The Cleanest Race (19 page)
Authors: B.R. Myers
Mun replies that America’s nuclear weapons must be withdrawn from South Korea at once. Blix stammers out his acquiescence:
“Ah, ah, I understand. Very good. I am very grateful to your esteemed country’s government for making its position known with such honesty.… Are all your esteemed country’s diplomats so direct?”
“Why,” Mun retorted, “you don’t like that?”
“N-no. On the contrary. Honest and very clear … it’s very good. But … I wonder how best to call such a diplomacy.…”
Mun laughed out loud.
28
The Text has a term for it: “attack diplomacy.”
29
Attributed to Kim Jong Il’s own desire to see his Foreign Ministry behaving “aggressively and combatively,” it is by no means reserved for America and its lackeys.
30
One
“diplomatic warrior” tells Russia
that it “should not impudently stick its nose into another
country’s affairs.”
31
On the other hand, the regime is mindful enough of its relationship with Beijing not to revile (at least not in print) the entire United Nations, but only the “impure elements” inside it that allegedly do America’s bidding.
Needless to say, the race-oriented Text makes little distinction between political factions in Washington; Democrats and Republicans, “doves” and “hawks” are all said to be bent on destroying the DPRK.
32
(Barack Obama’s accession to the US presidency in 2009 led to no reduction or softening of anti-American propaganda.) Nor can the Text acknowledge that America might refrain from a military attack in order to save Korean lives. The pure and the impure can have no common interests. Still less can the Text entertain the notion that the impure might defy their instincts. “Just as a jackal cannot become a lamb,” runs a maxim known in minor variations to every North Korean, “the US imperialists cannot change their rapacious nature.”
33
This leaves the Text with no way to interpret America’s readiness to negotiate except as a “kneeling down” or “waving of the white flag” in the face of Pyongyang’s terrifying strength and unity.
34
President Clinton’s letter promising “His Excellency Kim Jong Il” full compliance with the terms of the Agreed Framework appears in the official encyclopedia as a trophy of the “shining victory” of 1994.
35
The enemy’s failures of nerve are portrayed as characteristic not only of the US, but of non-Asian foreigners in general. (I have already referred to the mockery of the USSR’s “surrender.”) In this passage from a propaganda novel, which is typical of the DPRK’s sneaking respect for Hirohito’s war machine,
the Dear Leader recalls how Britain was taken down a peg or two during the Pacific War.
In his 1943 attack on Singapore, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, “the Tiger of Malaysia,” demanded the allies’ unconditional surrender, requesting that General Archibald Percival Wavell answer either “yes” or “no”…. Wavell at last spat out the word “yes” and hung his head. Since then use of the word “yes” in negotiations is regarded in the West as a symbol of subjugation and shame. But history has repeatedly forced the vanquished to say this humiliating word. At the Korean War truce talks the UN Commander Clarke had no choice but to answer “yes” to our demand that he surrender. In later years, after the Pueblo incident and the downing of the E-121 plane, the enemies bayed for war like madmen, but ŭltimately when we asked the stern question, “Will it be war?” they had no choice but to answer “no.” And when we said, “Will it be talks?” they had no choice but to answer “yes.”… Our people, our invincible People’s Army is asking, so answer them! No need for a long answer. One word will do. War? “No.” Talks? “Yes.”
Kim Jong Il smiled.…
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The Text thus treats the negotiations leading up to the Agreed Framework of 1994 as having taken place between a victorious DPRK and a vanquished USA.
37
The content of these and all other negotiations is overlooked, the regime being
unable to admit that it would so much as listen to requests for concessions. Instead readers are treated to peripheral dialogues like this:
America had no choice but to grovel.
Gallucci: “We respect you. The future peace not only of the Korean peninsula but also of Asia, the Pacific Region, depends on us, on the US and [North] Korea.”
Mun: “Whose words are those? Yours?”
Gallucci. “The words of the White House.”
Mun: “That amounts to saying that we’re a superpower too.”
Gallucci: “That’s right, you’re a superpower. A superpower like America!”
Now Korea was on an equal footing with the United States, the world’s only superpower. Asia’s small country Korea, which had once lost its luster on the world map.…
38
As I mentioned in the historical part of this book, the assertion that America signed the Agreed Framework out of fear creates a logical inconsistency in the Text. On the one hand, the Clinton administration’s claims that the DPRK was developing a nuclear arsenal are condemned as outrageous lies, while on the other hand heavy hints are dropped that a bomb
already
existed at the time. In a novel set in 1993 (and published in 2000), Kim Jong Il vows he will retaliate against any nuclear attack by turning America, in a single day, into “a sea of fire.”
39
Of course, many in the West will shrug this off as bravado masking a deep fear of American attack. How could the DPRK
not be afraid, after what it endured in the Korean War? But in the early 1960s, East Bloc diplomats registered their worry that the North Koreans were too
dismissive
of the American threat, even talking of another attempt at liberating the South, despite the nuclear weapons stationed there at the time.
40
And that was before the DPRK embarked on its unbroken string of successful provocations of the superpower, from the USS Pueblo capture in 1968 to its detainment and show-trial of two American journalists in 2009. Suffice to say that there is no trace of fear of any adversary in the Text. (One is struck by the contrast to anti-American propaganda in East Germany during the 1980s, which constantly raised the specter of nuclear war.) On the contrary, the child race is depicted as itching for a “holy war” or
sŏngjŏn
—once a common term in Pacific War propaganda—in which to kill Yankees and reunite the motherland.
41
“No matter how the Americans threaten us with their foolish war plans,” Kim Jong Il chuckles in a novel set in 1998, “we are not frightened in the least.”
42
Clinton and his men, meanwhile, express grudging respect for the “iron man” of Pyongyang and terror of the DPRK’s long-range missiles, which are faster and more accurate than America’s own.
43
The disconnect between Washington’s bark and its bite is contrasted with North Korean resolve. “If we say we do something, we do it,” a gargantuan KPA soldier shouts in one poster as he slams his fist down on the continental USA. “We don’t utter empty words!”
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Other posters show wish-fulfilling images of fighter planes or missiles destroying the US Capitol.
45
Yankee soldiers are depicted as spindly, insect-like creatures, dwarfed by enormous Korean fists, hoisted effortlessly on bayonets, or squashed under missiles.
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Even mathematics textbooks reinforce the impression of a hopelessly outclassed foe: “Three People’s Army soldiers
rubbed out thirty American bastards. What was the ratio of the soldiers who fought?” etc.
47
Also common are calls to “sweep” the Yankees from the peninsula like so much dirt.
48
The myth of an America quaking in constant terror of the DPRK has enabled the regime to explain away food aid shipments, which began arriving in the mid-1990s, in terms of reparations.
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The Yankees are also depicted (and not without a basis in truth) as paying in grain for the right to undertake fruitless inspections of suspected nuclear sites.
50
“Excellency! We in the (US) Department of Defense hope to have your military facility at Kŭmch’angni revealed to us, no matter what it takes. Please tell us the price of viewing it.”
Pong Myǒng-ju looked down on Dunne with a dignified smile. “Due to your economic blockade and natural disasters we are now going through … difficulties. Looking at things from a humanitarian aspect, and in view of the consequences of our conflict with you, we regard 700 thousand tons of grain as appropriate.”
51
This propaganda line is the reason why North Korean citizens are permitted to use aid sacks, including those emblazoned with the US flag, as carry-alls.
For most of the 1990s, the regime’s desire to pose as both an invincible superpower
and
an aggrieved victim of American slander forced the Text into an almost comical vagueness. The masses were told only that Washington had trumped up “some so-called nuclear problem,” and so on. Things became less complicated after Pyongyang explicitly acknowledged the existence of a “deterrent to nuclear war”
in 2003. Since the testing of this deterrent in October 2006—followed by another American “surrender,” i.e. a return to talks—less attention has been devoted to the back-story of the nuclear saga, which, quite apart from its logical holes, now seems rather dull in comparison.
Since 2006 the propaganda apparatus has engaged in all-out acclamation of the “military-first” policy that made the DPRK a nuclear power. (Only the Great Leader’s liberation of the peninsula now occupies a more important place in the national history.) The masses are to believe that America now has even greater respect and fear of its adversary, a message unwittingly confirmed by the superpower’s recent peace overtures, such as the New York Philharmonic’s visit to the DPRK in February 2008. When former president Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang in August 2009 to win the release of two detained US journalists, the official media made much of the deference and contrition shown to the Great Ruler by his erstwhile foe. (It was also claimed, though the US State Department denied it, that Clinton had conveyed an oral message from President Obama.)
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The Korean bomb is even said to have intimidated the Yankees into assuming a lower profile in their colony to the south. On theater stages, clowns with noses enlarged by putty play GI’s bumbling around amidst the increasingly rebellious South Koreans. In a recent comic strip, US military officers ask a passing local to take their picture. Promising the perfect backdrop, he leads them to the UN cemetery.
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But America is too important a scapegoat for the regime ever to claim to have defeated it once and for all. To do so would be to raise public expectations of a drastic improvement in living standards, the immediate reunification of the peninsula, and everything else that Washington is now accused of preventing.
The enemy must therefore always be shown reneging on the terms of its latest surrender.
54
Lest anyone think that nuclear talks might lead to a different relationship with the US, Kim Jong Il himself is quoted as saying, “The Yankees are the eternal enemies of our masses; we cannot live under the same sky with them.”
55
A common way to whip up anger during periods of lesser tension is to demand vengeance for America’s historical crimes against the race.
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