i saw the trailer for the new feel-good “anti-racist” US war movie about the carpet bombing of North Korea and started writing up something for this blog, partially inspired by the absolute shit storm i got for sharing that post i made with pictures of everyday life outside pyongyang
and then i gave up, because what’s the point? westerners can’t even handle a single picture of a north korean not looking miserable without screaming propaganda
meanwhile, there are no stories about the horrors of life in the ‘hermit kingdom’ that are deemed too outlandish to be believable. i can’t remember who said it, but it’s like the entire country has taken up permanent residence in the western imaginary as some silly little cartoon villain, where the leaders of the country does evil things for no discernible reason. they’re just silly and evil like that, and the citizens, of course, are silly, too. silly and brainwashed.
i watched a video recently of a tourists visiting an auto dealership in pyongyang, and the entire time he was just gawking at the employees and costumers, shoving his phone in their face, and confidently explaining to his youtube audience that everyone he’s interacting with are actually actors.
what level of dehumanization do you have to reach for that thought to even cross your mind? to think that the people you see before you are actors? that entire cities and shops are erected with to sole purpose that you, a western, will see them and be impressed?
what frustrates me the most is the casual cruelty that seeps into any mention of north korea, no matter how small. if north koreans are not being evil, they’re being silly.
a north korean newspaper reports that a group of archeologists in pyongyang have discovered an old rock carving with the words ‘unicorn lair’ (mistranslated), and the western press reports that north koreans now believe in unicorns.
a tourist at a hotel in hamhung is told by the receptionist to be careful at the beach: the waves can get high. that day the tourists goes to the beach, and there are no waves. she retells the story to her instagram followers, explaining that the poor woman at the hotel could never have seen real waves before because north koreans are probably never allowed to travel.
she adds a little teary-eyed emoji.
one of the cities i included in the post was sariwon, a densely populated city to the south of pyongyang. below are some pictures from its “folk customs street”, which was built to showcase old korean traditions and customs
here’s all wikipedia has to say about it
Built to display an ideal picture of ancient Korea, it includes
buildings in the “historical style” and a collection of ancient Korean
cannons.
Although it is considered an inaccurate romanticized recreation of an
ancient Korean street, it is frequently used as a destination for
foreigners on official government tours. Many older style Korean
buildings exist in the city.
it’s just north koreans being silly again. there’s no mention of what might motivate them to build a street like that
— why the preservation of old customs, culture and architecture might somehow be important for the city
could it perhaps have something to do with how the U.S. air force dropped
635,000 tons
of bombs, including
32,557 tons of napalm, over the korean peninsula during the war? the carpet bombings, which are now the topic of an upcoming hollywood movie about overcoming racism through warcrimes, destroyed an estimate of 85% of all buildings in north korea. some cities were entirely wiped off the map.
in sariwon they missed a few buildings, but not many
—
after an intense firebombing campaign the U.S. military estimated the destruction of sariwon to be at 95%.
none of this is mentioned on the wikipedia page for sariwon.
we destroyed entire cities. memory-holed the entire thing,
called it the forgotten war. and now, 70 years later, we’re convincing ourselves that the people living in the ruins are actors.
and somehow the north koreans are the brainwashed ones
reblogging this again because genuinely, if you can exorcise the western demon in your head that dehumanizes north koreans to the point of caricature, and tells you their country is not worthy of self-determination, you will also have discovered the antidote to US propaganda in the process
Been a critic since 2015-ish of the propaganda against the demonization of North Korea and to an extent many states/nations that operate in a left wing/communist system.
Definitely the propaganda against North Korea overlaps with the American -West Red Scare fear mongering and dehumanization, as well as even caricature. Remember the whole “article” about how North Koreans supposedly found a Unicorn Lair and the article continues to paint North Koreans as akin to Flat Earthers: that North Koreans believe in unicorns, etc.
Not to mention the innumerable amounts of stories of how NK citizens idolize and worship their leaders, to the point that these Western stories wrote how the citizens think Kim Jong Il invented the hamburger.
I’m not kidding!
As for the supposed Unicorn, it was actually NK’s archeology team digging up centuries old sites and artifacts of one of Korea’s kings, who was depicted with a Qulin, mythological beings of most of East Asia’s culture. In short, it was an educational and historical feat regarding Korea’s history and cultural links with an ancient kingdom.
As for the hamburger, many articles, even by Aljazeera, writes that citizens believe that Kim Jong Il invented the hamburger and specifically on 2009. Now 2009 is VERY important because, just a quick look at the history of fast food in North Korea reveals that a bunch of Singaporean business people went to North Korea AND took up a fast food business there, and called it Samtaesong.
And when did this fast food restaurant open? Around May of 2009!! Patrick Soh is the Singaporean businessman that introduced hamburgers or technically western fast food, in North Korea.
Samtaesong, as far as I am able to look into, is still in business in North Korea and has 30 outlets locally. Patrick Soh is likely making bank from this!
Look, no type of governing system is perfect. But oh my god the West’s continuing Orientalist/racist and conservative propaganda is a very regressive, very dangerous and nefarious, disinformational issue that’s plaguing the world.
Just look at Palestine now.
(also pls if ANYONE has great articles i would love to read them😭so many pay walled articles are usually on my search results! I’ll need to find a way to dig deeper for good articles..)
