Category: East Asia

North Korea is trying to encourage its exhausted citizenry to struggle on by highlighting the sacrifices made during the 1950-53 Korean War, a lesson sources told RFA is undermined by a growing number of deaths among elderly veterans to malnutrition and illness. The country is set to celebrate the signing of the armistice that ended hostilities in the war on Wednesday, a holiday Pyongyang officially calls the “Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War.” In preparation for the day, the government has ordered people to stay after work for propaganda lectures telling them to “follow the heroic spirit of the ‘War Generation,’ who defeated the armed invasion of the United States and other imperialists in the 1950s and defended the leader and the country with their lives,” said a resident of South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons, in mid-July. “The workers ended their shift at 6 p.m. and gathered at each workplace meeting room. It began with a question and answer session about the spirit of the War Generation and how they struggled. We discussed what we should learn and emulate from them even after the years and generations have passed,” the source said. In a company-wide lecture, the workers learned about the War Generation’s revolutionary spirit, and how North Koreans overcame obstacles to construct a socialist society with “miraculous speed across 1,000 miles” during the post-war restoration period, the source said.  “So, the workers were called to adopt that fighting spirit in the factory’s production plan,” the source said. “The workers have not been eating properly due to food shortages and are already exhausted from going to work in this heat wave.” The poor living conditions of the factory workers in South Pyongan are causing them to resent being made to stay after work for propaganda meetings. “They are complaining that they cannot live because of the heat wave, and the government is trying to increase its control over them,” the source said. Food scarcity is a constant problem in North Korea, but the closure of the border with China and suspension of trade since the beginning of the pandemic in January 2020 has made it worse. With no imports to bridge the gap between food supply and demand, prices have gone up and the people have had to do without. The propaganda lectures note that the heroes of the glorious past extend beyond the soldiers fighting in the war, a source in North Hamgyong province. “The factory gathered the miners for lectures on the spirit of the War Generation, and they talked about the 1950s, when miners carried out missions that cost them their lives,” the second source told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “Now that the COVID-19 crisis has been resolved and the major task as part of the five-year plan [2021-2025] is to be carried out, the lectures were given to encourage the miners to accelerate production with the fighting spirit of the War Generation,” the source said. The lecture said they should devote themselves to the party and the leader without asking for any honor or remuneration just as their forebears did during the post-war period of restoration and construction, according to the second source. “The miners complain that they are exhausted from the hardships of the pandemic and the severe heat, but the authorities focus on lectures and learning sessions that bind the thoughts and spirits of the residents instead of rationing food,” she said. Though the second source said that the COVID-19 crisis has been resolved, reflecting the North Korean government’s declaration that it was set to “finally defuse” the crisis, the World Health Organization has cast doubt over the claim, saying instead that the situation could worsen. North Korea has officially reported a minimal loss of life during the recent outbreak that caused the country to declare a “maximum emergency,” but reports have surfaced saying that those who die of COVID-19 symptoms are quickly cremated before a cause can be determined. Sources told RFA that elderly veterans who served in the Korean War are among those who have died either from the coronavirus or malnutrition due to the lack of food, angering North Koreans who say the government uses the veterans for propaganda but does nothing when they starve or contract a deadly disease. The country is set to hold an 8th National Conference of War Veterans in Pyongyang to commemorate the armistice holiday on Wednesday, but sources told RFA that the number of participating veterans has sharply declined. In North Pyongan province’s Ryongchon county, about a third fewer veterans are participating in the conference this year, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “[We’ve seen] a decrease of nine out of the 28 participants in the 7th National Conference of War Veterans held last year,” the third source said. The third source said that three war veterans from the rural village of Sosok-ri were alive in the spring. In May, two had developed a high fever and shortness of breath, typical symptoms of COVID-19. They died without receiving adequate treatment, quarantined in their homes, she said. “In Jinhung village, an elderly veteran living with his son and daughter-in-law died of malnutrition in April. Since March, the family’s food has started to run out, so they have been eating dried radish stem and leaves mixed with corn powder as a meal,” she said. “In total, the number of veterans who died was nine in Ryongchon county, reducing the number of participants in the National Conference of War Veterans,” the third source said. “The residents are critical of the intention of holding the conference of war veterans when the elderly war veterans are dying for lack of food.”  In Songchon county, South Pyongan, the number of veterans sent to Pyongyang fell by half compared with last year, a resident there told RFA. “Every year, elderly veterans die from malnutrition because they can’t…

Mao-era Chinese dissident Lin Zhao, whose birth name was Peng Lingzhao, was a writer and journalist who grew up near Nanjing, in the eastern province of Jiangsu. Initially a star student at the prestigious Peking University, Lin was branded a “rightist” and a “class enemy” in the 1950s for her criticism of then-supreme leader Mao Zedong’s Anti-Rightist Movement targeting intellectuals. She was executed by firing squad at Shanghai’s Longhua Airport in 1968 at the age of 36, and her family was ordered to pay five cents for the bullet that killed her. Her biographer Lian Xi, author of Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China, spoke to RFA about her importance as a recent historical figure: RFA: Why was Lin such an important figure? Lian Xi: Lin Zhao really was an extraordinary person. We know that there were many, many victims of the Cultural Revolution, but there were no real political dissidents like Lin Zhao. There were some big-name intellectuals within [the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)] … peoplel like Deng Tuo and Wu Han in the early 1960s before the Cultural Revolution started … who tried to persuade Mao to give up authoritarian rule. There were also some political heretics outside the CCP during the Cultural Revolution, like Yu Luoke and Zhang Zhixin, but they never totally broke away from the ideology of the CCP. The only one who openly rejected CCP ideology as enslavement and tyranny was Lin Zhao. RFA: What impact did Lin Zhao’s parents’ political views have on her world view? Lian Xi: Lin Zhao herself said that some of her so-called progressive political thoughts came from her mother’s influence. Her father was different. He never put his patriotic enthusiasm into action on the streets. He hoped to help China move towards modernity by introducing Western democratic institutions. But I think the most profound influence on her political ideals came around the time she was applying to go to the Jinghai teacher training college as a high-schooler. RFA: We know that Lin Zhao broke with her father, dropping his surname Peng and saying that Mao Zedong was her father. What role did her personality play in her story? Lian Xi: I think personality played a very big part. She was a very emotional person, but also a person who was prone to irritability. She also saw herself as inseparable from her ideals. When she was in secondary school, she was influenced by radical ideological trends within the CCP, and became determined to use her blood and her life to build a society free from social injustice, persecution and oppression. RFA: In 1954, Lin won a place at Peking University with the top score out of the whole of Jiangsu province. She once aspired to be the best reporter in the Mao Zedong era. When do you think she started having doubts about Mao and about communism? Lian Xi: As you just said, Lin Zhao once called Mao her father. This kind of complex, this very deep feeling for Mao, was actually very real at the time, and it wasn’t only Lin [who did that]. Lin had a classmate at Peking University called Shen Zeyi, and he was a poet. He used to say that many of their classmates had so much admiration for Mao that they all referred to him as father. Her ideas took a long time to change. She hadn’t given up her belief in Mao or the CCP by the early 1950s, when she was repeatedly suppressed during the land reform movement. It was only when she was labeled a rightist in 1957 that she started to break with the CCP and with communist ideas. RFA: And she was tortured due to that uncompromising attitude, wasn’t she? Lian Xi: The earliest torture mostly took place in the No. 1 Detention Center in Shanghai. Lin Zhao called the No. 1 Detention Center a hell-hole. Because she pleaded not guilty … the prison guards tortured her to force a confession. They handcuffed her hands behind her back, not with one pair of handcuffs, but two: one pair on her upper arm and the other on her lower arm … At one point she wore handcuffs for six months because she was determined not to give in [and ‘confess’]. During that time, she was also piercing her fingers and writing poems in her own blood, all of which were addressed to Mao Zedong. RFA: How much did she write in this way? Lian Xi: There are about 200,000 words that we know about, which is quite a number. Because she was a reporter, she described prison life in great detail, one of which was how she managed to write in blood. In her “Letter to the Editorial Department of People’s Daily” … she says that this letter isn’t being written in blood but in pen and ink, but it’s sealed with the character Zhao in her own blood. When I went to the Hoover Institution to look at Lin Zhao’s original documents, you could see that her private seal was stamped on each page. Also, the official indictment says that Lin Zhao pierced her own flesh hundreds of thousands of times to write hundreds of thousands of words of extremely reactionary content in her own blood. RFA: Have you seen any of this writing with your own eyes? Lian Xi: They’re not around any more. But I interviewed the judge who retried Lin Zhao’s case, and specifically … asked him if had seen her writings in blood, and he said he had seen them. Then I asked him why he didn’t give her writings back to her family, and he said it would have been too harrowing for them. The other [witness] was Chen Weisi, the first reporter to write about Lin, and he saw some of her blood writings too at the time. RFA: I know that Hu Jie, who directed the documentary “Looking for Lin Zhao’s soul,”…

While citizens in North Korea are nearly starving in the face of food price hikes and shortages, the country’s elite are feasting on one of the country’s most expensive delicacies: dog meat. Meat of any kind is a rarity in the North Korean diet these days, and dog meat costs twice as much as pork. A single bowl of dog meat stew, called dangogi-jang, can cost the same as two kilograms of rice. After a ban on imports at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in January 2020, and with harvests failing to yield enough food for the country’s needs, food shortages are widespread, a resident of Chongjin, in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Prices for food such as rice, corn and flour keep rising. Residents are frustrated as they suffer, … but high-ranking government officials and the wealthy class, for whom money is not an object, are busy looking for dog meat restaurants and taking care of themselves,” the source said. Dog meat is not common in the typical diet of either North or South Korea, but it is considered by some to be a summer delicacy with purported virility-enhancing and medicinal properties.  This summer, while the bellies of average citizens in the country of 25 million people rumble, the most popular dog meat restaurants in Chongjin and elsewhere are still bustling with powerful military and ruling party clientele. “Since last summer, the Kyongsong Dangogi Restaurant has been operating out of a two-story traditional Korean building in Chongjin’s Pohang Square. As the hot days of summer begin, it is buzzing with people who have come for their fill of dog meat,” the source said. “Kyongsong is the second largest dog meat restaurant in the country next to the Pyongyang Dangogi Restaurant on Tongil Street in Pyongyang. I believe [former leader] Kim Jong Il gave the restaurant its name. He was treated to dog meat stew every time he came to North Hamgyong province, and stayed at a hotel within the Kyongsong restaurant that has a scenic view,” he said. The source was aware that outside of Korea, dog meat consumption is rare. “In foreign countries, people don’t eat dog meat, but in our country, dangogi-jang is known for its invigorating effect on the body in summer. There’s even a saying that if you were to spill some of the soup on your foot, it would be like medicine to heal the body,” he said.  “Ordinary residents cannot even dare to eat a bowl of dangogi-jang, no matter how good it is for the body,” the source said. “It is the cheapest dish among the various other dog meat dishes like steak or braised ribs. The stew costs 12,000 won [U.S. $1.70] for a single bowl, about the price of two kilos [4.4 lbs] of rice.”  Besides Kyongsong, there are several other restaurants in Chongjin that serve dog meat dishes, according to the source. This file photo shows a meal at the Pyongyang Dangogi Restaurant on Tongil Street in the North Korean capital. Photo: Yonhap “People in power, such as party officials, prosecutors, social security agents and state security agents do not like to stand out and be seen in public, so they prefer to go to privately run restaurants to eat dog meat rather than public ones,” he said. A source in the northwestern province of North Pyongan said he believed dangogi-jang helped to heal his sick mother. “Everyone knows that dog meat is good for your health in the summer. But most residents cannot afford to eat even a single bowl each year,” the second source said. “There are several restaurants serving dog meat in Uiju county. On July 16, the first of the three hottest days of summer, for the first time in five years, I visited a dog meat restaurant with my mother, who was suffering from a fever and was terribly weak,” he said.  The second source said that there were many elites at the restaurant, including officials of the ruling Korean Workers’ party, agents of the Ministry of State Security and law enforcement officials. “It took a long time for my mother to eat her bowl of stew because her teeth are weak. So when other customers finished their meal and new customers replaced them, I recognized the faces of several well known Uiju county officials,” said the second source. “Ordinary residents are angry now because food prices are too high and there is no way to make money,” the source added. “I felt a sense of disappointment when I saw so many people in power who lined up to eat expensive dog meat … without a care about worrying how they would be able to earn a living.”  Dog meat is available at restaurants in both North and South Korea, but the dog meat trade is of questionable legality in the South. A South Korean court ruled in 2018 that killing dogs for their meat was illegal, but the law did not specifically ban selling or eating the meat. Translated by Claire Shinyoung O. Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.