Tuesday 2 March 2021

Answering the so-called ‘north Korean experts ‘ or Why the DPRK is no one's puppet

                           


Recently a certain, unmentionable ,CIA and south Korean National Intelligence Service patronised  website carried an article by a so-called ‘north Korea expert ‘ about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea accusing it of ‘leaning to one side ‘ and ‘ being too reliant  on China ‘ . Needless to say this particular overpaid and superannuated ‘expert ‘ had a long history of predicting the collapse of the DPRK which he used to do on a virtually weekly or monthly basis , years ago . Now an old slander from the past has been dusted off and given new life by the article , the idea of the DPRK being reliant on big countries and trying to ‘perform a balancing act  between the big powers ‘.

  This kind of thinking shows that the so-called ‘ north Korea experts ‘ are totally ignorant of the DPRK , in fact do not know the first thing about the DPRK  as well as being ignorant of the history of Korea .

  As everyone knows or should know the DPRK is based on the Juche Idea , the idea of independence and self-reliance . Juche rejects the idea of being dependent on outside forces . The Korean people and revolutionaries learned not to trust big powers or rely on them . During the 1900s factions within the feudal ruling class each tried to rely on big powers such as Russia , China and Japan with the result that independence was lost and Korea became a Japanese colony . 

  Rather than trying to ‘balance ‘ between the two big powers of the socialist camp  President KIM IL SUNG forged a road of independence and self-reliance , not dependence . He criticised both the USSR for modern revisionism and China for ‘ Left ‘ opportunism  at a conference of the Workers’ Party of Korea in 1966. The DPRK did not join the ‘Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ‘ . The DPRK pursued the line of an independent national economy .

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 percent 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.

  Visiting the DPRK during the 1990s there were many Chinese goods in the shops but nowadays there are not so many . The DPRK is making more things at home and further import substitution is possible .

The DPRK is no one’s puppet . It is not afraid to criticise China and did so in 2012 and in 2017 . Visiting the DPRK many times we had discussions with Korean comrades in which they criticised China .

However China is a neighbouring country of the DPRK and there is a long history of DPRK -China friendship which even goes back to the days of the anti-Japanese armed struggle . So respected Marshal KIM JONG UN took energetic measures to bring the relations between China and the DPRK back on track after they had been strained . This does not mean dependence or reliance on China or copying China .

What the so-called ‘experts and fake news websites overlook is that the DPRK has been under heavy sanctions almost permanently and these were intensified from 2016 , and from January 2020 it closed its border , surviving for 13 months when many so-called advanced  Western countries would not last for a few days  . The self-reliance of the DPRK is incredible . The DPRK is not reliant on any big powers or a puppet of them.

UK KFA

British Group for the Study of the Juche Idea


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