North Korea: The nightmare continues

By Gerbrand Visser, Socialistisch Alternatief (CWI in Netherlands)

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5499

The death of the long time Stalinist dictator of North Korea brings no relief to the workers of the country. They suffered many years under Japanese occupation (1905-1945), then during the Korean war (1953-1955) and many, many years of the most ruthless Stalinist rule. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy of North Korea suffered setbacks and it is estimated that more than two million people lost their lives during famines at the end of the 1990s. North Korea is now one of the poorer countries in the world, but until well into the 1970s, the income per head of the population was higher than in South Korea.

Stalinist rule in North Korea adheres to the “Juche“ ideology, of ‘self-sufficiency’. The North is unsuitable for food production, because it is mountainous and cold. It has many minerals in its soil, even quite rare ones. The Chinese government prefers the present regime because it gives them relatively easy access to these minerals, and North Korea provides it with a buffer. If North Korea ceased to exist, China would border a country that houses a large contingent of American military forces.

For Japan and South Korea, the presence of the Stalinist regime is discomforting, but it provides a useful excuse for obscene military expenditure. One of North Korea’s military trump cards is that it possesses a nuclear bomb. This seems to be a fairly primitive thing, like the American nuclear bombs in their early stages of development. It is probably too big to fit on a missile, but the North Koreans conducted two test blasts after the US invasion of Iraq, to show the world that they too had the bomb. North Korea’s large land force is meant to defend the country and to repress the population; there is no credible air force or navy.

Most of the expenditure of North Korea is on its military apparatus. This will not change. The new leader, Kim Yong Un, is young and there is no doubt that the military council will firmly hold on to the reins of power. If they do not fall prey to dissension, they could hold on to power for quite a while - the regime has shown itself to be quite tenacious. The regime has effectively isolated the country and ruthlessly repressed any independent working class activity.

Life in North Korea is a nightmare for workers: a harsh struggle for survival in a country with has almost no heating and extremely low temperatures in winter, little and/or very primitive food, and almost no lighting (often one bulb for an apartment). Life is difficult for workers even if you do not take into account the horrendous repression, the concentration camps, the controls over the family and the workplaces, the total lack of information (mobile phones and internet are prohibited) and the ubiquitous secret police.

The death of this tyrant has again provided the representatives of capitalism with an excuse to besmirch the ideas of socialism, despite the brutal reality that this regime, among the most horrific and oppressive band of despots ever to have falsely bore the name. The CWI stands for a struggle to overthrow the brutal corrupt Stalinist dynasty, an integral part of the international struggle to end the poverty, repression, dictatorship and conflict which dominates the region. Asia, through mass struggle. Such a struggle to establish a workers’ democracy and genuine socialism in Korea, based on the democratic control of government, and planning of the economy, may seem far away at this point in time, but like the North Korean football team, the Korean workers always manage to surprise.

China: Chinese regime repressing left-wing critics

For the immediate release of leftists, Lu Kun and Zhang Yaoyong • Stop the bans and breaking up of grassroots ‘red song’ concerts

Qian Lixing, chinaworker.info

The Chinese regime has launched a new wave of suppression against the left in China. Several active leftists and Maoists have been arrested and ‘silenced’ by the police and the state apparatuses. Several grassroots ‘red song’ concerts (organised by local pensioners, workers and youth) have been banned and harassed in different provinces. The so-called “communist” (CCP) regime in China severely represses any challenge or opposition both from the left wing or the right wing. It made the CCP’s 90th anniversary more like an irony. Meanwhile, bourgeois liberal sections of the media and liberal groups in China also continue to ignore the repression of the left and Maoists in China. Very little information about the left in China can really be accessed by the outside.

According to information from various channels, Maoists Lu Kun (Online ID: Yu Hong) and Zhang Yaoyong (Online ID: Leiming Tingyu) were arrested by the police in Baoji City, Shanxi Province, and Beijing, the capital of China on 30 July.
Lu and Zhang were both active in an online Maoist group, the ‘Central Committee of Chinese Communist Revolution’, for the last three years. Lu is a computer shop owner in Baoji, and Zhang is an editor of a local press group in Beijing. When Lu made an online conversation with Zhang, he was arrested by eight policemen, who raided his flat and seized his two computers. Zhang was called by the party boss of the press he worked at soon after that, and has “been disappeared” since then.

In the recent period, the Chinese regime has harshly suppressed active and influential leftists and Maoists so as to prevent the spread of left and radical ideas. Many left-wing online groups and web-forums, including Trotskyists and other socialist currents, as well as Maoists, have been blocked and banned.

The regime has also used the iron fist against any activists and activity in the real world (beyond internet). For instance, some leftists, including Hua Qiao, from the so-called ‘Revolutionary Party of China’, who tried to make contact and intervene in the truck drivers strike in Shanghai in April, were immediately arrested and questioned by the police, until now Hua Qiao is still under house arrest.

From 2007 onwards there has been an increase in grassroots-initiated ‘red song’ concerts in different provinces and cities. These grassroots ‘red song’ concerts are usually organised by pensioners, former SOE (state owned enterprises) workers, and young people, who are Maoists or sympathise with the former Maoist regime. The regime only tolerates such ‘red’ manifestations if they are fully under the control of officials and praise, rather than criticise, the current regime. When such events are organised outside the its control, local governments and police will try to ban or break up the concert by themselves or by employing thugs, if they cannot buy off the organisers of the ‘red song’ concerts.

This has happened in several cities such as, Luoyang and Zhengzhou in Henan province, Taiyuan in Shanxi province, Jinan in Shandong province and Xi’an in Shan’xi province. For instance, from 2009, the police in Luoyang have taken away or stolen sound systems and speakers from local ‘red song’ concerts on several occasions. The local government has put at least four active Maoists, such as Wang Xiufeng and Liu Sanying, into ‘education-through-labour’ camps or mental hospitals for half a year to two years respectively, without any formal legal process.

The usual accusation is “violation of social order”. The ‘education-through-labour’ camps and mental hospital are the main facilities used local governments to illegally imprison and punish dissidents and petitioners. Recently, local media has reported that the government in Changzhou city, Jiangsu province, has put three petitioners into the ‘education-through-labour’ camps for one-year terms. The reason is that they rode the bus in Beijing without paying the one yuan bus fare, when they had gone to the capital to appeal their cases in 2009.

The repression of leftists and Maoists by the regime has further exposed the true autocratic face of the regime – a fake communist party. Even some reformist Maoists have desperately commented online, if singing ‘red songs’ cannot change China back to being red, “we have to use our blood to make it red”.

While we do not agree with the Maoists and some other leftist on political program, approach and analysis of the Chinese revolution and state, chinaworker.info and the Marxist supporters of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) consistently defend basic democraatic rights and are completely opposed to the regime’s repression, especially against socialists and the left wing. We call for the immediate release of all political prisoners, including Lu Kun and Zhang Yaoyong.

For more information on ‘red song’ concerts read

China: repression or ‘reform’? (http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1507/?ls-art0=15)