in ideology since the USSR fell, the tsunami of sanctions on Russia has changed things. The stick has been removed from the equation, with Russia facing no possible punishment from the West because they were unable to enact sanctions effectively and used all their ammunition in the first few barrages rather than turning the screws over time (I don’t care if we’re on the 14th sanctions package, it’s all been meaningless for Russia since the end of 2022).
The carrot is also more visible, with an alliance making a lot of sense for both. Once again, Western education and media would have you believe a Parenti-esque reality in which Korea is a massive and unpredictable danger to the world, but is simultaneously so poor and destitute that their artillery pieces are made of wood and their missiles out of paper-mache. The truth is that Korea has innovated greatly in missile technology, with some of their weapons matching or even exceeding those of the Russians, hence the Russians’ use of them in Ukraine. Russia also finds it advantageous to invest in Korea to strengthen the anti-hegemonic alliance’s presence in the Pacific, countering the US-occupied lower half of the peninsula who has naturally sided with Ukraine. Additionally, Russia is investing deeply in the Arctic sea route. This will open up as climate change continues; is naturally quite defensible for Russia so long as Korea is there to provide further defense at its eastern edge; and is both a faster and safer route for Russia to access China - especially in a world where straits can be blockaded by even impoverished yet determined countries like Yemen. The situation in the Red Sea benefits Russia and China now, but in the coming years, the US may apply the same lesson for their own benefit elsewhere.
It is perhaps this new sense of self-confidence that has let Korea give up on reunification with its lower half via peaceful measures. A new Korean War would be devastating for both sides even if it remained non-nuclear, but with a rising DPRK and with the South falling yet further into hypercapitalist exploitation and misery, and a US that remains non-committal to its “allies” when times get difficult (as in Ukraine and Europe), a reality where Korea may finally hold the upper hand and have the ability to liberate its south may be approaching in the years and decades to come.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is *the DPRK! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
What’s up nerds and losers, I’m meeting Grover Furr and some representatives from the People’s Democracy Party of South Korea, who are progressives and not communists because it’s illegal to be an organized communist party in South Korea, and some other neat people from around the globe tomorrow.
If you got any questions you want me to ask any of them, let me know.
“you ever think about jumping the border?”
I’ll interpret that as asking them their take on anti-dprk propaganda in the rok
🖤🖤🖤
For Furr and the South Korean comrades:
.
For the South Korean comrades:
So I didn’t get to talk with Furr or the Korean comrades in regards to your questions as the former was rather enthusiastically discussing his recent discoveries he made in his most recent dive into the Soviet archives in regards to the NKVD section regarding the military trials, some german communist double-agents (in the bad way), and a funny side tangent about how reactionarilly anti-communist the poles are because their national history academic world hate his guts.
The latter I spent time discussing the recent doctors strike wave, their thoughts on the state of affairs on the international stage, and whether the weather in Korea was warming up or not.
Also it’s prof. Furr’s birthday and he was short on time making sure he could make it to dinner with his daughter and her family.
So I got lucky and talked to the Korean folks today and asked them about mainly the first question since that was mainly all the time we had.
So they more or less said that Park Chung Hee and the successor puppets until recently have abused the pain and the innocence of the Korean people by exploiting the still bandaged wounds caused by the brother war to urge on the rapid industrialization and complete transformation of society into a strong manufacturing hub but because it was a capitalist interpretation of 5 year plans the economic capacity of ROK was publicly traded on the international stock market and the economic miracle that transformed them from a bombed out colonized peasant kingdom into the newest rising star of the east a la the '97-'98 financial crisis that crippled the country to the point the government begged the people to patriotically give their gold jewelery to the Korean financial system. They also more or less said that the only reason why the ROK overtook the DPRK was primarily because the DPRK built their industrial capacity off of Soviet oil and had their legs swept from under them by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the oil spigot getting shut off leading to the crippling of their industrial and agricultural production which also was heavily exasperated by the famine caused by the foul weather at the time. Whereas the ROK industrial capacity is completely plugged into the global market system allowing full access to needed commodities to fuel their production in addition to receiving some funds from the u.s to grease the wheels as well.
Thanks for asking, I just saw your previous reply and was gonna say don’t worry about it.
This lines up with what I understand as well. South Korea’s Five Year Plans were brutal and authoritarian (although you can say that about Stalin’s as well, but at least they were racing against time to fend off Nazi Germany).
The DPRK spent ~20% of their GDP on agriculture since the 1970s, and although there was an initial boost in the yield, what transpired later on due to the atrocious climate of Northeast Asia also took a huge toll on their agricultural production. South Korea has the benefit of importing food from Western countries, and never spent more than 2% of its GDP on agriculture, whereas the DPRK was deeply dependent on the Soviet bloc for trade.