The roots of North Korea’s demonization

29/03/2015
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The ability to create satanic images of its enemies has reached extraordinary levels in the media under the influence of US war propaganda.

 

Remember Saddam Hussein? Muammar Gaddafi? They were labeled international pariahs, thanks to their demonization and unrelenting media campaigns painting them as the evil incarnate.

 

Any careful observer may have noticed the contradictory descriptions of these characters by the US corporate media and their satellites around the world. While Hussein and Gaddafi were close to the West and cooperated with US and Europe oil interests they were OK, but later they were demonized and ended up summarily executed: one quasi-legally and the other butchered by “freedom-loving” bandits.

 

With the above preamble, the U.S. Marxist political analyst Zoltan Zigedy initiates a comprehensive assessment of the mechanisms Washington uses to discredit the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and its political leaders who stoically resist the siege the West has imposed on them.

 

Kim Jong-un, the current leader of the DPRK –grandson of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the DPRK and a figure revered as a resistance leader against the Japanese occupiers– is the third generation of a family holding the leading post.

 

Western opinion-makers invariably mock this penchant for hereditary secession, while conveniently overlooking over 80 years of hereditary rule in their trusted ally, Saudi Arabia. The other Husseins, the family which has ruled Jordan since its independence, are never derided by the Western press, either. They, too, have been compliant friends of US and European leaders.

 

Zigedy explains that, during the Soviet era, the DPRK maintained formal relations with the European socialist community but insisting on blazing its own foreign policy path, and the consistent implementation of a philosophy its leaders call Juche.

 

The Korean War (1950-1953) began when the UN Security Council –manipulated by the United States– passed a resolution to intervene with troops in an internal conflict on the Korean peninsula. The war ended with the armistice (truce) of Panmunjom and no peace treaty. This gives validity to the UN resolution which legalized the Washington's intervention.

 

The North Korean posture toward other countries has been shaped profoundly by the experiences of that war which caused the near total destruction of the northern part of the Korean peninsula (today’s DPRK) by US air power and its scorched earth policy.

 

After the US’s failed attempt to dominate the entire peninsula, and the emergence of the DPRK as an independent country, the communist leaders –founders of the nation– proclaimed their determination to find a deterrent to a repeat of that catastrophe. They found that deterrent in the crash development of a nuclear-weapon capability.

 

Given the US and NATO’s attempt to reorder the world in the Western image –and at its convenience– since the demise of Soviet Union, that decision seems, in retrospect, to be both wise and effective, says Zoltan Zigedy.

 

Despite the fact that the DPRK has remained at peace for over sixty years, the US government and its servile media have maintained an unrelenting campaign of slander and bellicosity against it.

 

Just as in the case of Cuba in the Western hemisphere, the DPRK has been depicted by corporate media all over the world as a land of prisons and deprivation.

 

Demeaning the DPRK is a diplomatic obsession with the US. But, although the DPRK does not take slights or insults lightly, they have always offered to unconditionally repatriate US citizens charged or imprisoned for various illegal acts, like those performed by Evangelical proselytizers allegedly determined to bring Christianity to the heathen.

 

Like the missionaries of earlier empires, they serve both masters –God and imperialism– to tame the heathen. The North Korean authorities have only asked that the US send high-ranking officials to facilitate the repatriation. To anyone attuned to diplomatic niceties, this is a gesture designed to bring parties together without either party suffering the appearance of submissiveness.

 

However, the US government will remain unalterably committed to overthrowing the DRPK government, the US journalist concludes in his blog “ZZ”.

 

March 28, 2015

 

http://englishmanuelyepe.wordpress.com/

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs4323.html

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/168588
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