How to deceive the people

What would be the qualifications of a state given the false rhetoric and terrible sufferings of the North Korean people?

Kim Jung-kiThe author is an emeritus professor of journalism at Hanyang University. North Korea’s rhetoric in its 70th anniversary of “Victory Day” was terrifying. Even if it is a totalitarian state that uses media, gatherings and associations as a means of propaganda and incitement for the Workers’ Party’s ideology and policies, the rhetoric is still disgusting due to the distortion of facts, absence of peace, fear of violence, and cult of personality. Aristotle famously said that rhetoric can do the greatest good if used justly, but can also do the greatest evil if used unfairly.

North Korea’s self-proclaimed Victory Day is a classic example of deceptive rhetoric. The Korean War, which led to massive fratricidal crimes, came to an end with the signing of the Armistice on July 27, 1953. It is a lie to celebrate the agreement as victory day. The Korean War started with the North’s surprise invasion of the South in the early morning of June 25, 1950, but North Korea claims South Korea was the one behind the invasion. That is a sheer lie. The fact that the war was orchestrated by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong was already proven by declassified documents when the Soviet Union disintegrated.

The North’s “victim rhetoric” is also absurd. The victims were not communists who tried to change the course of history with ideology and force, but innocent South Koreans and their territory. According to Statistics Korea, over 620,000 South Korean soldiers and policemen lost their lives during the war. Casualties for the United Nations troops also reached more than 150,000.

That’s not all. Countless civilian lives were lost. The number of civilian deaths in the South was 244,663, including 128,936 who were killed in massacres. Another 229,625 were injured. The number of civilian deaths and missing persons in North Korea were 282,000 and 796,000, respectively. The whole country became a living hell. All the fallen bodies were someone’s father or mother, son or daughter, and siblings. They were people with dreams. In the ruins of war, orphans were everywhere. Over 100,000 children lost their parents or were separated from them.

The North’s “scapegoat rhetoric” is also pitiful and disgusting. It is a humongous fraud to attribute the impoverished lives of the North Korean people — excepting the privileged few — to the aggressions of the U.S. imperialist and its puppet groups in South Korea up until seven decades after the war. According to data from Statistics Korea, the nominal gross national income (NGI) per capita of the South in 2021 was 40.48 million won ($30,103), while that of the North is 1.42 million won.

South Korea has 24.9 million cars while the North has only 253,000. The number of mobile communication subscribers is 70.5 million in the South and 6 million in the North. South Korea’s trade amounts to $1.4 trillion while that of North Korea is about $1.6 billion. South Korea’s export is $683.6 billion, ranking sixth in the world, while North Korea’s is $160 million. The South’s main exports are semiconductors, petroleum products and automobiles, while North Korea is exporting mainly light industry products such as minerals, silk fabrics, wigs and artificial flowers. Compared to South Korea, which has almost risen to the ranks of the G7, the North is in the bottom 10 percent of countries around the world. At this point, no scapegoat argument can excuse the North’s tumble towards the bottom.

At the end of the day, the conclusion from “Victory Day” was “Long live Comrade Kim Jong-un, the hero of eternity.” Kim, the unprecedented patriot, received historic congratulatory messages. Hypersonic weapons, advanced ICBMs and the other strategic weapons displayed at the military parade were Kim’s accessories. The rhetoric that makes the people absolutely obey the “hero of eternity” has reached the stage that Kim is the truth, going beyond the rhetoric that Kim is the state. Language and non-language — both blessings to mankind — have been reduced to means of symbol manipulation and tools of surveillance and punishment, as Michel Foucault warned.

According to Sapiens by Yuval Harari, states originate from groups formed by humans, who could not protect themselves from external dangers, to preserve their lives. In February, a grandmother in her 70s killed her grandson and committed suicide in Hyesan, Yanggang Province of the North due to starvation. She left a note that “the North Korean people should regret that they were born in this country.” The State Security Department prevented people from talking about the incident, fearing the public sentiment would worsen.

From January till July, 240 North Koreans died of starvation, twice more than the annualized average of 110 over the past five years, according to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee. The cost of launching 71 ballistic missiles is estimated at 689 billion won, according to the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. Starvation, deprivation of human rights and concentration camps are hidden in the shadow of the missiles launched for the absurd ideology of the hereditary communist regime. What would be the qualifications of a state given the false rhetoric and terrible sufferings of the North Korean people?

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.