In the land of the killer clowns

The Indonesian orchid "Kimilsungia"

"Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World" is a book written hy Benjamin R Young. It was recently published by Standford University Press as part of their "Cold War International History Project". While the book does contain interesting facts (and a lot of borderline factoids), it nevertheless comes across as a rough draft. The book tries to describe North Korea´s foreign policy from 1956 to 1989, but lacks a more detailed analysis of the entire period in question. There isn´t even a general summary chapter. To be honest, the book comes across as a kind of catalogue of every weird North Korean mishap in the Third World, but without any attemp at a real synthesis. There are also a number of strange errors: the author (or his editor?) confuses Mauritius with Mauritania, claims that Muhammad is a "deity", and insists on calling the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna "the People´s Liberation Front" - while that is what the name means, everyone else just calls it JVP. After reading the book, I still don´t understand *why* the DPRK did what they did (as in "why really"), although a few answers can be gleaned by reading the narrative carefully. 

Which doesn´t mean you shouldn´t read the book. If you love killer clowns on a Halloween rampage in the Third World, you gonna love "Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader". 

A long time ago, I assumed that the DPRK were a super-isolationist Communist regime which really did have an independent line, and in contrast to Enver Hoxha´s Albania didn´t even try to create a "world movement" all their own. Later, I assumed that North Korea was really just a Soviet satellite, although a slightly idiosyncratic one. Judging by Young´s overview, the truth is more complex and also more sinister. North Korea was politically independent from both the Soviet Union and the People´s Republic of China, but also economically dependent on them - the "North Korean miracle" was really Made in Elsewhere. The solution seems to have been to play off the Soviets and the Chinese against each other, reaping dividends from both. When necessary, the DPRK carried out its own influence operations, economic deals and even terrorist attacks. There is a certain irony in this, since the "Democratic People´s Republic of Korea" was established by the Soviet Army and saved from USA/UN occupation by the People´s Liberation Army of China! Yet, since both the Soviets and the Chinese left early, the Kim family clan could remain firmly in control and pursue their own policies without direct supervision by Moscow or Beijing (both of which frequently complained about the North Korean attitude). So why were the North Koreans allowed to continue, year after year, even when they carried out crazy stuff worthy of a Gaddafi? I assume the reason is geopolitical: neither the Soviets nor the Chinese Communists can allow a "capitalist" or "pro-American" unification of Korea, and therefore need the DPRK as their buffer state in the north. This gives the Kims (including the present one) a certain leverage and ability to manoeuvre. They can go very far without risking more than some diplomatic reprimands backstage... 

I think the main, or even only, reason for DPRK´s "solidarity" with "the Third World" is the North-South conflict on the Korean peninsula. Judging by Young´s account, this is the case even when North Korea tries to get influence in Africa. It´s really a way to counter attempts by *South* Korea to gain such influence, or to move first. Sometimes, North Korea wants to test its weaponry, or even engage South Korean agents and military personnel abroad. During the Vietnam War, North Korea supported North Vietnam and the NLF, while South Korea did likewise with South Vietnam. The DPRK sent fighter pilots to Vietnam, and tried to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the South Korean troops active there. They also attempted to abduct South Korean military, spread Communist propaganda among them, etc. In Africa, the two Koreas were engaged in a decades-long propaganda war against each other, the purpose of which was to secure African support for the North Korean position within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which North Korean diplomacy tried to use as a forum and a tool for DPRK interests. While the aid to various Third World nations was originally free of charge (the North Koreans even paid handsomely for propaganda in various foreign newspapers), during the 1980´s the relations became more business-like, with the DPRK demanding payment (in foreign currency) for services rendered. 

What struck me most was the intensely opportunist character of the North Korean foreign operations. Machiavelli would have liked these guys. In Uganda, North Korea supported both Idi Amin, Milton Obote and Yoveri Museveni! In southern Africa, North Korea originally had cozy relations with Zaire´s very own killer clown Mobutu Sese Seko, only to abandon him (and his Angolan FLNA proxies, and I suppose his avasuits), in favor of the Angolan MPLA. In the Middle East, Kim Il Sung secretly supported Egypt´s peace deal with Israel, while saying the opposite in public! And despite its support for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, the DPRK pivoted to Pol Pot´s Cambodia after the war, even trying to get Vietnam expelled from the NAM. The bromance between Cambodia´s Sihanouk and Kim Il Sung must have been something to behold, with Sihanouk telling a high-ranking US official that the North Korean leaders don´t want war, since they are used to a life in complete comfort and luxury (something that must have impressed this truly precious prince who, alas, was no stranger to war). Sihanouk preferred having North Korean body guards, notorious for their brutality, being intensely suspicious of Cambodian royal palace guards... 

A fun fact is that North Korea weren´t the only opportunists in these transactions. Frequently, *they* were taken advantage of themselves, especially in the super-corrupted African theatre. Once, a pro-Western newspaper in Cameroon published pro-DPRK propaganda just for the money. Many "Korean friendship associations" in Africa paid people to become members, which all kinds of unscrupulous elements took advantage of. In Uganda, the "friendship association" supported Museveni, at a time when the North Korean regime was still aiding and abetting Obote. The Communist Dergue regime in Ethiopia cynically accepted aid from both Koreas! But then, the Dergue may also have been the only regime in the world which accepted aid from both Cuba and Israel...

Judging by Young´s account, the best aid rendered by the Kim regime to its "allies" in the Third World was the military one, which included both weapons, ammunition and frequently brutal instructors. He doesn´t have an opinion on the quality of the huge palaces and monuments built in Africa by North Koreans. Much other aid was substandard, including porcelain factories which made dishes of such bad quality that you could cut through them with a steak knife. I´m not surprised. One popular "export" were the Mass Games, a kind of political gymnastic exercises, which could be used for propaganda purposes in a variety of nations (although the locals preferred to enhance the Mass Games with references to their own cultures). This brings me to perhaps the most entertaining portion of North Korean foreign propaganda: its notoriously inept character. It´s not clear to me whether the Kim Il Sung leadership really didn´t get it, or whether they simply didn´t care, since the real deals between DPRK and its "allies" were negotiated off-stage. 

North Korea is notorious for its bizarre and hysterical personality cult of Kim Il Sung, and later also of Kim Jong Il, his son and heir-very-apparent. This personality cult was liberally diffused abroad (or in North Korea to visiting foreign delegations), often to the bemusement and slight consternation of the intended targets. After reading some of the Great Leader´s sage pronouncements myself, I have to say that most of them are basic bitch commonplaces. "We have to strengthen the people, weaken imperialism, and mobilize. This is very important". That kind of level. I assume that the statements *about* the Great Leader and the Dear Leader are more, shall we say, turgid. Even foreign diplomats, including from friendly socialist nations, where frequently forced to listen to long speeches extolling the virtues and excellencies of Kim Il Sung. One Spanish visitor, I think, was taken to the doctor for a check up before being allowed to visit Kim - the medic explained that the Leader is such a great man, that people frequently faint in his presence! An African delegation, when realizing that the next 40 rooms of a Kim Il Sung exhibition in Pyongyang were very similar to the 20 rooms they had already walked through, kindly asked to be taken elsewhere. The translations of books about Kim Il Sung to foreign languages were frequently pretty bizarre. One English translation had the headline "Kim Il Sung: The Divine Man", while an Arabic translation claimed that Kim Il Sung is God! (No less.) Ironically, the idea known as Juche, which the Korean Workers´ Party claims is Kim Il Sung´s foremost contribution to revolutionary theory, was succeful in the Third World mostly because it was interpreted as a commonplace. Thus, in India, Juche was associated with everything from Plato to Mahatma Gandhi, which seems correct - for what is Juche other than the idea of autarkic self-reliance from the Western-dominated world economy, the dream of many Third World nationalists? 

Unfortunately, the Communist fun house of North Korea also had a darker side. One thing that struck me was that the North Koreans sometimes attacked "progressive" governments they should logically have tried to lobby diplomatically instead, as when they supported the mad Maoists of the JVP against the left-nationalist SLFP government of Sri Lanka, or when they backed a small revolutionary foco against the Mexican PRI government. In both cases, the rebellions were adventurist and doomed from the start (the Mexicans hardly started theirs before the police arrested them). Notoriously, North Korea supported the Japanese Red Army, a kind of East Asian version of the Baader Meinhof gang. Further, there was the Rangoon bombing of 1983, during which North Korean agents tried to assassinate Chun Doo-hwan, the president of South Korea, during his official visit to Burma (at the time a socialist nation). Finally, there was the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, killing over 100 people, in retaliation for South Korea refusing to co-host the 1988 olympic summer games. After the Cold War, it´s been pretty much downhill from there, with the North Korean regime looking upon the Third World as a gigantic smorgasbord for smuggling, hacking and other ways to obtain hard currency (implicitly or explicitly threatening to nuke the US unless the West pays tribute is another sure method). 

North Korea has become a rogue state and international outlaw, and it seems the roots of the predicament go pretty deep. So does the geopolitical realities that seemlingly make the North Korean entity as viable as ever, at least for the Kim clan and its cronies. Today, the great benefactor of "self-reliant" Juche DPRK is, of course, China.