Resources to Learn More About the DPRK (aka North Korea)
*Note: if you’d like to listen to my podcast on this topic, it is free and you can listen anywhere podcasts are available. My podcast is called “Pick Me Up, I’m Scared” and it’s the episode series titled “The Korean War”. My cohost has a doctorate in Cultural Studies and I have been a community anti-imperialist organizer since 2001. We have also recently begun uploading our old episodes to YouTube, so you can access them here as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISPln6FqWBg&list=PLTJ_czggabi8
*You can also view my video interview with Nodutdol here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsCJzGlEYhY
The History of the United States Involvement in Korea
- Following World War 2, the USA divided the Korean Peninsula in half and assumed militarized control over the south against the people’s wishes.
- The USA brutally repressed the people in South Korea, including backing the genocide of Jeju Island, because they were politically too left-wing and did not approve of our presence.
- Meanwhile in the north, the Korean people were allowed to establish their own government and lead as they wished, but were forced to watch in horror as their family members in the south were terrorized.
- When the north attempted to expel the brutal occupying military forces of the USA from the south and reunify their country, as both the north and the south wanted, the Korean War began. The USA responded by murdering 20-25% of the entire population of the north and destroying 80% of their infrastructure, all for simply wanting us to stop committing genocide in the south and leave the Korean people alone.
The Defector Industrial Complex & Propaganda
- The Korean War never officially ended, and today the USA still runs militarized operations against North Korea.
- To this day, the South Korean military is still under U.S. command, and the south Korean government acts as our puppet ally in our war against the north, often attempting to provoke them.
- Today, the US government and its allies run a massive propaganda network spreading false information about the tiny country.
- As part of our hybrid warfare strategy against them, the USA maintains a network of massive disinformation and paid propaganda to make our political enemies in the North seem cartoonishly evil in order to retroactively justify the cruelty we enacted against them, including paying people from the North to tell sensational and untrue stories about their experiences for eager western audiences.
- In South Korea, it is illegal to say anything positive about the north and massive internet censorship prohibits people from hearing any true stories about North Korea that do not fit in with the U.S.-backed agenda.
Untrustworthy Sources
- The propaganda network churning out disinformation about North Korea is massive, and the most commonly cited sources are funded directly by US congress, our state department, or a US NGO started by the CIA called the National Endowment for Democracy. Below is a list of sources that are unreliable.
- Founded as a memorial to the Marshall Plan assistance through a grant from the West German government via US government funding
- NK News is owned by an American company that is registered in the tax haven of Delaware and operates out of South Korea
- Director at NK News (see above)
- Cites Andrei Lankov 27 times (see above)
- Cites NKNews 4 times (see above)
- Cites Daily NK 12 times (see above)
- Cites 38 North 1 time (see above)
- Cites Radio Free Asia 3 times (see above)
- Cites NKNews (see above)
- Cites Daily NK (see above)
- Cites Radio Free Asia (see above)
- Residing in South Korea, where it is illegal to say anything positive about the North:
- Hwang Jang-Yop
- Ri Il-Kyu
- Kim Kook-song
- Kim Hyun-hee
- Park Choong-kwon
- Kim Geum-hyok
- Ji Seong-ho
- Kim Byung-uk
- Songmi Han
- Ryu Ki-ho
- Jang Jin-Sung (criminal)
- Affiliated with US propaganda networks:
- Thae Yong-Ho and Kim Hye-Sook — Radio Free Asia
- Hyeonseo Lee and Kim Se-hyun — LiNK
- Kang Chol-Hwan — NK News
- Lee Sung-Ju — NKHR
- Ahn Myong-chol — George W. Bush Freedom Collection
- Kim Seong-Min — Free North Korea Radio (partner of National Endowment for Democracy)
- Masaji Ishikawa – NED-affiliated
- Eunsun Kim – NED-affiliated
- Kim Young-Soon – NED-affiliated
- An Hyuk – NED-affiliated
- Lucia Jang —HRF
- Kwon Hyuk
- Shin Dong-Hyuk
- Yeonmi Park
What is North Korea Really Like?
- North Korea is still a nation at war, and as such has more tight control over its borders. It also struggles greatly with the American blockade against them. However, despite that, it is still a relatively normal place and not the comedically evil country depicted in most western media.
North Korean Foreign Policy
- North Korea has long stood with Black Americans in their struggle for liberation.
- North Korea has also always been an ally of Palestine
- North Korea additionally stood with Burkina Faso and Thomas Sankara
Discussing Common Myths
- Myth: “People in North Korea are starving to death”
- When the USA divided the Korean peninsula in half, they left the north without access to ample farmland to sustain themselves.
- In the 1990s, there was a massive famine in North Korea when back to back floods described by onlookers as being of biblical proportions wiped out their farm land.
- North Korea asked the Americans to lift the embargo to rectify the famine. The US government responded by debating in Congress whether or not we should just “starve them out”.
- Thankfully North Korea does not experience food insecurity on that level today. However, any food insecurity they do experience is the direct result of US-driven UN sanctions against them that make it difficult for them to import the things they need to improve farming equipment in the small amount of farmable land they have access to.
- Myth: “North Korea is a prison state”
- . Myth: “People in North Korea are not allowed to leave the country”
- Myth: “People in North Korea are executed for watching foreign media”
- North Koreans do have access to foreign media, contrary to popular belief, and there are not harsh penalties for watching it like some people claim.
- A highly sensationalized story reported in western propaganda outlet Radio Free Asia said that someone heard a story of people being executed for watching the TV show “Squid Game”. However, the person claiming this had left North Korea years before the show was made, they did not provide names for who they knew who allegedly experienced this, and North Koreans published a glowing review of “Squid Game” in its papers.
- Myth: “North Korea tortured an American tourist named Otto Warmbier to death”
- Myth: “North Korea is a dictatorship with a hereditary monarchy under the Supreme Leader”
- North Korea is not a dictatorship, but instead has a triumvirate elected leadership system.
- North Korea has a collective leadership system consisting of three branches of government: the assembly, the executive branch called the cabinet, and the equivalent of their State Department called the State Affairs Commission.
- You can view a Flowchart of DPRK Worker’s Party vs Government here, as well as records of what their assembly system looks like here with the 1993 Record of The Parliamentary System of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
- Despite having a reputation for being a single party state, the DPRK parliament is currently made up of 3 different parties. Candidates are selected based on a consensus model at a local level, then officially confirmed or denied at election time.
- Kim Jong Un’s role today is as head of their state department, a job his father had but not the same job his grandfather originally had. His grandfather was the first Premier of North Korea, or the head of their executive branch like the U.S. president is today, a position currently held by a man named Pak Thae Song.
- Kim Jong Un is also head of the largest political party in North Korea, but their party system is not oppositional, meaning people can be and often are in multiple parties. The workers party is the largest because most people have jobs and are therefore workers. The party does not have governmental legislative control, just like political parties in the USA do not have governmental control, though members of the parties serve in government roles.
- Supreme leader is not a government job title, but instead is a cultural honorary (a bit like “founding father” here in the USA) bestowed on people in North Korea by the media.
- Stories about North Korea are inconsistently reported even by the same propaganda outlets. Take NK News for example, funded by the US government, admitting that North Korea does not have a dictatorship while also continuing to report after publishing this article that they do:
SPECIAL SECTION: DannyNorthKorea’s Source Analysis
A guide to understanding Danny North Korea’s resources (@NorthKoreaEdu on TikTok/YouTube/Instagram/X) – all largely from the same network of disinformation listed above
KEY
- RED: US GOVERNMENT FUNDED SOURCES
- ORANGE: SOUTH KOREA AFFILIATED (IT IS ILLEGAL TO SAY ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT NORTH KOREA IN THE SOUTH SO THESE ARE NOT TRUSTWORTHY)
- BLUE: UNRELIABLE NARRATION (PAID DEFECTORS, UNCONFIRMED STORIES, ETC.)
- PURPLE: UNSPECIFIED (NO DIRECT SOURCE AVAILABLE TO VET)
News/Analysis Sites:
Tools:
- X KCNA Watch - Compiles and posts all of North Korea’s state media’s news articles and news broadcasts FUNDED BY STATE DEPARTMENT
- X 38 North Digital Atlas - Detailed map of North Korea FUNDED BY DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Human Rights Organizations:
Think Tanks:
Books:
Other Literature:
Interesting Articles:
Remaining sources: