‘Lies , Lies, Damned lies and GDP Statistics and the imperialist falsification of the Korean revolution’
Recently , the “London Review of Books “ carried a review by someone called Ed Pulford of two toxic anti-DPRK books , one by a long standing anti-DPRK writer Fyodor Tertitskiy who is part of the NKNews clique ( NKNews being a CIA front organisation funded by both the US and ROK puppet government ) and who has been resident in puppet south Korea( a state there is the No 1 enemy of the DPRK and has spent the past 80 years trying to overthrow the socialist system of the DPRK ) for 15 years(plenty of time to swallow massive slabs of hateful anti-DPRK propaganda and be brainwashed by the puppets ) . Also Fyodor Tertitskiy writes for the notorious Daily NK, a far right south Korean website funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (a CIA cutout ).Tertitskiy got a PhD in the puppet south and teaches at a south Korean puppet university . The other author reviewed is Michael Seth , an American academic from the James Madison University in Virginia , USA. Both authors obviously lack objectivity because of their backgrounds, this an understatement . Both books are crammed full of lies and smears steeped in anti-socialist propaganda and orientalism .
Scanning Pulford’s review and glancing at the two books I reminded of old discredited south Korean puppet propaganda of the 60s and 70s which tried deny the legitimacy of the DPRK and its origins and discredit it . These latest outpourings represent a recycling of old lies as part of the campaign of disinformation and de-legitimisation of the DPRK by Western imperialism.
Pulford’s review of the two anti-DPRK books is not worth the paper it is written on . Pulford does not mention Juche once in his review . Juche is the guiding ideology of the DPRK , without studying the Juche idea it is impossible to understand the DPRK . Writing about the DPRK without mentioning Juche is both illiterate and is typical of imperialist journalism and historiography , it is done deliberately to demean and diminish the DPRK .It is done to fit the history of the DPRK into certain imperialist propaganda narratives .
Pulford claims “ North Korea is an anomaly. Its GDP per capita is at least thirty times smaller than South Korea’s, but it is also an industrialised, predominantly urban society with near total literacy and many more doctors and teachers than the other states below 150th place in global wealth rankings” . However this proves that paper GDP statistics are not an accurate measure of the wealth and economic power of a given country .In recent months even the “Wall Street Journal “ has been forced to grudgingly concede that the DPRK is growing fast . Indeed the DPRK does have 100 per cent literacy compared to 98 per cent for south Korea and a claimed 99 per literacy rate for the US (although this figure is very doubtful , it is probably much lower, maybe 75 per cent ) .By the 1960s the DPRK had 16 doctors per 10,000 people , a very high level . By 2017 , according to the World Bank the DPRK had 3.7 Doctors per 1,000 people . This was higher than south Korea which had 2.4 doctors per 1,000 people ( of course medical care is not free in south Korea ) and the United States with 2.6 doctors per 1,000 . The World Bank also said that the number of hospital beds per 1,000 in the DPRK was 13.2 per 1,000 compared to 2.9 beds per 1,000 in the UK .So basically the DPRK has 4.55 times the number of hospital beds per 1,000 than the UK. South Korea’s much vaunted GDP statistics are basically fake because south Korea has huge debts apparently $1.3 trillion dollars which are unrepayable . Moreover , the south Korean puppet economy is about 80 per cent owned by foreign companies . South Korea is famous for its slums as well as big disparities in wealth distribution.
(slums in south Korea )
Pulford claims that President KIM IL SUNG came from a “relatively prosperous “ family . In fact President KIM IL SUNG was from a poor peasant family . Those of us who have been lucky enough to visit the DPRK have seen President KIM IL SUNG ‘s original home at Mangyongdae (it is doubtful whether Pulford, Seth or Tertitskiy have ever visited it ) on the outskirts of Pyongyang . It is a simple straw thatched home which did not even have a front door . KIM IL SUNG’s family were so poor that they could not afford to buy a new earthenware jar and instead had to patch the existing one they had . The patched earthen jar is displayed at Mangyongdae to this very day . President KIM IL SUNG himself and many members of his family went through great hardships , his own mother Mrs Kang Ban Sok died at the early age of 32 . President KIM IL SUNG’s family was far from being “relatively prosperous “.
Pulford and the authors of the books he reviews totally false the history of the Korean revolution .Pulford falsely claims that President KIM IL SUNG joined the Communist Party of China in 1931 . Not only is there not a single shred of evidence for this assertion but it is a blatant falsification as President KIM IL SUNG had put forward the independent , Juche-based line of the Korean revolution at the famous Kalun Meeting in June 1930 . It was at the Kalun meeting in 1930 that the Juche idea was outlined in embryo form in the famous speech “The Path of the Korean Revolution “ . Korean communists under President KIM IL SUNG actually formed their party organisation , the Society For Rallying Comrades in July 1930 and later the Homeland Party Working Committee in 1934 . Pulford ignores the fact President KIM IL SUNG had to struggle against big power chauvinists in the Communist Party of China in the mid 1930s .
The Anti-Japanese Armed struggle was conducted in very harsh and difficult circumstances with a rear and external support . In fact the Korean guerrillas once asked the Soviet Union , the workers and peasants state, to supply a hand grenade factory but for whatever reason this did not materialise so President KIM IL SUNG had the anti-Japanese guerrillas create their own hand grenade , the Yongil bomb ( I have seen the original Yongil bomb at the museum of the Pyongchon revolutionary site ) in the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance.
The Anti-Japanese armed struggle led by President KIM IL SUNG is denied by south Korean sponsored Western liberal academics such as Tertitskiy but in fact is actually recorded in Japanese records .Some former Japanese army officers even recounted fighting battles with President KIM IL SUNG’ guerrillas . During the 1930s and 1940 President KIM IL SUNG became a legendary figure well known as great guerrilla commander .
(President KIM IL SUNG commanding the anti-Japanese armed struggle )
Keen to repeat and rehash old south Korean propaganda tropes, Pulford gets the date of the birth of President KIM IL SUNG’s successor , Chairman KIM JONG IL , wrong . It is actually 16 February 1942 not 1941 . Chairman KIM JONG IL was born in the Secret Camp at Mt Paekdu not in Russia . I was privileged to see Chairman KIM JONG IL ‘s birthplace at Mt Paektu in August 2017 . Chairman KIM JONG IL ‘s birth was witnessed by women anti-Japanese guerrillas . As for the story of “Yuri Kim “ , this person would have been a Soviet Korean or Russian Korean as many Koreans lived in the Soviet Union and not the same person as the great leader Chairman KIM JONG IL .Pulford , Tertitskiy and Seth are just falsifying facts and repeating old lies of the south Korean puppets .
(Japanese imperialist troops surrender to the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army )
The liberation of Korea is slandered and distorted by Pulford who ignores the role of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army . In fact the USSR which had concluded a neutrality agreement with Japan did not actually enter the war against Japan until the 9th of August 1945 some 6 days before Korea was liberated from Japanese rule . From 1940 the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army had carried out small unit operations against the Japanese . In August 1945 the units of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army took the lead in storming Japanese positions and there were armed uprisings by the Korean people but none of this is mentioned by Pulford. The role of the Anti-Japanese Armed struggle led by President KIM IL SUNG is internationally recognised as the World Cultural Congress in Havana ,Cuba in 1968 adopted a document praising it .
( Fyodor Tertitskiy)
Ridiculously Pulford praises Tertitskiy along with his mentor Andrei Lankov as “world’s leading authorities” on the DPRK when they are both paid by south Korean puppet universities .Lankov teaches at Kookmin University in south Korea, a private university funded by a south Korean Jaebol( big business conglomerate) . South Korea, by the way, relies heavily on foreign teachers in its universities, thus exemplifying its dependency . Such "Korean Studies " of people like Lankov and Tertitskiy are believed to be funded and controlled by the south Korean spy agency the NIS .Lankov is typical of the "sausage intellectuals" as their critique of the USSR was simply that there was not enough sausage or not enough varieties of sausage.(such a viewpoint ignored things like full employment, subsidized housing and the like enjoyed by Soviet citizens. It is more accurate to say that Tertitskiy , Lankov and others are part of the massive 24/7 anti-DPRK propaganda machine created by the south Korean fascist puppets and Western intelligence agencies.
The DPRK was not a creation or copy of the USSR as Pulford falsely asserts .President KIM IL SUNG declared that the new People’s Korea would follow its own road and not be a copy of another country . In Korea Soviets were not set up but instead people’s committees a new form of popular rule were established. Some factionalists and sycophants of big powers wanted to either copy the Soviet model or even build American style bourgeois democracy in the liberated Korea ! Some factionalists even wanted to make Korea a union republic of the Soviet Union !
President KIM IL SUNG said “ The Korean revolution at the present stage is an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution. We must follow the road of progressive democracy which suits the Korean situation—neither Soviet
democracy nor American ‘democracy’. The road of progressive democracy, this is the very line, the right road, for the Korean revolution at present”
People’s Korea carried out the anti-imperialist anti-feudal democratic revolution .
The choice of the name Democratic People’s Republic truly reflected the independent , people -oriented character of the DPRK .
Soviet troops were withdrawn from the DPRK in 1948. In the Eastern European people’s democracies they were not withdrawn until the 1980s. Straight after liberation the DPRK began to build its own independent munitions industry at Pyongchon against the wishes of some Soviet advisors . President KIM IL SUNG criticised the big power chauvinist tendencies of some Soviet advisors who opposed the building of an independent defence industry and tried to take industrial equipment back to the USSR as “reparations “ . The line of building an independent national economy was put forward as early as 1947 . The DPRK itself did not join the Council For Mutual Economic Assistance or Warsaw Pact.
The falsity of the assertions of Pulford and the two hack writers whose books he is reviewing is proved by 1956 August factional incident which Pulford mentions but contradicts himself by first saying that there was no purge and then saying that there was , make up your mind Pulford . In August 1956 pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions in the leadership of the WPK combined to try and overthrow the leadership of President KIM IL SUNG and overthrow the socialist system making the DPRK into a pro-US bourgeois republic . They were defeated by the unity of the people and some of the traitors were forced to run away to the USSR and China .
In the past south Korean anti-DPRK propaganda against the DPRK was full of contradictions ; one day it would be asserted that the DPRK was dependent on the USSR , another day that the DPRK was dependent on China , another time that it was dependent on both the USSR and China but at other times the puppets would claim that the DPRK was ‘extreme nationalist ‘ and opposed to its supposed allies . This schizophrenic mentality is reflected in the approach of Tertitskiy , Seth , Lankov and Pulford.
Pulford claims that the magnificent Pyongyang Metro was built with “Chinese aid “ but does not provide evidence . In actual fact I have visited the Pyongyang Metro Revolutionary Museum (one of my favourite museums in the DPRK ) which shows that the Pyongyang Metro was built by Koreans and not the Chinese . As the Beijing Metro and Pyongyang Metro were built roughly at the same time , it seems implausible that China could “aid “ the construction of the Pyongyang Metro.
Space does not permit me to refute all the lies , slanders, distortions and falsifications of Pulford and the authors of the books he is reviewing . Pulford repeats some of the dirtier , coarse and vile south Korean puppet propaganda against the DPRK supreme leadership . Also the mythical ‘caste system ‘ lie(which has been debunked is repeated by Pulford .
Both Tertitskiy and Seth’s books, which form part of the West’s psychological warfare against the DPRK and Juche , along with Pulford’s review of them belong in the dustbin or at the local waste recycling centre ! Instead of paying money for such rubbish we would recommend you download free of charge the many excellent books on the DPRK’s history on Naenara.kp . KFA UK and the British Group For the Study of the Juche Idea has its own publishing programme which you can find on lulu.com
(Dr Dermot Hudson , KFA UK general chairman and deputy editor/reviewer PKT )
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