|
|
|
|
Kim Jong-il's 'useful idiots' in the West
By David Scofield
The term "useful idiots" has been widely used over the years to describe
apologists from Western democracies who could be counted upon to offer slavish
praise despite obvious evidence of egregiousness within the system they
supported. During Joseph Stalin's reign of terror there was the infamous Walter
Duranty, a correspondent for the New York Times who in 1932 won the Pulitzer
Prize for his glowing prose praising Stalin and the communist utopia he was
building. Duranty chose to ignore the malice of the regime, the brutality of
Stalin's forces and the fact that Stalin's "communist utopia" was being built
through the enslavement of more than 10 million people. He also failed to
publicly note that some 11 million Kulaks were liquidated under Stalin's plan.
During the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia there were more examples of
false portrayals for Western consumption. In April 1975, Sydney Schanberg,
another New York Times correspondent, declared while the Khmer Rouge prepared
to lobotomize the nation that "for the ordinary people of Indochina...it is
difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the
Americans gone." He won a Pulitzer Prize, while Pol Pot's bloody excesses left
more than two million people dead.
Decades later the world has arguably more useful idiots filing copy to any
manner of agencies than ever before. Kim Jong il's useful idiots have formed a
club called the Korea Friendship Association (KFA). The group's website is
strikingly similar to North Korea's official government web site; the official
Democratic People's Republic of Korea website links directly to it. The KFA
indicates clearly that they enjoy the "support and endorsement" of the Northern
regime - Kim Jong-il certified. The group's activities include "information"
seminars where the enlightened benevolence of Kim's rule is championed, all
part of its "alternative" view of the North. The ragged wretched displays of
poverty and starvation are edited out and the voice of North Koreans not in the
direct employ of Kim Jong-il are conspicuously absent. In place of
uncomfortable reality, the KFA offers vacation photos of "their" North Korea
taken during recent, state supported visits, complete with bowling, golf,
amusement parks and Karaoke with young female party members. Members write
glowing pieces, oblations celebrating Kim Jong-il's wise rule. No starving
people, torture, summary execution, penury or despair in the Korean Friendship
Association's North Korea. Just golf, great meals and evenings in the company
of Kim Jong-il's beauties.
That useful idiots like these exist and profit from a system that inflicts so
much hardship and misery on millions of people is difficult enough to
understand; these organizations exist in various countries. But when Canada's
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade offers its financial
support, it beggars belief.
Former KFA (Canada) "general secretary" Irwin Oostindie resigned his post
last July to promote an exhibition he calls "Axis to Grind". He is, of course,
still an active member of Kim's KFA fan club, a fact made abundantly clear in
his exhibit. Now, that a person with little direct experience with Korea,
training in its history, or apparently any understanding of the dynasty's role
in the country's road to perdition would actively disseminate Kim Jong il's
propaganda is itself morally reprehensible. But state involvement - the use of
Canadian taxes - to subsidize such a vicious portrayal is a deep insult to the
millions who suffer and die in North Korea.
Citizens of Canada have a constitutionally protected right to articulate their
beliefs, regardless of how muddled, hateful and corrosive to freedom these
beliefs may be. The ongoing North Korean famine that has claimed at
least a million lives is, as the United Nations, Amnesty International and
Medecins Sans Frontieres indicate, a product of, at best, callous indifference
within the most senior levels of the regime. Access to food is, as many sources
both within the government and outside indicate, determined by political
loyalty and caste, so that those closest to the regime live in luxury, while
the rest, the vast majority of the country live amid the"hostile" and
"wavering" classes, denied sustenance and are starved by the state. North
Korea's leaders are guilty of gross negligence causing more than a million
deaths. If even a fraction of what those who have escaped assert concerning the
establishment of gulags, the use of torture and the slaughter of tens of
thousands are true, then the North Korean leader is guilty of mass murder.
Canada's Heritage Front, for example, a radical group of racists who actively
deny the Holocaust and offer excuses for the Nazis, have been rightly condemned
by the government and the courts of Canada, freedom of speech not withstanding.
Offering excuses for those who use food as a weapon and inflict unspeakable
crimes against their own citizens, is as offensive to humanity as the ravings
of those who deny the Holocaust. Condoning such a mendacious display through
official support of those who seek to sanitize the suffering and distract from
the depravity that is inflicted by this system challenges the image of Canada
as a country committed to alleviating the suffering of the world's most
afflicted. Useful idiots, indeed.
David Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace
Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently conducting post-graduate research
at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on
sales, syndication and
republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Korean Sex News
|
|
|
