What cool commie facts should I tell them?
They’re a friend but not communist.
Still, they’re interested. They’re coming back in about a week’s time and are currently going to Jeju Island (I’m currently finished with the Blowback episode on that uprising that happened there).
They likes commie facts, btw. Maybe give me some Korean news as well, idk (but, like, not DPRK news; not because they don’t like it, but because I want something relevant).
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anna louise strong’s reporting from korea in the interim between wwii and the american invasion of korea is fascinating.
uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire
Y E S
But also, I want to give them leftist or communist facts about South Korea and the places she is visiting.
Like the trade union movements or the dictatorship that happened there and was toppled.
Now’s the time to pick up the book Patriots, Traitors and Empires by Stephen Gowans and to genuinely share interesting titbits in conversation with them as you come across them in the book.
Saying stuff like “Goddamn, I never knew that in the Korean War the US armed forces had bombed every building in North Korea that was more than a single-storey dwelling that bombers send out on missions would just drop them into lakes and rivers so they’d be able to return to base because there were no targets left to hit” or “Did you know that there was one single construction crane that was left operational in North Korea by the time that the ceasefire agreement was struck? When you consider that, it’s kind of impressive how the DPRK has managed to pull itself up by the bootstraps” or, of course the old chestnut about how the US was supposed to be party to peace negotiations within like 60 days of the armistice agreement but they completely reneged on this obligation.
(Let me try and find the source for the last claim because it’s been a while and I could be misremembering it…)
Edit: Found it!
Article IV of the Armistice Agreement (turns out it was 90 days not 60):
Man, I lived there for a year when I was younger and I really wish I would have known then what I know now. Would have been a very different experience. Alas, I was but a dumb lib. Still not super knowledgeable about Korea commie stuff but there’s a lot of wild shit in that blowback season. Mostly unspeakable atrocities.
And unspeakable atrocities by the Americans against the South too.
