Gareth Morgan thinks I am ignorant about the DPRK

Yes, really. 

See my response.

I'll take him on anyday about Korean history, and as long as he doesn't use the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang edition of History of Korea, he might have a chance.  However I doubt it.

The man who claims that reporting the facts about the DPRK is a "beat up" and "completely wrong".

The man who says they are "wonderfully engaged, well-dressed, fully employed and well informed".

I doubt he got to meet anyone with English that wasn't pre approved, so he couldn't seriously "engage", and I very much doubt if he was able to freely talk to anyone without others being present.  

Well dressed?  Well he didn't meet this girl, because she is dead, she was "fully employed" hunting rats and looking for grass for survival.

Well informed?  Yes, thinking your founding leader saved the country, that the USA started the Korean War and the country's poor economic performance is due to a blockade, and south Korea is a poverty ridden colony of the USA - really well informed.

It's lack of international money he bemoans, but then borrowing from Western banks and simply defaulting doesn't exactly make for a credit rating worth glancing at.

Then Jo Morgan has been tricked well.  17 minutes of naive observations that the Korean Central News Agency wouldn't be ashamed of using, seemingly interviewed by Nick Tansley - former ZM Wellington clown.  Not a high calibre journalist.

She talks about the wonderful local produce!  The wonderful "muscular" young men, and how south Korean journalists said young men in the south were getting obese.  She seems to bemoan the "Western softness" of Seoul.

She talks about how everyone is expected to do some manual work - fabulous and how fit they are.

She blames the manual labour on "sanctions", swallowing the state propaganda.

She "reckoned" 50-60% have cellphones, but then that was those she saw - the elite.  She dismissed bans on foreigners using cellphones as "just a rule for foreigners", not because it risked live reports of what goes on.

She was gobsmacked - rightly - about the Arirang Mass Games (which are a remarkable spectacle), although again thinking it reported the "history" of the country, rather than it being propaganda and a symbol of how people are only important if they are in a mass collective action.

"You can't tell me these people are miserable" from seeing members of the elite singing and laughing together.  No they aren't Jo.  No.  

"They seem well fed" says the woman who didn't spend time on Google Earth to note the burial mounds for the starving.  

"our escorts were making sure we didn't get lost"  Too funny.  Really.  Seriously, not there to ensure you didn't go explore on unapproved routes?

"The people want their children to be able to ride down into the south, they want reunification" Yes, they do, but the regime doesn't want it, unless it involves it being on their terms - which they know will never happen.

Finally, Gareth thinks division of Korea is due to "great powers".  It was originally, for the USSR installed Kim Il Sung in the north, against the UN mandated declaration of the Republic of Korea as the government of the whole peninsula and resisting the (admittedly very flawed) elections that were meant to be the basis for a new government.  Korea could be reunified tomorrow, except the regime in the north doesn't want to surrender its slave state that sustains a tiny elite, and the south doesn't want to be a slave state.

It's not about foreign powers, unless you believe the withdrawal of US troops (one deterrent to north Korean aggression, which is demonstrable)

NKNews (subscription once you read more than the minimum number of articles) reports on the trip.  

Gareth says "the farms are perfect. They have no pollution”, 

the standard of living was probably like south Korea "20 years ago"... astonishing.  

Think maybe 50 years ago, the last time north Korea and south Korea were roughly equals in per capita income.  North Korea WAS the rich half of Korea, south Korea the poor peasant half... 

Capitalism made south Korea one of the top 20 economies in the world and now up with developed countries.  

Shame Gareth is still admiring the system that has trapped, literally and economically, the people of the north in a 1960s timewarp.

I look forward to him admitting he is wrong, confessing he didn't know as much as he wished, and sorry for saying things complementary about a country that has such a vile government.  I look forward to him noting that much of what he was told in the country was false and they were probably shown only what was permitted, in order to show the country in the best light, and that it sends shivers down their spines to think of children being in gulags today.

Really, I do...

North Korean history lies

Given Gareth Morgan's affection for the country once described as "a place where George Orwell's 1984 was taken not as a warning, but as a textbook manual as to how to run a country", I thought I'd point out some of the biggest lies perpetuated by the regime in Pyongyang.  The saddest thing about it, is that I doubt if most of the elite even know this.  

These are lie the Kim gangster family have generated and it starts with:

- Korea was liberated from the Japanese imperialists by a group of loyal anti-Japanese patriots led by Marshal Kim Il Sung.

No, it was liberated by the United States, with the USSR having a tiny role at the very end.  Kim Il Sung spent the last four years of WW2 in the USSR.

- Kim Il Sung founded the Korean People's Army when he was 21.

No, it was founded in 1948, which was acknowledged until he decided in the early 1960s to rewrite history.

- Kim Il Sung arrived in Pyongyang greeted by hundreds of thousands grateful he had liberated the country.

No, he was brought in by the Red Army and trained to be their stooge.

- The Korean War was started by the US imperialists.

No, Kim Il Sung got authorisation from Moscow and Peking to launch the attack.  Soviet records prove that Stalin gave the approval.

- The Great Fatherland Liberation War (Korean War) was a great victory.

No it was a stalemate.  The military demarcation line is roughly where it was when the war started, so nothing was gained, but millions were killed.

- Kim Jong Il was born on the sacred Mt Paektu where he saw his father and mother preparing as they fought the Japanese.

No, he was born near Khabarovsk in the USSR.

- South Korea is a country of abject poverty and despair.

You know the truth. 

- South Korea is run as a colony by the US to use South Korean as slave labour

South Korea has long been independently minded, and has been a fairly robust liberal democracy since 1988

- Most of the world is wracked with crime, corruption, poverty and slavery, the people of Korea have nothing to envy

....

- The reason the DPRK has economic problems is because of the blockade by the US imperialists.

The reason is because it is the most centrally planned Stalinist state left on the planet, with market signals having little influence compared to the whims of the gangster family running it.

- Kim Il Sung is renowned worldwide as a genius and great man, who fought hard for the right of countries to be independent and people to be liberated.  Millions around the world worship his works.

Yes, well, need I say more?  Besides a few useful idiots, he's a laughing stock.

- Kim Jong Il is similarly renowned.

"Team America"

- The "arduous march" (mass starvation 1995-1998) was due to the US imperialists and some bad weather.

It was due to the diversion of economic effort to the military as Kim Jong Il sought to avoid a military coup after his father's death, and the storms that destroyed crops broke the back of the state farming sector.

- The United States and Japan are constantly seeking ways to invade and occupy north Korea

The US and Japan are deterring a north Korean attack and have no interest in any occupation. However, the regime does maintain a constant "we're on the brink of war" footing.  Read Orwell's 1984 to understand that.

- All of the Korean people love Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and just wish reunification of the country

Most Koreans despise them, and few south Koreans want reunification on north Korean terms.  Many fear the cost of rebuilding a broken country, but many also are deeply distressed by the division of families

- Korean reunification would happen if only the US withdrew its bases from south Korea

It might, because north Korea would feel more free to invade

SO that is a start. I wonder how many of these myths Gareth has swallowed?

Gareth Morgan becomes propaganda tool for the child torturing fiefdom of the Kim family: UPDATED 2

When Gareth Morgan's group got permission to enter the DPRK by motorcycle I was surprised, but then it is being accompanied every step of the way in the country.  I was also surprised when he got permission from both the DPRK and ROK sides to cross the DMZ.  I think the DPRK is also surprised by this, as it has several times used crossing as a propaganda trick, knowing the other side would arrest and detain anyone undertaking it (those who do it are typically DPRK sympathisers after all).  

So now he is in the country, and not surprisingly the New Zealand media is reporting none of it, even though North Korean media actually is.  Unless some celebrity is involved, or it involves a sports team or a disaster, then it isn't of interest.  Of course he'll get coverage when he returns, but it will be of the "wow amazing wasn't that cool" type of questioning.

You see Morgan's group is now being used for propaganda and this slave state will milk the propaganda value of peace loving sympathetic Westerners coming to learn about their country's "history" and how they struggle against the yoke of foreign aggression (when all of the aggression comes from the mafia family that runs the place).  

Gareth Morgan is now a tool of a slave state.  I doubt he'll ask about children being kept in gulags.  

The state/party daily newspaper has a photo of him on its visit here and here.  It reports on Morgan's group learning about the country.

His visit has included paying reverence to the murderous war-mongering Kim Il Sung, who set up the abominable personality cult led slave state that it is today, started the Korean War, and has manufacturer such a complicated web of lies about the place that it is difficult to know where to start.

For a start Kim Jong Il wasn't born on Mt Paektu, he was born in Russia in Khabarovsk.

Kim Il Sung did not lead a gang of guerrilla fighters based at Mt Paektu to led the Korean people to victory against the Japanese, he did led a small group based in Manchuria that tactically fled to the Soviet Union, where he was when Kim Jong Il was born.  Kim Il Sung was a Soviet selected stooge put in place to follow Stalin's order and occupy the land.  He successfully took all he learnt in the USSR and then some, started the Korean War and ended it building a cross between Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World.

So if you want to follow Gareth Morgan, read the Rodong Simnum and the Korean Central News Agency, or listen to Voice of Korea's English broadcasts online, which are reporting on these adventures (all pretty much similar).

Meanwhile Porirua based Anglican pastor Don Borrie continues to felch the regime, and it continues to render his reputation to be equally vile.

UPDATE:  So the West needs to "rethink" North Korea now, says Gareth.  It wasn't just a motorcycle trip. His head has gone soft and he has taken in all the lies and thinks they are awfully nice folk.

The thing is, the guides are.  The people you see are nice, as they are privileged members of the elite painstakingly trying to make sure their country is seen in a good light.  

You don't need to try to demonise north Korea.  He claims it isn't a great big prison camp, but who gets to leave Gareth? Who gets passports?  What about the domestic passport system that ensures no one can leave their village or town unless they belong the elite? 

He talks of how everything is tidy and clean and everyone has a job. The Potemkin world he got to see. Escorted the whole way, he claims everything he saw was real, and told was real. 

He then touts the Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo reunification scheme (not by name) of Kim Il Sung as the solution to reunification, except for removing US troops from south Korea.  Naively thinking the north Korean regime actually could survive any extensive contact by north Koreans of south Korea, but also wanting China to protect the slave state's sovereignty.  He even uses the language that has been uttered in DPRK English language propaganda since the 1970s over this.

Gareth talks of why he and his wife could travel across Korea, but Koreans couldn't.  Yet North Koreans can't own motorcycles and drive anywhere they want in the north.

Until now I thought he was just a bit naive and actually would come out and acknowledge that he didn't know what was true, what wasn't and what he was shown and not shown.  No, the fool appears to have swallowed the Kim gang fiction hook line and sinker, and not only that, is even endorsing the sustenance of the regime by giving it propaganda.

Matt Nolan has questioned his wisdom here.

I question his sanity.  

Imagine if he had travelled through Pol Pot's Cambodia and did this, or Nazi Germany in 1938 talking about how misunderstood the proud German people were and they only want more living space and to be reunified with Germans in Czechoslovakia, and it isn't a prison camp, the stories about the Jews are lies, demonising them.

Well Gareth - you kind of did that.

Go get your head examined, and if you're sane, here are some books to read

(UPDATE - he has read some unspecified books about the horrors of the regime and said he has no reason to question them.  It would have been balanced had he acknowledged this publicly instead of telling me on a comment on his blog)

Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan  (for life as a child in a gulag)

Kim Il Sung - the North Korean Leader by Dae Sook Suh (for the best historically accurate and well researched account of Kim Il Sung's REAL life and what he did to fight the Japanese (a little) and what he says he did (saved the nation) .

The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov an excellent report of how the country has changed and contrasts with the USSR, by an academic who lived there over decades and has fluency in Korean, Russian and English.

I still think despite reading some books and believing they are true, his behaviour is astonishing.  I don't understand it.

I STILL think he should...

Apologise to the hundreds of thousands who are in prison camps, including the thousands of children. Apologise to the millions dead because this regime preferred to build a mausoleum and deny farmers the right to grow more than tiny private plots of vegetables outside state and collective farms, leaving mass starvation in the 1990s.

Next time, take a holiday somewhere else interesting, but don't start describing how homosexuals in Iran have a happy life, or women in Saudi Arabia have such freedoms we don't understand, or how the people of Zimbabwe love papa Bob Mugabe.

Better yet, whatever you do, just shut up. The last specks of your credibility have been flushed well and truly down the basement toilets in the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun (resting place of the DPRK's "eternal President").

The problem of Egypt

Egypt has no tradition of respecting individual liberty or secularism.

Nasser was widely admired, as he took over the Suez Canal and lost the war he was about to launch against Israel (and lost the Sinai Peninsula).

Anwar Sadat bravely made peace with Israel, gaining back the Sinai, and was assassinated for his efforts (and is largely forgotten).

Hosni Mubarak set up a massive military led corporatist state of rent-seeking self-aggrandisement, whilst simultaneously suppressing Iranian style Islamists.  The same Islamists who bombed hotels, tour buses and killed foreign tourists, until Mubarak's secret police authoritarian state put enough of them in prison.  Meanwhile he appeased a moderate form of Islamism, allowing for the occasional hassling of Christians and implementation of Shariah law.

So he gets overthrown, and elections are held. The world quietly condones it and lo and behold, a plurality of Egyptians choose theocracy, as the alternative is a patsy of Mubarak.

The USA, EU and the rest of the supposedly freedom loving West celebrated democracy, not individual freedom and rights.   Not separation of religion and state.

So how could any Western politician oppose a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood?  How could it oppose that elected government trying to change the constitution?  

Indeed.  Egyptians who supported Islamism were happy.  Egyptians who supported secularism, the small Christian minority and Muslims who keep their religion in the private sphere, were not.

Neither was the Army, which has a large network of businesses which keep many of the senior officers well fed and watered.   

So Egyptians who don't like Islamism, and Egyptians with a vested interest in the Army's own corporatist enterprises, protested.

The Islamists were less than happy as the Army overthrew their authoritarians, to reimpose their own.

Now the Army is killing those who resist it, but don't be fooled.  The Islamists would do the same, given their predilection to terrorism, their predilection to criminalising apostasy, to harassing those who are not of their faith, to censoring views, cultural expressions and humour they don't like, to constraining the role of women.   Then of course there is the widespread anti-semitism, which is far more widespread.

So whilst the philosophy, politics and the motives of the Islamists are thoroughly despicable and the anti-thesis of individual freedom and the secular liberal democracy that Western civilisation is supposed to be based on, the ends - the political defeat of Islamism - do not justify the means - opening fire on civilians.

The problem is that the Army is led by a man, who believes it is ok for women to have their virginity checked by men, to protect them.  

Egypt needs rulers who will allow people to live ascetic Muslim lives, by choice, or not to.  It needs rulers who believe in freedom, and who believe in separation of religion from state.

However, it doesn't have a majority of citizens who share those values...

Stock market bubble fueled by printed money

So the Dow Jones has hit 15,000, it was 14,000 just over two months ago, with the S & P reaching a record level, the FTSE is at its highest since 2007, and the German DAX index reaching levels not seen since before the global financial crisis.

It is like the crisis didn't happen, but oddly enough there isn't a huge amount of evidence to demonstrate that this is due to performance, rather than cheap credit.

Yes there has been a bit of a recovery, and yes some stock prices were low compared to expected revenues.

However, as Allister Heath of City AM says:

"Ultra-loose and interventionist monetary policy globally is one of the main causes of this resurgence. Pretending that it isn’t, and that economies – even those like America’s which have liquidated many past malinvestments – could immediately and easily readjust to neutral interest rates and zero intervention is a dangerous delusion.

Much of the central-bank induced madness that led to the last two bubbles is reaching ever more dangerous proportions, not least the Fed’s hubristic determination to prop up markets..."

It was the perpetual issuing of fiat money by central banks that fueled the crisis, with CPI inflation hidden by a combination of plummeting prices from Chinese imports (a scenario that has come to an end, as China no longer offers lower costs) and the inflation being largely seen in stock and property prices.

The new bubbles will be stores of future problems. 

Increases in stock prices due to good performance and optimistic earnings based on improved productivity and market growth are one thing,  increases due to banks, flooded with cheap money from central banks, seeking somewhere to put it, are another.

No one has learned anything.