Report from Pyongyang
IMPRESSIONS of NORTH KOREA (1979)
Eric Schwimmer
I HAVE just returned from a month's
visit to North Korea Because so very few Canadians have had the opportunity to
visit that country, people are full of curiosity to hear what I have seen,
especially as my past as a rather non-political university professor rules out
the possibility that I was sent there for communist propaganda. I was, in fact,
invited by a branch of the North Korean government known as the "Peaceful
Reunification Organization." I spent most of the month I was there asking
the sort of questions one expects a professor specializing in "developing
countries' to ask and if, after that experience, I still feel I know very
little about North Korea, it is certainly not because people refused to answer
my questions. On the contrary, they went to enormous trouble to answer them and
reacted very well to my habit of probing and boring until I get a satisfactory
answer. What impressed me particularly, on the part of the informants that were
offered me, was their willingness to look for other experts when the original
informant did not have the necessary knowledge. They certainly did not try to
bluff their way out of my questions but were proud if they found someone who
could answer them to my satisfaction. Therefore, if I am still rather ignorant,
this is due to lack of time and talent on my part, but only rarely due to
refusal to answer.
When there was refusal, as
in the case of official statistics for instance, and in the case of locations
that were out of bounds, this may well be due to the reason given, namely that
North Korea is still technically at war with the United Nations -a
problem to which I shall return —and it was understood all along that I would
be free to publish the information I obtained. I actually met an economist who
offered to give me all that was available, but it was in so complex a form
that I decided only a very well-trained economist would have any hope of
sorting out the data. I don't think the government really wants anyone to sort
them out. Nor do I think it is very useful to spend a month's visit stubbornly
trying to discover what one's hosts are trying to hide. Not only does this make
for bad relationhips but one wastes much time following blind alleys. For
instance, during the recent international table tennis championship at
Pyongyang there was an American journalist who used to walk around Prongyang
after midnight 'ten nights running' to try and find beggars sleeping in parks
or under bridges. Eventually he gave up, without having found any beggars, because
in fact there aren't any.
My own method was, above
all, to be a good guest. I tried diligently to understand the message my hosts
wished to communicate to me. This method made it abundantly clear that,
whatever questions one might raise, the country is oriented extraordinarily to
social service. There are 11 years of compulsory education plus play-centers
and kindergartens for just about every child from two years onwards (and even
before), a vast network of hospitals, local, provincial and central, some 150
institutes of tertiary or university education as well as night schools leading
to university degrees, a wonderful and very extensive system of hostels to
provide annual holidays for workers and farmers, a total absence of
unemployment, as well as adequate if modest housing for everyone. The critic,
after looking at this array of services asks himself not whether there are
people who are forced to sleep in parks but rather: if one would be allowed to
sleep in a park if one wanted to. Perhaps they would let you, but you would
have to give a good reason. And if the social services are the strongest
emphasis of this system, the privileged category of citizens in North Korea are
clearly the children.
This is an aspect of
socialist society for which I had not been prepared. The situation is,
however, easy to understand. Just as the individual Korean is quite incapable
of refusing to give to a child whatever he happens to have, so also Korean
socialism quite naturally puts its best technology fully at the service of
school and play center equipment development. No equipment could ever be
refused because it would be too expensive, for the children really do come
first. The result is that the play centers are far ahead of anything seen in
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North
Korean agricultural productivity has been dramatically raised by large scale
mechanization on collective farms that have promoted the country's policy of
"Juche," or self-reliance.
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Canada
as is also the number of children using it — just about every child from two to
six. Perhaps the vast extravagance of this scheme will be limited once cost accounting
is more developed in North Korea, but as far as I can see accountancy is still
a bad second, in that country, to education. Another consequence of this bias
is that commodities for children are very much cheaper than commodities for
adults. Thus, if the price of adult clothes is about 60% of the Canadian price,
the price of children's clothes is more like 20% of the Canadian price, so that
everyone has enough money to dress his children well and the children are all
extremely well dressed.
The main message my hosts wished to communicate
had to-do not with social services but with Korean reunification.
This message essentially came down to refuting that there are 'two Koreas,'
one of which is socialist while the other is capitalist; but that in fact
there is only one Korea,
part of which is liberated while the other part is occupied by the United
States. In Canada, this argument has often not been taken seriously
because the partitioning of European countries has been a practice of many
centuries. In the 20th century, Austria, Ireland and Poland, and later Germany
have been partitioned while the frontiers of the Balkan have changed from
generation to generation. Europeans appear to adapt themselves rather easily
to such devices so that the partitioning of Germany after the Yalta Agreement,
for instance, caused comparatively few problems. East and West Germany seem to
be content each to go their own way; in any case, the pre-war frontiers of
Germany were less than 75 years old.
On
the other hand, the partitions attempted in Asia by the Potsdam Agreement
(arrived at by the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union in 1945)
or afterwards, have been markedly less successful. North and South Vietnam
have already been reunited; China and Taiwan clearly will not remain separate
forever; the Koreans who have had a common culture and language for over 2000
years are by no means willing to accept a piece of horse-trading arranged by
foreign barbarians such as Americans and Russians who find it convenient to
divide their nation in two. The main argument advanced by the present South
Korean government - namely that north and south are irrevocably separated
because of their different systems of government -overemphasizes
greatly the difficulties of having a federation containing a communist state
or province. India has managed this for many years now. What North Korea is actually demanding is a
federation where both parts would keep their present political system.
It
seems to me that this demand raises two separate questions: The first is
whether North Korea is sincere in its desire for a united Korea having two
separate political systems; the second is whether such a prospect would
nonetheless hold grave dangers for the present rulers of South Korea. With
regard to sincerity, my impression was that nationalism has always been the
strongest driving force in North Korea. National independence is, for instance, the
strongest and highest objective in Kim II Sung's Juche philosophy, about
which, unfortunately, space is limited to discuss more in detail here. While Juche is certainly
Marxist in its general tendency, Marxism takes second place wherever it conflicts
with nationalism.
Thus
North Korean diplomacy, while maintaining many amicable exchanges with China
and the Soviet Union, focusses on the bloc of 'non-aligned' nations —the
Africans, Arabs, Yugoslays, Indonesians -whose chief problem
everywhere and always is to elude the imperialism of all big powers. Thus it
would not favor a communist but a nonaligned foreign policy if Korea were
reunited. Moreover, when one scans the list of foreign visitors from
non-communist countries, one finds that a very large part of them are not communist but socialists or
social-democrats. North Korea's chief associations in Canada for
instance are with the NDP. Cooperation with the South Korean NDP is the policy
of North Korea. It seems
to be an integral part of Juche ideology to have good alliances with nonaligned
nations and political parties. All this is consistent with a sincere
desire for reunification with South Korea, should the latter refuse communism.
On the other hand, North Koreans would violate their Juche ideology if
they were to force communism upon South Korea or anyone else.
Nonetheless, the present rulers of South Korea have every reason to be opposed to unification, inasmuch as Kim II Sung has made no secret of his dislike of their regime and of his desire that the other political parties of South Korea should be given the degree of power which their popular support would entitle them. He has expressed strong opposition to the present South Korean constitution which denies them such power. In these circumstances South Korea refuses reunification and insists on a 'two nations' approach, without however ruling out certain limited exchanges which it has proposed from time to time. Such exchanges, however, have always been based on the 'two nations' principle. North Korea has always refused any exchanges that would appear to give legitimacy to such a principle. Hence, North Korea refused to receive a 'South Korean pingpong team at the recent tournament for exactly the same reason that South Korea refused to be part of an all-Korea team. In this respect, South Korea accepts the [Western] principle of partition while North Korea rejects it for very traditional Asian reasons. In the eyes of most Asians the Potsdam Agreement was largely an imperialist document.
After
hearing all the arguments and after seeing the vast importance North Koreans
attach to reunification, my impression is that no short-term solution to the problem is likely.
Much will depend on the future political development of South Korea, particularly
on South Korea's success
in struggling for human rights. Much will depend on the social, and
especially economic, development of North Korea. To the extent that the
present social, educational and technological advances in that country can
gradually be translated into
visible economic success, the chances of reunification will improve
markedly. Meanwhile, outside Korea, the time is ripe for cultural and
commercial exchanges with the Northern half. As long as the reunification
struggle is waged by purely political means and the North does not try military
aggression there is no
good reason why integration of North Korea with the general community of
nations should be delayed any further. Nor is there any reason why Canada should not be in the
vanguard of such a move towards normalization, just as Canada moved somewhat
ahead of the United States in the recognition of China. There are
indications that the Korean community oi Toronto is more open to this kind of
initiative today than it would have been a few years ago.
-
Eric Schwimmer teaches
in the Department of Anthropology, University of Laval, Quebec City.
------------------
RIKKA
WINTER 1979 VOL. VI NUMBER 4
national quarterly magazine (Toronto)
Rikka
is produced by an editorial collective.
1
Editorial Notes
2
The Boat People Charles Roach,
6
The Ukrainian Canadian Experience / Myrna Kostash
11 Nipponia Home - 21 Years of
Service
/ Susan Hidaka
15
The Strathcona Story Hayne Wai
17
Impressions of North Korea Eric Schwimmer
18
Diana / poem Sharon Berg
20
Chun: Difficulty at the Beginning / poem
Carol
Poster
21
Legacy of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Sheridan Tatsuno
25 The Legend of Tokyo Rose
Book
Review / George Yamada 26 The Mission of
Amnesty International / Andrew Blane
28
Tension / short story Sahar Khalzfeh
32
Woman Warrior / Book Review Jacob Muller
33
Critique of The Woman Warrior Katheryn Fong
37
The Golden Mountain
38 Poems/ Jerome Salzmann
39 After the Ceremony / short story
Roland
Kawano
45
The Bay of Cortes / poem
Paul
Cameron Brown
46
Carlos Bulosan - An Appreci‑
ation
/ Himani Bannerji
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