North Korea carries out public executions on river banks and at school grounds and marketplaces for charges such as stealing copper from factory machines, distributing media from South Korea and prostitution, a report issued on Wednesday said.
It’s a really fun drinking game how fast you can trace these articles back to the US government and the CIA.
It took only two steps this time!
According to the article, the report was compiled by the Transitional Justice Working Group in Seoul, South Korea.
Aaand its prime sponsor is the CIA-fronted< US-government-funded regime change fund “National Endowment for Democracy”. You know, the ones with the WMDs.
https://en.tjwg.org/sponsors/
And the other sponsor is the National Democratic Institute, which was actively involved in funding fascist and anti-socialist coups in Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua and more.
Oh, and it’s also funded by the NED and the US government.
Yeah i saw that. And i also understand the structural anticommunist perspective the article was written in (“west good, east bad”), for instance if US police murders people people don’t complain that much about human rights.
However! I found this article to be interesting because south korean pop culture is also seen as a political threat for north korea and i think this is just hilarious. North korea and similar countries have no strong queer community, because this is against the gender roles the communist government desires for its population.
True is however also that this article does not contain this queer perspective that much, but i remembered this context from other articles about north korea and such.
In recent months, Kim Jong Un had launched a crackdown on South Korean pop culture, including movies, K-dramas and K-pop videos. Under the same, North Korean authorities have also outlawed ‘non-socialist’ hairstyles such as the spike and mullet along with dyed hair. As part of the new laws, men and women can only sport one of the 215 other hairstyles authorised.
Do you seriously believe that the DPRK is limiting what haircuts people can have?
As for crackdowns on South Korean culture, all sites seem to lead to this article by Daily NK, whose evidence is a piece of paper supposedly smuggled out of the DPRK. Thankfully, they’ve provided us a look at all 3 pixels of the paper. I guess with all of that NED funding they couldn’t afford a scanner or good camera.
Do you seriously believe that the DPRK is limiting what haircuts people can have?
I do seriously believe that many communist countries have expectations towards men to fullfill male steretypes, such as “being strong” and such things. For me it is obvious that all societies have a problem with toxic masculinity and structural sexism. One example is that most government people in both communist and capitalistic societies are male-dominated. Just because you have a socialist country which reduces some forms of patriarchy (for instance badly paid care work), it doesn’t mean it is completely gone. So in essence, the lack of queerfeminist theory is a big red flag which makes the article i linked above believable.
Of course communist countries will also have problems with sexism and partriarchy to some degree, no one here has said otherwise. But to jump from that to thinking that they’ll micromanage their populace to such a degree as mandating haircuts and that the people will simply shut up and take something like that is a stretch.
You’re orientalizing this society and using feminism as an excuse to do so. You can engage in feminist critiques of the DPRK as much as you please, but don’t do so in such a way that reinforces the imperialist understanding of the DPRK. That’s a disservice to non-Western feminism.
I have probably trust issues because my female/trans leftwing environment (people i follow on twitter for instance) usually complain loudly that many/most communist/leftwing men don’t know much about queerfeminist theory and that THEY as women, trans or non-binary people have to explain queerfeminist/trans inclusive theory towards cisgender male people over and over again, because the male people are not very interested in reading in that theory area.
It is true that i don’t understand much abouyt non-western feminism but in the communist areas here on lemmy or lemmygrad or somewhere, i have never read a comment criticizing the lack of female/trans people in high positions of power in communist societies. Or at all talking about that.
So basically: given that china and north korea have much control over how their society works, i kind of expect that they use that to bring female/trans people (or for instance people of color) into positions of power. So basically, i trust female/trans people more in working towards queerfeminist politics as someone like Kim Jong Un. And because i don’t see many female/trans people in those governments (i think they would have said that?), i don’t have much hope.
If you truly believe there’s something interesting to get from here post it in another community, for example /c/shitliberalssay, but this is simply racist bullshit against an Asian country.
It’s a really fun drinking game how fast you can trace these articles back to the US government and the CIA.
It took only two steps this time!
And the other sponsor is the National Democratic Institute, which was actively involved in funding fascist and anti-socialist coups in Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua and more. Oh, and it’s also funded by the NED and the US government.
The TJWG’s executive director is also a member and close associate of the National Endowment for Democracy. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4974ZxosXEc)
So literally all of their funding comes from the CIA/US government.
Yeah i saw that. And i also understand the structural anticommunist perspective the article was written in (“west good, east bad”), for instance if US police murders people people don’t complain that much about human rights.
However! I found this article to be interesting because south korean pop culture is also seen as a political threat for north korea and i think this is just hilarious. North korea and similar countries have no strong queer community, because this is against the gender roles the communist government desires for its population.
True is however also that this article does not contain this queer perspective that much, but i remembered this context from other articles about north korea and such.
… Korean pop culture is not queer friendly at all, and the gender roles are very very classic in K-pop.
but i have read that k-pop stars are considered to be not male enough?
example: https://studybreaks.com/thoughts/korea-flower-boy-breaks-masculinity/
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/north-koreas-kim-jong-un-wants-to-ban-k-pop-music-calls-it-vicious-cancer-3838712.html
Do you seriously believe that the DPRK is limiting what haircuts people can have?
As for crackdowns on South Korean culture, all sites seem to lead to this article by Daily NK, whose evidence is a piece of paper supposedly smuggled out of the DPRK. Thankfully, they’ve provided us a look at all 3 pixels of the paper. I guess with all of that NED funding they couldn’t afford a scanner or good camera.
I do seriously believe that many communist countries have expectations towards men to fullfill male steretypes, such as “being strong” and such things. For me it is obvious that all societies have a problem with toxic masculinity and structural sexism. One example is that most government people in both communist and capitalistic societies are male-dominated. Just because you have a socialist country which reduces some forms of patriarchy (for instance badly paid care work), it doesn’t mean it is completely gone. So in essence, the lack of queerfeminist theory is a big red flag which makes the article i linked above believable.
Of course communist countries will also have problems with sexism and partriarchy to some degree, no one here has said otherwise. But to jump from that to thinking that they’ll micromanage their populace to such a degree as mandating haircuts and that the people will simply shut up and take something like that is a stretch.
You’re orientalizing this society and using feminism as an excuse to do so. You can engage in feminist critiques of the DPRK as much as you please, but don’t do so in such a way that reinforces the imperialist understanding of the DPRK. That’s a disservice to non-Western feminism.
I have probably trust issues because my female/trans leftwing environment (people i follow on twitter for instance) usually complain loudly that many/most communist/leftwing men don’t know much about queerfeminist theory and that THEY as women, trans or non-binary people have to explain queerfeminist/trans inclusive theory towards cisgender male people over and over again, because the male people are not very interested in reading in that theory area.
It is true that i don’t understand much abouyt non-western feminism but in the communist areas here on lemmy or lemmygrad or somewhere, i have never read a comment criticizing the lack of female/trans people in high positions of power in communist societies. Or at all talking about that.
So basically: given that china and north korea have much control over how their society works, i kind of expect that they use that to bring female/trans people (or for instance people of color) into positions of power. So basically, i trust female/trans people more in working towards queerfeminist politics as someone like Kim Jong Un. And because i don’t see many female/trans people in those governments (i think they would have said that?), i don’t have much hope.
If you truly believe there’s something interesting to get from here post it in another community, for example /c/shitliberalssay, but this is simply racist bullshit against an Asian country.