One, why such an extreme emphasis on portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il? I get having a portrait or even portraits of the founder of the country and his son, but why in people’s houses, in buildings, etc?
Two, what is with the pins citizens in the DPRK seemingly force themselves to wear?
Three, why not have portraits or represent other Marxist Leninist icons? Marx, Engels, Lenin. Not even Mao? It seems like its always KIS and KJI.
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They are the founders of Juche and the equivalent of Marx and Lenin to the DPRK people.
Idk. Maybe its fashionable?
The DPRK aren't officially an ML state anymore. They did away with ML in 1992 and replaced the official state ideology with Juche.
have you ever considered that maybe the people in the DPRK actually have great respect for the Kim's, who are seen as the liberators and builders/defenders of the country? it's hard as someone who lives under capitalism to fathom this, since we don't have anyone who is actually worth celebrating (the only exception to this being old American politicians like the founding fathers or Lincoln).
It's a tiny pin, not everyone wears them. i don't know if its mandatory but who cares, it's most likely just another sign of party alliance and socialist patriotism.
Juche, despite having its roots in Leninism, is basically seen as it's own ideology now, hence the focus on the DPRKs own historical figures (this is also a part of the patriotism). i'm pretty sure they still have portraits of Marx and Lenin as well, just not all over Pyongyang.
and why would they put up portraits of Mao? Mao didn't contribute to the Juche ideology. the DPRK isn't Maoist, as much as some brainlets might like to argue since they think Asian socialism = Maoism.
I wouldn't say they are not a ML state anymore, I would say they aren't orthodox ML anymore but as materialists we shouldn't be concerned with what people call themselves considering the material base and the superstructural state construct hasn't really changed in the DPRK, especially now that the Songun era is pretty much declared as being over. There was a good chance of the DPRK degenerating into a military junta after Kim Jong-il's death but that didn't happen and Kim Jong-un has given power back to the civil administration (although the military still holds a big amount of power).
Secondly, on an ideological level Judge doesn't really contradict Marxism on any level, it carbon-copies Marxist slogans and adds a Korean patriotic spin on it. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as well as communism are still mentioned in official writings but it's true that they have removed the portraits of Marx and Lenin from Pyongyang. This is obviously not a good thing and can be a prelude to revisionism but it's largely dependent on the actions of the young leading generation arround Kim Jong-un, which slowly replaces the old guard and enjoys increasing popularity (as the DPRK enjoys an increase in economic life and living standard that the country hasn't seen since 1991). I think the most important thing here is simply that the official state ideology continues to adhere to materialism, class consciousness and scientific socialism.
I mean if you want to be fair Cuba hasn't really been a ML state since after the 90s either, they reference it less and less and have introduced several reforms on a political and economic level, and Castro himself didn't like the label ML either.
One day every person in the Earth will wear those pins. Marx my words
In which ways did the military hold power, and in which ways has it been relinquished?
To me it makes no sense to say "the military holds power" when there's basically full conscription and 10 years service. At any given time, 30% of the population are active in the military. Might aswell say the people hold power.
Why wouldn't they honor and respect their great revolutionary leader? He is to them what Ho Chi Minh is for Vietnam, and what Fidel Castro is for Cuba.
Also, Kim Jong Il was his right hand man for quite some time, who futher developed the Juche Idea and helped ensure the survival of the DPRK through the Arduous March.
They also uphold Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin as revolutionary forerunners, but not Mao. Mao is quite seperate from Juche, and they came into opposition on many issues and questions, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
In Juche, ML is considered to be a universal truth and is regarded as its presupposition
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The North Koreans are hardcore nationalists and their brand of nationalism revolves around a cult of personality of Kim Il Sung.
Not that other countries have much room to talk in this regard.
Something I've always wondered. The US has statues like however they seem to be more of pieces of art done by the passion of the artist where as in North Korea multiple pictures of the leaders seem more akin to the pictures of Saddam Hussein
It’s probably a mixture of respect for their liberators from Japanese colonialism, the Kim family leading the people of the DPRK through the Korean War where most of the country was utterly destroyed and some Confucian values about leadership. I don’t judge them, the Kims have done great things
Literal pathology.
Then what the fuck were you trying to say? You are implying here that pictures of the Kims do not reflect Korean patriotism but are reflective of an autocrat who wasn't a socialist at all.
the statues in the post here
look like works of art.
Big portraits of the Kims resemble the portraits that Saddam Hussein hard put up after he invaded Kuwait
I know you trolling and this is probably very redundant at this point but:
Imagine the image of Che, Or in South America you have Peron.
You can have the communist flag or wtv.
It's like the image of someone that, probably believed by them, was very intelligent and generally allowed them to work with a good direction, like could happen with Peron, but also had the socialist ideas that make you feel good, of ending *some people getting paid 1M and hour while others get 10 an hour*, and of having the efforts of the country organized under a politically elected direction, and wtv wtv.
that would be because youre racist, dude
who knew!
Do people here think North Korea is a good example of communism?
you faggots play this game everytime, you screaming "liberal" at every criticism of this reactionary shit is the same as retarded liberals screaming "racism" at everything they want to shut down
Hardly, there's absolutely no way for Best Korea to build communism in complete isolation, but it's what we have, so we support them.
fuck anprim niggers, there, i said it
*laughs in British*
*laughs in Chilean*
*laughs in Russian*
…?
Cockshott confirmed for Juche
How do you defend öcalans face everywhere in one big US military base in Syria then?
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see
In china its the exact same thing, half the farmers have a picture of mao on their walls.
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How many people in the US have pictures of Jesus, of George Washington, of Lincoln, and of other people they like in their house? Il-sung and Jong-Il are their Washington and Lincoln. Only difference is they died more recently. People back in the 18th century couldn't plaster their houses on pictures of George and Abraham, but had they had the chance they definitely would have.
The small red ones? They're party pins, if I remember correctly. People in socialist countries are generally more politically active.
Most people only care about their own country.