[KS] North Korea says multiracialism is poison

[Owen Miller]

I think if you look at the lineage (if you'll pardon the use of this term) of the racialist ideas of North Korea's ruling class it would not be difficult to find affinities with some of the ideas that lay behind Nazi ideology. The DPRK bureaucracy seems to have inherited much of the Social Darwinist 'survival of the fittest' ideology that informed pre-war Japanese fascist ideas and strongly influenced many of the Korean 'enlightenment' thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as Liang Qichao. In this sense I think we can probably find some common ideological ancestry. But then the influence of Social Darwinism and racialist ideas was (and is I suppose) very broad and never limited only to the far right.

Of course we also have to look at the historical circumstances of North Korea's turn toward racialist ideas - I'm sure Balazs Szalontai is correct when he connects the dislike of mixed marriages in the early 1960s with the rift with the Soviet Union.

Apologies to Dr Tikhonov for intruding somewhat into his specialist area - I'm sure he could provide more informed commentary on the connections between DPRK ideology and Social Darwinism.

Owen Miller
[http://froginawell.net/korea]
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Afostercarter at aol.com 
  To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws 
  Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 1:39 PM
  Subject: [KS] North Korea says multiracialism is poison


  Dear colleagues,

  The item below appears on KCNA today.

  Comment is perhaps superfluous,
  but I venture the following:

  1. They practise what they preach. See the harrowing account
  which begin's Time's Asian edition cover story this week.
  http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501060501/story.html

  2. How does this differ from national socialism?

  Aidan FC

  AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
  Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University 
  Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK 
  tel: +44(0)  1274  588586         (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634          mobile:  +44(0)  7970  741307 
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  Email: afostercarter at aol.com     (alt) afostercarter at yahoo.com      website: www.aidanfc.net
  [Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me know, so I can chide AOL]

  ---------


  Rodong Sinmun Censures Theory of "Multiracial Society"

  Pyongyang, April 27 (KCNA) -- A strange farce to hamstring the essential characters of the Korean nation and seek for "multiracial society" is now being held in south Korea. In this regard Rodong Sinmun today runs a signed commentary, which censures the farce as an unpardonable bid to negate the homogeneity of the nation, make south Korea multiracial and Americanize it. To deny the peculiarity and advantages of the homogeneous nation now that dominationism and colonialism are posing a threat to the destiny of weak nations is a treacherous act of weakening the spirit of the nation, the commentary says, and goes on: The south Korean pro-American traitorous forces advocating the theory of "multiracial society" are riffraffs who have not an iota of national soul, to say nothing of the elementary understanding of the view on the nation and social and historic development. 

      If the homogeneity of the nation is not kept, the nation and the destiny of individuals cannot be defended from the U.S. dominationist moves and the attempt of the Japanese reactionaries for invasion of Korea, which is revealed in their claim to Tok Islet, cannot be checked. 

      The theory of "multiracial society" is a poison and anti-reunification logic aimed to emasculate the basic idea in the era of independent reunification. The anti-national logic is advocated in south Korea, contrary to the aspiration of the fellow countrymen. This is ascribable to the criminal attempt of the pro-American elements including the Grand National Party to make the north and the south different in lineages, block the June 15 era of reunification and seek the permanent division of the nation and the manipulation of the U.S. behind the scene. 

      The commentary calls upon the people from all walks of life in south Korea to decisively reject the anti-national moves of the sycophantic traitorous forces to tarnish the lineage of the Korean nation and obliterate it, bereft of the Juche character and national character. 



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