About a week or two ago , an old horse chestnut came up on twitter when someone said ‘ The DPRK and Cuba couldn't exist without China.’ . There are variations on this theme such as the idea that the DPRK was ‘dependent on Soviet aid ‘ and is the creation of the USSR or China or both and is even a copy of either of those two countries . These kinds of misunderstandings ( in some cases it is a genuine misunderstanding, in other cases it is based on a mistaken belief of worshiping big countries ) diminish and deny the achievements of People’s Korea , undermine solidarity with it and effectively block the dissemination of the Juche idea .
Such misconceptions about the DPRK are deliberately spread by the bourgeois mainstream media and bourgeois academic hack writers as well as revisionist and dogmatist elements.
Let's examine these arguments in detail . Firstly , the DPRK and the Juche idea are both firmly rooted in the anti-Japanese armed struggle led by President KIM IL SUNG . President KIM IL SUNG started the anti -Japanese independence struggle when he founded the Down With Imperialism Union in 1926 , this went over to armed struggle with the formation of the Korean Revolutionary Army in July 1930 and later the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army in April 1932 which was to become the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army(KPRA ) in 1934 . President KIM IL SUNG outlined the Juche Idea at the historic Kalun meeting of Korean revolutionary cadres in June 1930 at which he stated that “ Experience shows that in order to lead the revolution to victory, one must go among the masses of people and organize them, and solve all problems arising in the course of the revolution independently on one’s own responsibility in accord with the actual conditions, instead of relying on others.
Drawing on this lesson we regard it as most important to take the firm standpoint that the masters of the Korean revolution are the Korean people and that the Korean revolution should by all means be carried out by the Korean people themselves in a way suited to the actual conditions of their country.”
He also pointed out that ‘ "we fight the armed struggle with no state backing and no aid from outside "
The anti-Japanese guerillas fought in the spirit of self-reliance for 15 long years before the USSR joined the war against Japan on the 9th of August 1945 . China itself was still under the rule of the reactionary KMT and the People’s Republic of China did not come into being until 1949.
Therefore it is very wrong to see Korea’s liberation as solely the result of Soviet assistance . Indeed the anti-Japanese guerrillas fought without the support of a state or a rear base The KPRA fought the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and the Juche Idea . They seized weapons from the Japanese aggressors or manufactured their own . Some hoped that the Soviet Union, the first socialist state, would supply them with a hand-grenade factory but this never materialised so they made their own hand-grenades the 'Yongil bomb'.
President KIM IL SUNG from early on whilst stressing the fraternal alliance with the socialist camp (which in those days stretched from East Berlin and Prague to Vladivostok and Shanghai ) also emphasised independence in all matters . In 1947 he said that “For complete national independence and sovereignty and for national prosperity and development, one must build an independent national economy and thus firmly ensure economic independence.”
President KIM IL SUNG also stressed the importance of building an independent munitions industry .
It is true that the DPRK was devastated beyond imagination during the Fatherland Liberation War ( Korean War ) and received assistance from the socialist countries such as the USSR, China , Romania etc , to reconstruct the country . Western and south Korean sources say 2.6% of revenues in the DPRK budget in 1960.( quoted in article by Milan Juche Idea Study Centre and KFA Italy) . This of course is a fraction of what south Korea received from the US and other countries . It is also likely that south Korea inflated the amount of aid received by the DPRK . President KIM IL SUNG in his famous speech “
“On Socialist Construction In The Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea And The South Korean Revolution” pointed out that the DPRK had received about $550 million in aid from the socialist countries . however he said ‘ But in those days, too, it was our principle to enlist the forces of our people and our national resources to the fullest; at the same time we also tried to make effective use of the aid from the fraternal countries. In fact, it was our own forces that played the decisive role in postwar reconstruction. There is no need to make further mention of the achievements scored in the economic construction of our country in subsequent years.’
Those who prattle about Soviet and Chinese aid to the DPRK miss the point ; the decisive factor is not outsiders but the efforts of the Korean people themselves.
Rather than being a generous benefactor to the DPRK , the USSR actually imposed its own sanctions of sorts on the DPRK in 1962 when the DPRK refused to kneel down and accept the revisionist line of the Khruschov revisionists . Some sources also say that in 1975 the USSR drastically increased the price of oil to the DPRK.
As to the idea that the DPRK would not survive without China whilst it is true that historically the two countries have a close relationship but the DPRK is at the same time independent , it is its own master and is nobody’s puppet .
In fact back in 1992 China asked the DPRK to settle foreign trade accounts in dollars . China voted for all the UN Security Council sanctions against the DPRK . Some say that China secretly breaks the sanctions against the DPRK but isn’t this the position of the extreme neo-con China haters in the US and elsewhere ? Surely China would not vote for sanctions only to break them deliberately.
The DPRK's independent national economy can produce almost any product from a wrist watch to a nuclear missile. In the 1970s the DPRK was able to produce 98% of its own machinery and 75% of fuel and industrial materials.Whilst it may be true that a big proportion of the DPRK's foreign trade is with China it needs to be stressed that in the DPRK foreign trade is not a big proportion of economic output . Foreign trade is a small percentage of gross national product in the DPRK unlike the south Korean puppet regime which has 88% of its gross national product coming from foreign trade and is therefore highly dependent. Thus a large part of the DPRK's GDP would be unaffected by sanctions. $ 1 billion only amounts to about 3.5 per cent of the Western estimate of GDP for the DPRK but as the real GDP of the DPRK is in fact higher it is a much lower figure.
The DPRK economy has become more self-reliant since the 1990s . I can remember visiting the DPRK in the 1990s and going around the shops in those days many of the goods on the shelves were produced in China but nowadays the shops in the DPRK are stocked with domestically sourced products . A member of the Korean Friendship Association who studied on a course at KIM IL SUNG University and lived in the DPRK for 3 months said it was possible to live on DPRK products only for the whole 3 months . Moreover the DPRK this year (2020) shut its border in January but has survived without a problem for nearly 12 months . This fact alone dashes the argument that ‘the DPRK couldn’t survive without China ‘ to shreds .
The DPRK based on Juche and self-reliance can stood on its own two feet .
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