With journalists being expelled and Kim Jong-un saying that he wants to normalise relations with “hostile states” by saying that he won’t use nuclear weapons first, May’s Skeptics in the Pub has come at the perfect time. Alistair Coleman from BBC Monitoring comes armed with chocolate from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to answer the question “How much do we really know about North Korea?”
Alistair doesn’t mince words – “North Korea are a bunch of murderous maniacs”, quite an opening statement. The whole country has a “military first” policy, that is the regular people come second. We don’t know the exact population of the country but we do know that many are peasants who work in the fields. Any food they grow has to be given to the government and if they’re lucky they’ll get some back as a ration, although the military gets the first dibs on food. The country is a form of “starvation based socialism” – Millions of people are starving in order to support the military.
Although they don’t really have much of a military. Everyone knows that recent “satellite tests” were actually inter-continental ballistic missile tests. They now have one that could reach the west coast of the USA but it’s very unreliable and they haven’t developed a nuclear weapon that’s actually small enough to put on top of it. Recent “submarine launch missile tests” were probably just launched from an underwater platform. This is because the “Whiskey” class submarines that they have only have a missile launcher attached to the side of the conning tower which would be too small. These 40-year-old subs have a top speed of a less than impressive 8 knots. The air force only has 5 MiG-29 jet fighters but they do still have some 40-year-old MiG-15s, although they no longer have any parts for these. They also have 200 AN-2 biplanes. These can each carry 20 troops which mean that 4000 men can be deployed via planes that don’t show up on radar because they are made of wood. Fortunately, they can call on glorious leader Kim Jong-un, as he’s a “qualified pilot”
Kim Jong-Un’s leadership is based on generational power. There is a virtual worship of the country’s founders – Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-Sung claims to have founded the country after World War 2, which the North Korean’s call “the war of liberation”. There is a statue of Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il in every town and city in the country. There are also portraits of them in every house and each household is given a special cloth to clear these pictures. Due to the almost religious respect for the family, there is a thrice-curse punishment for those who do anything against the state whereby they punish you, your children and your children’s children. There are hundreds of thousands in prison camps and because of this punishment, there are babies born in the prison camps.
Kim Jong-Un is a big fan of visiting factories including one that makes water slides (these are classed as a luxury item so can’t be imported due to a UN ban but there is a military department responsible for manufacturing them) and one that makes notebooks. This is ironic as everywhere he goes he followed by people with notebooks who write down everything he says as his word is law. They were also unable to import a ski lift when they were building a ski resort. In fact, Switzerland’s refusal to send one resulted in North Korea declaring war on them.
The North Korean media is all about Kim Jong-Un but the newspapers also enjoy insulting the South Korean leadership. The North Koreans hate the South Koreans. On television they even burnt an effigy of the South Korean leader. After shooting it. Then they blew it up. This enmity all dates back to the Korean War, the only time that the UN has had a consensus to declare war on a single nation. A ceasefire was arranged in 1953 but no peace treaty has ever been signed, so technically they are still at war. Although no-one is quite sure why North Korea has pledged to wipe out Milwaukee.
However, this doesn’t stop South Korean companies setting up in the international zone just over the border and it doesn’t stop the North accepting payment for letting them do it. The North Korean workers were paid in food credits and were also given lunch buckets which contained a treat called Choco Pies. Luckily for us, Alistair has brought some Choco Pies with him. They are awful, like a really dry Wagon Wheel. The South Korean companies couldn’t understand why they never found any Choco Pie wrappers anywhere in the factories – the workers were taking them home and swapping them for bags of rice. The workers then realised that they could go on strike and get more Choco Pies – eventually, their lunch buckets included 12 of them. North Korean managers banned Choco Pies. The industrial estate is now closed down and the 60,000 workers who were there have been dispersed through the country to keep them apart and stop them having any more insurrectional ideas.
We do know that thousands of people die of starvation every year in North Korea but we never know exactly how many. The country was so used to being a client-state of the Soviet Union that when it collapsed, there was no longer any money coming in. Three million people are estimated to have dies in the 1990s of starvation. Now, there are no longer any frogs in the whole country because they were all eaten during that decade. People were also eating songbirds, grass and tree bark. In fact all of the trees were cut down which also didn’t help with flooding.
There is still some foreign money coming into the country though. An Egyptian mobile phone company were told that they had to finish the building of a hotel in Pyongyang before they were allowed to set up a network. They completed the building and then as soon as the phone network was ready the North Korean government stole it. At the other end of the scale, most of the crystal meth that is sold in Japan in made in North Korea. There are also “open markets” in North Korea where people grow their own produce and sell it. This small-scale capitalism is actually illegal but people would rather risk it than wait for rice rations. Despite their hatred of western capitalism, there is actually a “special economics” in North Korea where free trade happens. This is such a big deal that China have constructed a huge road bridge link to get there.
But how much do we know about North Korea? It’s time for the quick fire round:
Kim Jong-Un DIDN’T end up in hospital because of a cheese overdose. Although he does love his cheese, he just had a foot operation
There IS a list of approved haircuts. There are 18 for women and 8 for men. So, not all men have to have the same haircut as Kim Jong-Un although students do
Kim DID have his own uncle killed. He negotiated a trade deal with China badly and was then seen at a part event not clapping loudly enough for his nephew.
Kim LOVES horses. So much so that he built a horse institute in Pyongyang.
There ARE pop bands in North Korea. They have girl groups where Kim Jong-Un has personally selected every member. When they play gigs, they have videos showing clips of Snow White behind them despite the fact that no-one in North Korea know what Disney is.
Foreign bands ARE allowed to play. Laibach toured North Korea last year.
The language hasn’t changed in 70 years. While South Korean has evolved and added words, North Korean hasn’t.
Due to a lack of food, people in North Korea are, on average, two inches shorter than their South Korean equivalents.
Women are important in North Korean society (they even have female fighter pilots) but very few women make it to the top.
We’ve all heard the rumours about how amazing Kim Jong-Il was at golf but what do we know about the current “dear leader”? Well, we know that he has one or two children but we only know that thanks to Dennis Rodman. The people of North Korea don’t even know when his birthday is (January the 8th) When Rodman visited and sang “Happy Birthday” to him, the local TV cut it out and just reported that he sang Kim a “special song”. They also have no idea that he was educated in Switzerland.
So, what’s next for the country? Well, neither China nor South Korea want a quick regime change. There are some 23 million people who need feeding and neither country would want responsibility for that. In fact it could cause the whole south-east Asian economy to collapse.
Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub returns to The Canalhouse on June 7th at 7:30pm where Ash Price will be teaching us “How to be a psychic con man” For more details check out: http://nottingham.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/6841/How-to-be-a-Psychic-Conman
By Gav Squires
@GavSquires
