TEL AVIV JOURNAL MARCH 2, 2012
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There is a temptation to think of the two Koreas as twins. But certainly not identical twins. After Japan surrendered to the United States and the Soviet Union in August 1945 (the Soviets had only been in the war for days … really just for days!), battered Tokyo relinquished the peninsula it had seized and brutalized from 1910 onwards. Korea had gone through nearly a half century of both imperialism and colonialism, quite different manifestations of similar instincts, and was left again as a captive nation. With a difference, of course. South Korea, occupied by American troops, moved quickly to independent rule that was also authoritarian rule. Still, governance with the U.S. was not governance by the U.S.S.R. In 1948, Syngman Rhee, one of the typical Cold War strongmen in the West, was elected president, and the American left depicted him as Mussolini at best. Alas, this false history has lingered, in some measure attributable to clinical phantast (and low-level, not-exactly-yet-sort-of Soviet spy, but hero of every progressive who remembers him) I.F. Stone and his book The Hidden History of the Korean War.
Of course, the progressives ignored the brutality of the regime in North Korea which for decades pivoted between Communist Russia and the People's China. What a happy choice! But the Kim dynasty can no longer count on Putin's Moscow for anything, and even Beijing is an unreliable partner. The Chinese were not about to end up in strategic conflict with United States over Pyongyang's nutsy nukes. Anyway, the big news is that the new Kim—Kim Jong-un, the roly-poly one—is now in charge. But he is not (yet) president. His grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was designated in the constitution as "eternal president." Still, even in revolutionary North Korea, eternity does not last forever. He died in 1994.
Ordinary life expectancy was also a big disappointment in North Korea. According to the CIA World Factbook (2011 estimates), the composite life expectancy was 63 years—for men more than two years less, for women three years more. Devastating, no? But the comparison with South Korea is positively desolating. Again, the source is the 2011 CIA report. The composite life expectancy is 79 years, one year higher than the United States. Imagine. South Korean women live to 82. South Korean men live to nearly 76. Almost all of the countries with lower birth expectancies than North Africa are in sub-Saharan Africa. But the Kim dynasty did build a bomb. Terrific.
I want to make several points.
The first is a didactic one. North Korea was the paradigmatic socialist economy and the paradigmatic communist polity. This is what it produced.
South Korea did not become really democratic till midway in its history, although its strains of authoritarianism began to edge away earlier. But its economic practices were always capitalist, with all its faults and all its virtues. And this is what it produced. Moreover, it is not a run-of-the-mill capitalism like those troubled banking societies of Western Europe. But even these—Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal—are near the top of the life expectancy tables of both the CIA and the only slightly different ones of the United Nations.
The second point is that South Korea is a high-tech society and, however much its values may or may not disturb us, it is geared to the services of intellectual and commercial life. It doesn't need a bomb.
The third is that we still don't know how North Korea will be aimed. It has only abjured atomic weapons for the food relief it will get from the United States; the Obama administration moved quickly and decisively to relieve the famine—a famine that had already killed millions. But whether the new Kim and his comrades are truly ready for an open society is unlikely. It would surely mean their unseating. I wouldn't bet on that. Still, the endemic starvation in North Korea is in a phase-out stage. Will the regime begin to end the ruthless rule of a provincial and pathetic patrimony? No one as yet knows.
But a historic judgement can be made. And it can be made despite the current travails of capitalism here, there, almost everywhere.
Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.
12 comments
North Korea is a Nazi concentration camp posing as a country. South Korea is a prosperous modern democracy. Shouldn't that say something to even the most dogmatic "liberal" about the comparative merits of socialism and capitalism? OK, so "liberals" are advocating European style socialism, not the extreme version of the North Koreans. Then the question becomes why emulate Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland? Why go down the road to social, moral, and economic ruin? Why commit suicide? Why let the irrational neurotic guilt of the Left destroy all that western civilization has achieved over the last thousand years?
- bulbman1066
March 2, 2012 at 1:37am
I usually like your opinionated blogs but on this one I wonder where you find your information. BTW, Rhee was a thug (our thug that the State Department disliked intensely) who was finally overthrown after he fixed one too many election. If he had not acquiesced to the 1953 armistice, the US was prepared to depose him (Operation Ever Ready). The truth is out there only one does not have to look far to find it. Since the end of the USSR its archives have been open and they show that the Korean War was a combination of Kim Il-sung's prodding of Stalin and Mao. The war was not precipitated by the ROK even though there were numerous border incidents. The north invaded because it thought it would win. UN intervention led by the US stopped this and the intervention by the Chinese (who feared an aggressive anti-communist) US led to a stalemate. If North Korea is a "socialist" country, then someone has misappropriated the term. The DPRK is a dynastic system that calls itself a socialist democracy (whatever that means). It is, in fact, the Kim family business - just about a theocracy. North Korea is not a model Soviet socialist state - its ideology is not Leninist-Stalinist but is based on Korean nativism and Japanese 1930s-style racism. In terms of the "deal" with North Korea we have bought the same horse again and again, administration after administration - party does not matter. Will famine relief reach the victims? I don't know but I doubt it. We are dealing with an oppressive police state that is not socialist, communist, mercantilist, capitalistic, national socialist, or any other "ist." It is an extractive gangster state that makes money counterfeiting US currency, selling missile technology, and stealing bread from the mouths of its own people. It is my firm belief this regime will not change (although one should always be open to the possibility that it might). Reading the material available about North Korea on the net, one comes to the conclusion that they will muddle through somehow and they will continue to sucker the rest of the world. Ah well, to paraphrase the Laozi: Those who know of the Way do not speak about it, while those who know do not speak.
- NR161963
March 2, 2012 at 4:09am
There's a big difference between European-style social democracy (economies with a mixture of nationalization and privatization) and North Korean-style socialism. For example: even though I think the U.S. should work toward government-run health care (to expand availability and cut costs) and more affordable higher education, it doesn't mean that I favor living under an authoritarian regime.
- maxhencke
March 2, 2012 at 9:35am
M. Peretz gets it wrong and Maxhencke gets it right :"There's a big difference between European-style social democracy (economies with a mixture of nationalization and privatization) and North Korean-style socialism."
- LawrenceGulotta
March 2, 2012 at 11:34am
Oh lord. When will people figure out that "authoritarian totalitarian regime" isn't the same thing as socialism; and that capitalism can and does often result in evils just as bad as any other form of government, for example, look at our plutocracy. This is so wonderful? Believe me it isn't wonderful if you're one of the 18% of Americans who haven't been able to afford food this year, let alone medical care. Now we're going to be lucky to beat off the open theocrats from the Middle Ages in the Presidential election. Meanwhile, I'm glad we are helping North Korea. As far as food stability is concerned has anybody taken a good look at their climate? Do you really think that capitalism or lack thereof is the only reason North Korea is short of food? Good lord. Oh PS: don't take American food supplies for granted. We've had horrible climactic conditions that past few years. How do you think that is going to affect our harvests? And we got capitalistas up the wazoo.
- Sophia
March 2, 2012 at 1:30pm
What does anything involving the Koreas have to do with the failures of capitalism in the US and Western Europe? Is someone at Occupy Wall Street claiming that North Korea is a good alterantive model for the West? When was the last time even die-hard Western leftists defended anything that North Korea said or did, as opposed to trying to distinguish its brand of communism from the "good" kind practiced in, say, Latin America?
- wildboy
March 2, 2012 at 1:50pm
Sophia, our form of government is as bad as North Korea - i.e., another form of government? Go away.
- travis
March 2, 2012 at 2:17pm
I have occasionally thought some of harsh rhetoric aimed at Marty for rambling, incoherence, or cheap shots has been over the top. Today, as we read his libel of I.F. Stone as a"clinical fantast [sic] (and low-level-yet-not-exactly-yet-sort-of Soviet spy...)", I am on the other side. I am one of the legion who regard Stone as a courageous truth teller who could cut through the crap and cant being handed to us courtesy of the Johnson Administration during the Viet Nam war. Marty is libeling a legendary journalist whose stature towers over Marty's as a giant to a mouse. For those who want an authoritative assessment of Stone, I would recommend the biography "All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone" by Myra MacPherson.
- JackR
March 2, 2012 at 2:43pm
Travis, I think its abundantly clear Sophia was responding to the usual knee jerk comments ("see everyone! socialism is evil and capitalism is good!") by people by the Bulb who seem stupefyingly blind to some of the cruel and immoral effects wrought by capitalism. She was not saying our entire system is "just as bad" as N Koreas. Think before you blog.
- Tristan
March 2, 2012 at 2:57pm
Thank you Tristan! That's exactly what I was trying to communicate; alas people like to jerk their knees. And apparently cannot read. And have zero compassion for the poor people here in the US; nor any clue about the impact of climate on farming, including here in America, where we have had dust bowls, plagues of locusts, droughts, floods, fires, etc; we are NOT immune to catastrophe despite all our capitalists.
- Sophia
March 2, 2012 at 3:34pm
First, when do we get to Israel and the Middle East? Oh, both Marty Peretz and TNR do talk about something besides that topic. Second, it is terrible that millions of people in North Korea live in slavery and starvation, though I don't know how we can do anything about it without killing millions of people, which does not seem like a good plan. Third. people like that North Koreans should not play with toys like nuclear weapons. Again, how do we take these toys away from the mad children without killing millions of people, including, possibly, ourselves?
- skahn
March 2, 2012 at 7:05pm
Like most, I was surprised that the Administration announced this deal with NK. Running the numbers it looks like we are giving them 20 pounds of food per person over the next year. Knowing the North Koreans, some will get 60 pounds, and most will get nothing. And all we get is a little access to what ever they decide to let us look at? This is after two attacks in the last year to let the Dear Leader establish himself. Maybe someone requires an apology for sinking a South Korean Ship that killed 46 sailors. Maybe someone asks them to come clean about a Reactor in Syria before we serve them up a meal. I was reading of this history of Korea and it is fascinating. I never knew that the Japanese beat the Russians in 1905 and kicked them out of Manchuria. The Russians really wanted their influence in this region back, and after we opened a can of Nucelar Whoop Ass on the Japanese, used their influence to end the war in the pacific by taking on the Japanese. Really the Russian got North Korea for free. North Korea is a very bad actor and I think we would be better served with out charity work in the Middle East. Until the North Korean Military is starved and ready to admit past mistakes, we are just wasting time.
- CRS9TNR
March 2, 2012 at 10:02pm