Interesting op-ed piece from the New York Times
here on North Korea's official ``pure-blood'' racism. I'm not sure if I agree with it 100 percent -- I reckon that the racial purity rhetoric is more of a tool than a basis of ideology in what appears to have turned into an essentiall nihilistic state -- and I'm also suspicious of anyone who studies North Korea at a South Korean university. That said, I'm open to the idea and it does provide a fresh paradigm for understanding Pyongyang beyond Stanlinism. It does explain North Korea's constant biting the hand that feeds it, China.
Beyond that, I have two reactions: one is that Stalinism is basically a reactionary ideology in the guise of a left-wing movement (hell, if the intellectual right tries to call Nazism a left-wing movement, I reckon I'm entitled to call Stalin a rightist.) Any leftists or fellow travelers on Kos who continue to back the Pyongyang regime, or minimize its offensiveness, should reconsider their position. The internationalism of North Korea has always been week, and now appears to have faded to nil.
The second is that there does seem to be a nasty streak of racism in Korea: everyone couple I know where the one spouse is Korean and the other is not has chosen to raise children outside the country because they're concerned their children will be bullied at home for being mixed race. Some of the prejudace against mixed marriage appears to have faded in the South in the last 10 years; the north appears to be continuing to play xenophobia for political gain.
I understand that this fear of strangers has its origins in Korean history, because the country was bullied by larger neighboring countries, but as the basis for a political ideology it's not compatible with either rational governmet or the modern world, as we've seen in the past century.