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On this week’s second podcast, the COMMENTARY crew takes on the bad choices in North Korea and—gasp—offers a defense of Donald Trump against his knee-jerk critics on the matter. After that, they wonder at the ongoing insistence by fans of Trump that the conservatives and Republicans critical of him should and must bend the knee to the president or be complicit in the ruination of the country. Give a listen.
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You will likely find some in this comments section telling you to “bend the knee” and how tiresome you are when you will admit you were wrong about Trump not beating Hillary, but that you (and I) are so very wrong about Trump, the man. They accuse me of being childish and upset that “my guy didn’t win”. I think they are childishly defending their vote and support for a man that they know really should not be in office.
As a former resident of Korea, now living in Japan, and a longtime student of the history and culture of the peninsula, I am most appreciate of this lucid discussion of the North Korean threat and completely share in the dismay expressed at the folly of US policy over the last decades. I would, however, disagree with John Podhoretz’s claim that North Korea, in contrast to South Korea, does not seek reunification. According to North Korean ideology, the southern part of the peninsula is a colony of the evil American jackals, the miguk-nom, who have sought to corrupt and pollute the pure race that is uri-minjok ‘our people’. South Koreans, accordingly to the official line, nonetheless secretly yearn to be liberated by the Dear Leader. In North Korea, the Korean War is referred to as Choguk haebang chǒnjaeng ‘Homeland Liberation War‘, whereas in South Korea a more defensive term is used. Ironically, the Sino-Korean term minjok is simply a loan translation of Sino-Japanese minzoku, itself coined in the Meiji Era to correspond to ethnos or Volk as a political entity. Historically, it is not without its ethno-fascist implications. Koreans, both north and south, are among the most “racially” obsessed people in the world, but whereas in South Korea children no longer throw stones at foreigners or “half-breeds,” the DPRK remains deeply “racist” not just because its people are isolated and ignorant but also because racism is part of the national ideology. (The parallels to the State Shintoist myth of Japanese militarism are not coincidental.) By the way, juche (主體), lit. ‘main body’, as it is has been endlessly used and discussed, is vague in the extreme—and not because there is anything “mystical” about it but rather because it is a mirage, trotted out largely for foreign consumption. The term is yet another example of a Sino-Japanese neologism, originally referring to Kant’s Ding an sich, noumenon, borrowed in this case out of context.