The Story of Oh
The BBC tells the melancholy story of Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean man who, convinced by his Marxist education that North Korea was a worker’s paradise, decided to defect there with his wife and two children in 1986. Oh, who had just completed his PhD in Germany in Marxist economics and who “had been active in left-wing groups” had no reason to doubt the beckoning invitation of North Korean officials who promised him free health care and a government job, like certain other people you may know.
He chose poorly.
Aged and broken, Oh now concludes that his “life was ruined by his decision to defect to North Korea. Seventy years old, he still does not know the fate of his wife and daughters – either dead or imprisoned in a labour camp.” His wife, who lacked the benefit of a European education, suspected something was amiss from the first. She was aghast when he told her of his plan to defect.
“Do you know what kind of place it is?” she asked. “You have not even been there once. How can you make such a reckless decision?”
But Oh replied that the Northerners were Koreans too – they “cannot be that brutal”, he told her.
Ha ha ha.
Hee, hee, ho, ha, ha ha! LOL. He thought they couldn’t be that brutal. Those are the famous last words.
But being the dutiful wife, she followed Oh with her two children. As soon as he arrived at the Pyongyang, Oh realized that he had not read the fine print. “Communist party officials and children clutching flowers were there to meet them. But despite the cold of a North Korean December, the children were not wearing socks and their traditional clothes were so thin that they shivered. Then he began to suspect that they didn’t have any warm clothes. “When I saw this I was really surprised and my wife even started to cry.”
But there was little time for that. Ignoring his questions about the promises of the job or the government health care, Oh and his family were whisked to a guarded camp where he was drilled in the sayings of Kim Il-Sung. They were kept in privation, the better to make them fear losing what little they had. Soon Oh was told that if he and his family planned to keep on eating he would accept an assignment to Europe where his task was to lure more South Koreans to the worker’s paradise the better to convince the sophisticated Europeans what a great place it was. He was ready to cooperate but was stopped by the courageous actions of his wife.
she was furious. “I remember the two of us talking about it softly under the blanket. I told my wife that by fulfilling this mission, we would preserve our livelihood in North Korea. But she slapped me in the face.” Shin said they would have to pay the price for his mistakes – he could not entrap others.
Damned herself, his wife did not want to damn others. So when Oh arrived in Copenhagen, he defected to the West. For Oh it meant going back to the place he left before. But for his wife and two children it was a death sentence. He never saw them again.
For Shin and her two daughters, Oh’s defection was catastrophic. They were taken to Yodok concentration camp, where the North Korean government imprisons its enemies. The conditions in this slave labour camp are reportedly as bad as anything in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Gulag.
For a time, Oh heard nothing about the fate of his family. Then in February 1991 he managed to get six photographs of his wife and daughters and a tape cassette with a message from them.
“On the tape my daughters were telling me how much they missed me and my wife was saying that perhaps it would be OK for me to come back now.”
Oh still hopes to see them in his lifetime. But realistically if his wife and children were by some miracle still alive, they would by now be broken beyond recognition; and why should Oh want to see them again? To receive their affections perhaps, he who did everything humanly possible to take them from a prosperous country and condemn them in an act of intellectual vanity, to hell on earth? What would it be like to hear your broken child ask, “Why, daddy? Why?”
Why? Because that’s what they taught him in school. That’s what they taught him in the sophisticated cafes. That was the received wisdom. And none of it was true.
Even now Oh Kil-nam might wander, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, from meeting to meeting, to tell his doleful tale. But who would believe him? At the schools, sophisticated cafes, at all the in-places they would turn away and listen in preference to those celebrity academics who taught Oh his Marxist brand of economics, or to those millionaire actors who claim that North Korea is the Worker’s Paradise even if — or perchance because — they will never go there.
Oh took 3 innocents to their doom. But the intellectuals who led Oh are piping along a whole civilization. And Oh, for all his foolishness, is the better man than they. For what is the moral difference between Oh Kil-nam and a Bill Ayers except that Oh Kil-nam had the courage to live out his convictions where Ayers did not? The advantage Ayers has over Oh is not that Ayers is braver, but he secretly knows better. “Guilty as hell but free as a bird.” That’s tellin’ ‘em Bill.
Anyone who believes in something for nothing is already half on the road to being swindled. Today millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people have reached such a pitch of education that they can believe what Oh’s wife in her simplicity could never credit; that there exists something for nothing.
Sure there does.
How many people you know are convinced that free government health care, free government cheese, permanent government jobs are only a vote away? How many people you know are eager with excitement, as Oh was trembling in anticipation, at the glittering prospect of “fundamentally transforming America”. If you had a dollar for every one.
But surely it must be true. It can’t possibly be the case there’s no stash at the end of the rainbow? No political class could be that dishonest, because they’re Americans too and they can’t be lying?
Ha ha ha. Hee, hee, ho, ha, ha ha! Who would have thought? Who would have thought?
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Yet another beautifully written, wry commentary. Lately, each time I read one of your essays I have to go outside and lift my spirits by talking to the plants in my vegetable patch. They know nothing of devious schemes or confidence tricks. They only know how to grow and produce food.
Oh deserves his fate. But his wife, what a woman! and pity his innocent daughters. . . . You know, I’m amazed that the Stalinists at Auntie Beeb aired this.
“You can’t cheat an honest man.”
“Never give a sucker an even break.” So sayeth soothsayer W. C. Fields.
Please, oh please; may all the Progressives find their way to north korea.
I feel sorry for the wife and daughters, particularly the poor girls that were transported to hell on earth through no fault of their own. Unfortunately, the one responsible was the one that was able to run away.
First, they have to teach you to disparage what you have. A pot of bean soup cooked from scratch by a loving, if exploited, mother is not quite up to a wagyu beef dinner wit FLOTUS. A warm winter coat bought on sale at Walmart lacks the Anna Wintour seal of approval that will make you really happy. Playing gin rummy or hopscotch or kickball with your friends is not as good as having dozens of computer games on your own laptop. Turn any satisfaction derived from accomplishment into dissatisfaction at a lack of cool things and you feed the 99% the poison they need to support your power grabs.
Vicki Hearne said that modern academic success depends on believing things quickly.
Hope Prager sees this article.
He’s always talking about things only college educated people could believe.
Oh Kil-nam was 44 when he took his family to North Korea.
Barrack Obama was 48 when he took this country on this ride.
Obama cannot possibly like or respect this country.
He cannot have any respect or admiration at all for the way this country was founded; the way it grew; the way it’s exceptional; the way it became a world superpower because he’s trying to dismantle it brick by brick, doorjamb by doorjamb.
No other way to put this now.
He was indoctrinated as a child.
His father was a communist.
He was raised by a communist.
His mother was a leftist.
He was sent to prep in Ivy League schools where his contempt for the country was reinforced by the professorate, the faculty lounge.
Moves to Chicago. Oh, yeah, that’s a great environment to grow up in.
Home of the radical left movement, hooks up with Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko.
He’s out there claiming that Romney’s a felon, when Romney doesn’t even know any, and half of Obama’s inner circle are felons.
– Limbaugh on Obama
—
Obama’s Work Ethic
Did Obama Really Work His Way Through College And Harvard Law School ?
(From Factcheck.org) July 2, 2008
His new ad says he “worked his way” through college and law school. His campaign says he had two summer jobs.
Obama’s new ad, “Dignity,” is largely a 30-second version of his last one, “Country I Love.” It, too, will be airing in 18 states, according to the presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign.
The ad begins with the announcer telling us that Obama “worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” Actually, Obama took out loans to get himself through college, as we heard in a 60-second ad his campaign began running last month. We don’t know how much assistance his family provided.
But “worked his way” through college and law school? The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father” having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm.
We asked campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, “He had the two jobs I told you about.”
Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it’s a real stretch to claim he “worked his way” through school.
—
Oh, I did read that he also worked at an ice cream store once in high school.
—
My family was probly middle-upper middle class in the 50′s.
Certainly no poverty case
I had a job sweeping and mopping floors from fourth grade on.
A full time job every summer in high school.
…and so many different jobs in college it’s hard to remember.
But never claimed I worked my way through college, ’cause my folks paid much of my way.
The Obama’s took out massive student loans.
Yodok concentration camp (from BBC)
About 50,000 people are held in Yodok, most imprisoned without trial
Prisoners are divided into two areas – Revolutionary Zone and Total Control
Zone (TCZ)
Political prisoners held in TCZ never released
Many inmates are held as family members of so-called criminals
Prisoners face forced hard labour, starvation rations, beatings, inadequate
medical care and filthy conditions
30% of new prisoners die, according to a former inmate, and many eat rats
and earthworms to survive.
As many as 200,000 people estimated to be held in political prison camps
around the country
Source: Amnesty International
I can’t find it in myself for sardonic laughter. The poor wife knew what was in store for them.
Satan’s only power is he tells us lies we want to believe. I pray deliverance for his poor wife and daughters.
The arguments for academic freedom and tenure at the university level are defensible in theory. In theory the students are adults able to make choices and be responsible for them. The professors face rigorous and jealous peer review that would spot any flaw. Academics assume risk by going beyond what is already known and creating new knowledge. Security is only reached after a long and withering process of critical review. In theory theory mirrors practice but in practice not so much.
None of the arguments listed above apply to the primary and secondary level of public education where the real damage to society begins. There tenure exists solely to protect government employees who ape the status of real academics without facing any of the restrictions. Their students are not adults making a choice but captive children. The review process is a joke and the content is not held to a high standard nor is there any drive to face risk by seeking new information but only the content accepted by the faculty is transmitted. Since the system is closed to external review in the market sense any error introduced into the curriculum can be impossible to remove. The content is subject to alteration by political pressure, even though that is exactly what the tenure system was supposed to prevent. That pressure however is not that of objective reality nor is it that of public scrutiny but it is only that of a small self selecting and indeed conspiratorial group.
None of the arguments for respecting the educational system apply in the case of Barack Obama. He was never selected by merit. He was never objectively evaluated. He never faced consequences for failure.
We need to regain control of our education systems at all levels. It was lost in a political campaign in the 1950s and ’60s. The myths of McCarthyism were used to remove the review process that had kept radicals from infesting the public schools. The entrenching of the radicals through the protections afforded by government unions also happened within the last 50-60 years. The seizure of curriculum to establish radical dominance was a planned campaign. The debasing of the graduate and undergraduate systems, reducing them to glorified versions of the public precollegiate systems, has proceeded apace.
I remember a line about the California Watt’s riots as viewed on TV by a man from Asia. If I recall correctly it went something like the following: He asked his hosts, “Why are those people rioting and looting.” His hosts said because they feel poor and oppressed.” The Asian said,”Those are the fattest poor people that I have ever seen.”
The adult men that escape from North Korea have a heck of time adapting to the S.Korean life style/culture of work. You have to show up on time, have only prescribed times for lunch and breaks, and you put in 9 hours a day at a minimum. The men and the half feral parent-less children have trouble staying inside that long. The kids have trouble taking the short and pithy corrections typical from management in the medium and small farms. They take it way to personal. The teenagers have to be feed up a lot because they have been so malnourished. If they get them young enough they’ll show growth spurts.
Because food and pay is so low in N. Korea the men will wander off to eat at home if their is food there. It is kind of the old the state pretends to pay them and they pretend to work. The women adapt better.
One thing that strikes me about East Asia, mass hunger, starvation, is not all that far back in their various histories. I suspect that it is not too far away in some of the more “leftist” countries.
Oh Kil-nam was a fool; he never learned to think for himself, and didn’t listen to his wife as she tried to warn him of the consequences of his actions.
Attempting to reform the existing system of entrenched radical teachers and administrators from our public schools is the most important step to regaining the culture. A voucher system will put the control back into the hands of parents, where it belongs. But even worse are the “Schools of Education” in our universities, where the radical teachers are ingrained with the Marxist ideologies by folks such as William Ayers ["retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar"]. Unless you remove their evil influence, our public schools system will never be changed; Gramsci will have won!
Oh got his received wisdom through hard work and collusion with the academic class. Theirs was vanity and the conceit of power. Ayers and O on the other hand do not need received knowledge nor ideological sustenance. What motivates them is not the perfected other but pure visceral hatred for their neighbors and fellow countrymen. TWANLOC.
Sometimes people just refuse to see things as they are. They see only themselves and project that image onto the object of their affection.
The story reminds me of Timothy Treadwell. I worked with someone who had met him as part of the bear biology community in Alaska.
Timithy was a young man who overcame a troubled past of alchohol and drug addiction when he found his true passion – the bears of Alaska. He achieved a good deal of fame and attention for his work until he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten one fine day.
His fatal flaw was that he simply refused to accept what we all know about bears to be true. He simply set up his camp right in the middle of bear country and walked among them without any precaution at all. Most bear biologists will use portable electric fences, pepper spray and carry firearms. My collegue kept a .50 cal revolover and told me “if it happens the first 5 rounds are for the bear”. Timothy thought himself gifted and special. The real tragedy is that like Oh, he took another innocent with him.
Another example is Vittorio Arrigoni. He was a self styled ‘activist’, reportedly gay, who found his calling in Gaza. He lived there and devoted himself to anti-Israel activism and reporting. In April of 2011 he was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Gazan jihadis. In a video he was accused by the kidnappers of “spreading corruption” and his home country Italy as an “infidel state”.
A scorpion is not a misunderstood frog.
15. spindok
After all these years, I had never heard about a girlfriend getting eaten.
Does fits in with Oh’s family story.
Very sad, but very nice way, Wretchard, of pointing out the end result of that platform in the previous post of which some were so approving.
The thing about Oh is that the trip was in fast-motion so that we can see the death wish that underlies all of those statist, social engineering dreams.
What so many overlook is the fact that the American Revolution was a religious revolution and that the republicanism that followed was imposed by elites — it was not a bottom-up process — elites who understood that they were working with a consensual moral substrate, Christianity. Diversity among various versions of Christian dogma drove the engine and gave it dynamic energy, but pretty nearly everyone agreed on the existence of an objective morality that they violated at their peril.
We got almost 3 centuries of stupendous success out of this effort, only the second major one in human history, to fashion a City of God.
But now, the consensus appears to have eroded catastrophically. Too many of us have, like Oh, swallowed the serpent’s lies. Instead, we have a religious war between those who still hold to the world view we inherited from Christendom, many unconsciously, and those who are wedded to an opposing dogma, a materialist theology in which death and the will to power reign supreme and which, should it win out, will make little Ohs of most of us.
Back in the early 90′s I recall reading of an American couple who, unable to “make it” in the USA defected to communist eastern europe in the 70′s.
By 1992 they were in their third country, as each communist regime fell and they went looking for another Worker’s Paradise that was still in business.
In the same timeframe I recall hearing an interview with a man in Europe who was an “expert” on communism. He described his astonishment at having just attended the largest book fair in Europe, at which for the first time he found not one single book on communism. He said, “Every year there would be new books on how communism worked and why, and how well it did some things as opposed to others and as compared to capitalism. Now, after a lifetime of work we find out there was never anything to study in the first place.”
OT, but too great to miss:
Amazing Op Ed in the LA Times!
What California could learn from Wisconsin.
Wretchard: “Who would have thought?”
Someone once said, more or less, that democracy comes to an end the minute the people discover that they can vote themselves goodies out of the public treasury.
Someone else also said, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?”
This is one of the silliest stories I’ve ever read. First, the title is an obvious allusion to the porn movie/book of the 70′s — The Story of O, which involves bondage and dominance sex. Second, the fable is obviously a moralistic tale designed to “teach” sheep not to stray from the fold. It reminds of the movie with Gregory Hines in which a tap dancer defects to Russia and winds up imprisoned in a slum, disillusioned and bitter about his choice.
If you take the story at face value, it doesn’t hang together. Why would a woman who knew what North Korean society was like agree to follow her husband there? Why would you assume that a mature grad student in his 40′s would be “indoctrinated” by the one or two Marxist professors, rather than choosing that viewpoint from the variety of views professors hold in every grad program? Are we to believe that his wife is so loyal she would follow him overseas but he is so disloyal he would be slavish to Communism and yet abandon his family to leave Korea?
His treatment in Korea is exactly what would be expected for defectors anywhere, including those defecting to the USA. A defector cannot be trusted because he or she has already betrayed one country. A defector who is a grad student has no intelligence of value to trade for support in a new country. His only value would be as an object lesson — propaganda. That is exactly the way this story is being used here — propaganda against so-called Marxist professors and a cautionary tale to students that Korea is a bad place and that Marxism doesn’t work well in practice no matter how attractive in theory. As if any grad student wouldn’t have encountered that information many times.
I find myself wondering how ill-treated this man and his family were as Koreans in a country that is not welcoming of multicultural people. Gregory Hines character defected because of racism. When we mistreat people who are members of minority groups, we set up a motive for them to seek a personal solution. Yet people here seem to think the problem is those nasty professors indoctrinating students and not those nasty neighbors who make people of other national heritages feel unwelcome. But that assumes there is any truth at all to this silly story.
It’s truly as bad as Cuba over there.
About every source for Yodok concentration camp is a British tabloid, “Human Rights” front reporting-from-Homs, Libya, Uganda, or other propaganda rag. To invoke Nazi Germany is insulting and offensive.
Maybe it’s all true and as bad as they say — but not because they are saying it. The BBC’s word is only reason to disbelieve anything.
For now, Oh should be considered another Chen saying everything the paranoid want to hear to affirm their prejudices, and that the media-intelligence complex conspires to profit from. I denounce their antics.
And the response from the left-collectivists:
“Oh, we’re nothing like North Korea. We care about YOU. We so MUCH that we must insist on telling you how to run your own life, how big your sodas are, how much and what kind of health care you need.
Because we CARE.
We would NEVER throw you into a gulag unless the experience would be good for you.
And did we tell you how much SMARTER we are than you sad unfortunate plebes?”
Alas, I am more surprised that the BBC would publish anything critical of a socialist paradise than I am that a Marxist idiot educated by other Marxist idiots would deny reality and cause so much needless pain for his wife and daughters.
Thank you, Sally @ 21 for demonstrating the truth of the old adage, “You can’t tell anyone anything they don’t want to know.”
And Sally, that is one of the silliest comments I’ve ever read.
Oh Kil-nam’s case is a pretty famous one. Here’s the Wikipedia entry. And there’s a lot of collateral for the claim that North Korea is a totalitarian country obsessed with capturing humans from abroad.
For example, about 3,800 Japanese citizens have been kidnapped, sometimes from the streets of Japan and spirited to North Korea. In fact, North Korea has officially admitted that it does this and is the subject of bilateral talks and multilateral talks which include the Red Cross.
It’s not like Oh Kil-nam is saying anything new. The only thing particular about Oh Kil-nam is that he walked into it, rather than being grabbed and thrown into a van.
And it’s in a grand tradition. In the 1930s and 1940s, many Europeans made the pilgrimage to the worker’s paradise never to return. Those who wonder what ever became of those Spanish Republicans who escaped to the Soviet Union will find most of them wound up in the Gulags, as for example did Valentin Gonzalez.
Of course everybody on the Left thinks its just a boogeyman story. So I propose a test. Those who think it can’t really be that bad in North Korea can defect there to find out first hand. And then if they are correct about it being not too bad after all, they will be able to tell us about it.
Any takers?
Wouldn’t it be nice to know anywhere is safe or dangerous based on reliable sources? From the reporting and documentaries I’ve watched, the Left hates North Korea more than the Right for giving them a bad name. And since the media is undeniably Left, I don’t want to believe anything they are saying.
I’d consider going to other forbidden countries on a dare, except that it wouldn’t accomplish anything. Nobody would report it, although they might put on a show to “prove” how bad they are. Then they’d put me on a plane and fly me back to Oz… I’d get a bill in the mail weeks later charging me for the journey.
Every time I take a close look at leftist thought, I am amazed by the immaturity and spoiled-brattishness of it. Sure, there are lots of pretty-sounding words on the surface. But once you dig your way through the fluff and verbal styrofoam, unpack the boxes within boxes, and get down to the small kernel of what leftists actually believe, it’s nothing but avarice and narcissism. Leftism is narcissism expressed as politics.
I meant to add: Michael Walsh, in another article here at PJM today, makes a pretty good case that the Democratic Party is basically a Mafia front. I never thought about it that way, but it fits, and Walsh points out where some of today’s Democrat party leaders have explicit Mob ties.
The story described in Wikipedia is nothing like your summary of it above.
It may seem to you that no one could possibly be an apologist for a communist system without having been duped somehow, but Oh was a mature economist at the point he defected. He also seems to have been caught up in politics against supporters of South Korea in his expatriate community. Remember that there was a war between North and South Korea and that partisans of both sides would have strong feelings in that time period. He regrets the separation from his wife and kids — isn’t that natural?
I find it telling that his story is reframed as a matter of indoctrination into marxist ideas and disappointment with the worker’s paradise. I also find it interesting that people here so uncritically buy the story as presented and fit it eagerly into their own biases instead of wondering about the aspects that just made no sense in this retelling. I can understand that people who are so eager to believe anything that fits their own prejudices would be worried about the possibility of college professors indoctrinating students. If you believe whatever your authorities tell you, the idea of critical thinking being taught or practiced will be foreign and you will have to worry about students buying whatever their professors say whole cloth. That isn’t what higher education consists of these days — the the professors or the students. But this story was actually about a mature economist making a decision based on his political beliefs, not a student being indoctrinated into marxism, as presented here.
Sally might consider surfing some of the K-blogs such as One Free Korea and ROK Drop, to see more such stories about North Korea.
And it remains a self-damning fact that the Left would indict the Nork regime just as harshly as we do, if doing so wouldn’t put them on the same side as us.
Really Sally? A movie staring Gregory Hines is the true morality tale here?
Really?
Hollywood fiction about racism trumps a real life story of personal disaster.
Talk about silly, Sally.
“Obama/Biden 2012 – If You Want To Be Special”
28. Baobo – “the Left hates North Korea more than the Right”
I understand that “Left/Right” is common usage, but those terms lead to a complete misunderstanding of the current political struggle. The struggle is between “ordered liberty” (exemplified by the U.S. Constitution) and unrestrained Statism (e.g., ObamaCare). This theme is covered in a very brief essay here http://fundamentalsofliberty.com/?page_id=576
Sally is probably right about this story being fiction. After all, nobody could be that brutal (not LOL, COL)
My oldest son majored in history with a minor in education at a large state university that turns out thousands of teachers every year. (Before you stereotype him, you should know that before he was a college student, he was a Devil Dog.) He says the history dept. was OK, but the education department was nothing but nonsense and Marxist propaganda (sorry for the redundancy). This is where our public school teachers come from.
32- Are those North Korea blogs like the Libyan highlander blog? A supposed Libyan girl who championed (in English) Philip Zimbardo as an inspiration for Arab reform?
35. Radag Brown – I honestly don’t know what to believe. We shouldn’t bear any blame for being skeptical either way, but let’s remain open-minded.
Can Sally come out and play? We can have an interesting conversation. Yes, Wretchard often chooses provocative titles. Something we can all enjoy.
That aside, BBC would be ill-advised indeed if they created a fictional account of someone, who, still living, would be available to refute.
As for 40 year old grad students being deceived, what’s your point? That category and many categories far more clever are deceived daily. I could provide some interesting examples regarding a governmental agency engaged primarily (until 2008, at least) in human space flight.
Social collectivism always reduces ultimately to the same simple idea. We all contribute to the great storehouse according to our ability, and we all take from the storehouse according to our need. (You know, the rich must be taxed more to pay “their fair share”.)
The trouble comes when people realize that they can take from the storehouse regardless of how efficiently, effectively, or productively they labor.
What is the dream of retirement, if not to reduce one’s productivity to nil, while subsisting from savings or other reserves. Why, therefore, is it difficult to understand that the productivity, across the mean, falls dramatically when the benefit is personalized while the cost is socialized?
Take a scan of the work titled “Tragedy of the Commons”.
Moreover, if we ever managed to fill the storehouse, it becomes too tempting a target for other takers to neglect. You would consume your meager resources trying to protect from looters.
Despite the popular belief, the Devil doesn’t seduce you by appealing to your greed or lust; that is way to crude, to blunt and too aparent. No, he appeals to your vanity. He tells you that you’re special, you’re important and that you deserve much better than what you have. Once your ego is sufficiently stroked, you’re more than willing to give in to your lusts, you greed and your envy. Oh, especially your envy.
Oh’s story is the same story told over and over again by just about every traitor thoughout history.Oh didn’t defect to North Korea because he believed that it was a paradise (workers or otherwise) but because…
This is why Marxism, Communism and all the other authoritariansims are popular among our inttelectual elites. It’s not about the proletariat or the masses; as far as the elites are concerned can rot in Hell (as many have done over the past decades/centuries.) The “revolution” is about the elites and their self importance.
KRB
but Oh was a mature economist at the point he defected
Oh probably thought he was mature too. After all, he was an economist with a PhD. He was politically active. He thought he knew the facts. Did he know them? On his arrival in Pyongyang he realized the truth of Mark Twain’s adage. It’s what you don’t know that gets you. It’s what you know that ain’t so that’s really the killer.
Maturity is not necessarily a function of time, but ripeness. Ripeness not decay; and long exposure to drivel produces the latter, not the former. Oh must have thought that with the academic fruit salad after his name and all those discussions he had with his leftist friends that he was sophisticated, savvy and wise.
Ha ha ha.
In reality Oh knew less than his wife. He probably knew less than the homeless man on the street whose basic instincts would have have led him to mistrust the offers of men who promised him the moon and the stars. He’d guess there was a catch, but the PhD economist didn’t. Oh’s wife put her finger on it. You’ve never been there, how can you know?
How could he know? A genuine epistemological question.
He knew from his books, from his friends who had never been to North Korea; from many in the media. He learned from say, Chomsky. Chomsky knows something doesn’t he?
Believe Chomsky. Go ahead. Why not? Reading Chomsky is less fantastic than reading books which seriously maintain that al-Qaeda is a wonderful organization.
And Chomsky’s not alone. Who’s the biggest food aid donor to North Korea? The U.S.A. There is no shortage of people who would have credited the proposition that North Korea isn’t as bad as propaganda makes it out to be. It’s probably worse. We probably don’t know the half of it.
You can never convince some people that Marxist indoctrination, any more than the devil, actually exists. It’s an old wives tale, a result of bias. Therefore we may safely watch it fed to our children, to whom we would never give a transfat fried chicken nugget, for we love them more than Oh loved his wife and daughters. We care for them so much that we would never willingly expose them to the horrors that Oh brought on them.
And yet how many thousands do just that. Day after day. Well it’s their choice. But like the knight said, “he choose poorly.”
“I also find it interesting that people here so uncritically buy the story as presented and fit it eagerly into their own biases instead of wondering about the aspects that just made no sense in this retelling”
Sally, the story is TRUE. That is why people “buy IT”. Speaking of bias, yours is showing.
Anyway, when you are ready, I know a guy with a boat. Fast Boat. REAL FAST BOAT.
I’m sure we can get you into Cuba. You might have to paddle the last few Km’s but I’d bet you have strong arms to go with your strong back.
I thought socialism was dead but then again I thought with the Bee Gees dying off the world was safe from bubble gum music. Then while looking for covers of “like a bomb” I found this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6dvUVOih9Y
I think they are Romanian. So after getting free of socialism, Romanians are being afflicted by bubble gum music. Some folks never get a break.
I figure you can burn this so when your Volt breaks down you’ll have something to listen to while waiting for the tow truck.
This looks to be the #1 hit for Europe this Summer. At least until they find out the CIA is using the 3 hour continuous loop cover to crack the real hard cases at Gitmo.
Celer, Silens, Mortalis.
s @ 31: but Oh was a mature economist at the point he defected.
That being the point.
We have so many more economists we’d like to have follow his example, please offer your suggestions as to how to facilitate this.
Very good Mr Fernandez. I highly recommend the book The Aquariums of Pyongyang. The victims in this true story were Koreans residing in Japan. North Korea had organized very well among the half million or more Koreans residing in Japan. (A leftover from World War II when Japan occupied Korea and forced or enticed millions of Koreans to labor in Japan’s war industry.)Koreans organized schools and civic organizations extolling the ‘real’ Korea, the Korea of Kim Il Sung, ‘People’s Democratic Republic” (!). About 1962 the family decides to leave behind their prosperous life in Osaka and take the North Korean ship to North Korea and start their new life there–true Koreans, true patriots. Three generations went. The grandfather had great reservations, but went along. The story is told by the boy, the only one to survive. He too escaped and wrote the story of his family’s tragic life and death in a North Korean prison camp. The boy’s father believed all the propaganda he heard in Japan, and took his parents, his wife and all but one of his children to their deaths in China. A compelling book, and one which reinforces and magnifies Mr Fernandez’ point about believing the lies of the collectivist tyrants.
Methinks thee doth project too much, Sally.
There’s a hoary old pickup line in Spanish, which in English goes like this: “your eyes say ‘yes’, but your lips say ‘no’. Which shall I believe?”
I think actions speak louder than words. I remember being at a private party where a prominent member of the American communist party was in attendance. Someone came into the room and handed him an envelope, whispering a message which I overheard. He was getting rental payments from properties he owned.
“Your eyes say ‘yes’, but your lips say ‘no’. Which shall I believe?”
The safest course is to watch what a man actually does, not what he says. Do you believe in Marxism? Like Chomsky who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts? Like perhaps Michael Moore or Sean Penn or that supermodel who lives in London? Like Bill Ayers maybe?
If I were uncharitable I’d say they were putting me on. That like fake preachers they had one set of words for the podium and another for when they got the envelope from their rentals.
I knew a lot of people who actually believed in Communism. They went and joined the New People’s Army and lived in the sticks, in the mud, in the jungle. Many of them died. And while I hate what they believed in, I have no doubt whatsoever that they sincerely believed in what they preached.
Oh was sincere. He put his money where his mouth was. The only problem was he bet on the wrong horse. Boy did he bet on the wrong number. But as regards all those celebrity Marxists with multiple residences in Paris, London and New York, no thanks.
You can trust them if you want. I’ll take my chances with the homeless man before I trust them.
Radag @ 35 – I wish those folks creating the site you link would come to their senses.
We enjoy a Constitutional Republic. Democracy is a process we use to select certain members of the Legislative Branch.
The story is true in that Oh existed and went to North Korea then subsequently defected again, leaving his family behind. The rest of the elaboration serves the storyteller. Imputing thoughts and feelings to Oh beyond his statements is fiction. Further, there is a conflation of No Korea now with what it was then (30 years ago) and a conflation of the personal tragedy of leaving his wife and children (now long grown) and the political meaning of his actions. We don’t know whether he understood the realities of No Korea at the time he defected, nor do we know whether he knew the realities but hoped to make the system better by working from within, nor do we know whether he considered those imperfections preferable to the imperfections of the circumstances he was living in while in Europe (divided Germany). There are a whole lot of assumptions in the story as presented here, pleasing to the beliefs of this blog’s readers, judging by the comments.
Equating what passed for education in communist countries with what happens in Western education is entirely unjustified by any facts. Calling anything taught in a Graduate Education program “Marxist” works only with the very broadest definition of Marxism, a construction so broad as to entirely change the meaning of the word. I encountered someone recently who accused the K-12 public schools of indoctrinating children with socialism. I find it hard to imagine what that person could have meant by that statement — encourating kids to share their toys, maybe? Saying something nice about FDR?
I have no intention of defending Marxism, No Korea, Oh or public education, but it does bother me when fiction is confused with fact and when people use terms with personal meanings — or when people feel entitled to reconstruct historical events and make up their own set of facts (yes, I know Wikipedia does that too).
Communist countries do hold the families of their embassy workers hostage to prevent defections. Oh may even have discussed his actions with his wife before defecting the second time. Who knows. I do know that the point isn’t that he was indoctrinated by his grad program into something so foolish. Even I knew No Korea was not a worker’s paradise when I was a child and people in Germany certainly knew about Stalin and the flaws in Eastern bloc communism, first hand. That part of the story makes no sense if you think about Oh as a living, breathing, thinking person.
Would it surprise you to know that according to the State Dept, well over 2/3 of people who leave the USA as expatriates intending never to return are back within 2 years. It is very hard to go live somewhere else, even if it is a worker’s paradise, because most people aren’t flexible.
Sally – perhaps I misunderstood, or, misunderestimated you. Is your main contention that mature folks cannot be deceived? That they make rational choices based on validated fact?
That Oh received sufficient true information to make that choice?
45. epignosis – “I wish those folks creating the site you link would come to their senses. We enjoy a Constitutional Republic. Democracy is a process we use to select certain members of the Legislative Branch.”
“those folks” would be me and I am interested in your critique. Are you referring to that horizontal chart with Communists on the left, Fascists on the right and Democracy in the middle?
That chart is meant to be an example of INCORRECT political analysis. It is followed by a vertical chart that I believe is more in tune with reality and not at all in conflict with your point about a “Constitutional Republic”.
46. Sally
“Would it surprise you to know that according to the State Dept, well over 2/3 of people who leave the USA as expatriates intending never to return are back within 2 years. It is very hard to go live somewhere else, even if it is a worker’s paradise, because most people aren’t flexible.”
Sally, would it surprise you to know that I and millions of other immigrants to America and Canada who chose to leave the country of our birth, never went back there? We stayed and prospered here because we took opportunities that did not exist back where we came from, because we worked hard and because we are very flexible.
The entire population of America and Canada (including the Indians and Inuit) is from someplace else. What was your point again?
Radag – I’ll read it more carefully. Point is direct democracy incorporates the seeds of its own destruction, tyranny of the majority. When the majority of those with less, decide to loot the minority with more.
We seem to be suffering a little bout of that virus ourselves. Would that the people here at BC recognize that it may not be wise to champion ‘democracy’ as a form of governance.
To me, this is Sally’s money quote: “His treatment in Korea is exactly what would be expected for defectors anywhere, including those defecting to the USA.”
Epi, what I was getting at earlier, and which I still stand by, is that democracy works when it is embedded in an overarching moral and cultural framework that supports and promotes good decision making on the part of the populous.
Sally – “I find it hard to imagine what that person could have meant by that statement”
Usually it is not so much as endorsing Marx as it is a slow and ineluctable rejection of American traditions. The horse is not carved directly but by leaving what is not horse un-chiselled in stone. Where there is no love of country there is only hatred and within the vacuum of that hatred is ideology. Did I read that in Wikipedia? No, I experienced in within my lifelong educational experiences.
One cannot take a language course in California without being exposed to anti-American toxic venom.
maineman – part of that framework was documented in the Constitution. When the Republic operates within that boundary, it’s great.
We have subverted our republic, however, by creating a shell game for democratic election of the CO & XO, which is unfortunate, because now we have a fool as Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world.
Where does it say, in any of our governing documents, that the College of Electors has to select between a R and a D nominee?
#21 “His treatment in Korea is exactly what would be expected for defectors anywhere, including those defecting to the USA.”
There is actually someone at PJMedia who we can categorically ask about that assertion. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a fellow PJExpress writer, whose column I hope you will visit, “is the highest-ranking official ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. He is currently writing a book on disinformation together with Prof. Ronald Rychlak.”
He ought to know. But nah, why ask him? He only lived under Communism.
The most singular aspect of the Oh story is how little value he put on actual direct knowledge. What he believed was all out books and second hand accounts.
So why ask Ion Mihai Pacepa? Why look at satellite photos showing no lights in North Korea? Why peruse photos of concentration camps in North Korea? Who cares if there’s a road thousands of miles long in Russia called the Road of Bones built by poor zeks. Of what matter are the hundreds of thousands of people who can tell you from direct experience that going from Cuba to the USA is not the same as going from the USA to Cuba?
That’s just propaganda.
One is tempted to say that statements like “his treatment in Korea is exactly what would be expected for defectors anywhere, including those defecting to the USA” are demonstrably false. No. Nothing is demonstrable at all.
As to the charge that it’s propaganda, why not? If there are no facts then we are all propagandists and one might as well write one sort of fiction as another.
But there’s another reason why this story cannot be propaganda. The Left is inconvinceable. They’re as certain as saints in what they sure to be true. And if they won’t believe the physical facts with their own eyes, why should they credit a story in the Belmont Club? They won’t believe it because to do so would sink their mental world. Thus nothing on these pages is meant to convince the already certain that what they know is wrong. To even attempt it would be futile.
So no offense is meant. If anybody doesn’t like the story of Oh they can fall back on their own truth. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Maineman #51:
I have to agree with you that is the money quote from Sally.
Sally, would that apply to Lt Victor Belenko, who defected to the USA with a Mig-25?
You should read his book, Mig Pilot. There was a “mature” man who had his eyes opened, but only after he arived here. He went looking for a place that was less screwed up than the USSR, leaving his wife behind. He was stunned when he discovered the truth, after denying for some time what his eyes told him, tossing it off as propaganda.
And when reality hit him, it really, really hit.
29. Cousin Dave:
“One of the distinguishing things about the left is a lack of self-awareness.”
– Dennis Prager
“One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it’s very complex, it’s very profound.”
He went on to study at the Russian Institute (now Harriman Institute) at Columbia University.[1]. He speaks, and lectures in several foreign languages, including Russian and Hebrew[2].
Prager taught Jewish and Russian History at Brooklyn College, and was a Fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, where he did his graduate work at the Russian Institute (now the Harriman Institute) and Middle East Institute from 1970-1972.
More on Pacepa under the bi-line “I wrote John Kerry’s speech!”
As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe.
Gee, are links being killed by the filter?
Pacepa wrote an article in National Review that was bi-lined; ” I wrote John Kerry’s speech!”
http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200402260828.asp
A bit of an eye opener.
“The story is true in that Oh existed and went to North Korea then subsequently defected again, leaving his family behind. The rest of the elaboration serves the storyteller. Imputing thoughts and feelings to Oh beyond his statements is fiction.”
God forbid anyone reads Oh’s story and tries to learn a life lesson from it. God forbid anyone reads his quotes and connects his initial opinion that a North Korean communist government based upon Marxist ideology might be a great place to live with his actual life experience.
Sorry Sally but I’ve seen the wall separating East Germany from West Germany. I saw the guards in the towers and the mine fields designed to keep the east germans in. I’ve taken the duty train to Berlin over night and when it stopped been surrounded by armed east german guards.
I keep a loaded .45 by my bed at night. When and if those people kick my door in at night to take me away I’m getting at least one shot off. I’ll let you guess which part of my comments above are fiction….
Sally – A good bit of your argument seems to rest on the idea that people, especially educated ones, aren’t likely to make poor decisions that would clearly affect them and/or their loved ones negatively. Why would any rational person do that?
In my experience, humans (myself included) will often look straight at an A/B constructive/dangerous choice where the rational decision is A, and reach right out and embrace B, and then suffer the inevitable, rationally foreseeable consequences. Much to the bewilderment of friends, family, and YouTube viewers.
Maintaining that Oh couldn’t have made such a self-destructive choice because a rational well-educated, mature adult wouldn’t, is wishful thinking. I hope your life never depends on some rational, mature, educated adult making the right decision.
“His treatment in Korea is exactly what would be expected for defectors anywhere, including those defecting to the USA.”
Sally, re-read this sentence above, and then defend it. So you cannot worm out of it, let me make clear it’s assertions a bit by restating it:
“The imprisoning and indoctrination of Oh, and his family upon arrival, and the sending of Oh’s wife and children to a death camp as punishment is exactly what defectors to the United States, Canada, Great Britain of Australia can expect to also happen if they decide to return to their country of origin.”
Please link to the many case-studies you obviously are aware of where this kind of thing happened in any of the countries listed above.
If you can’t, then redeem yourself by admitting you made a foolish claim.
If you can’t do even THAT, please go away so as to not embarrass yourself again.
Anyone who visited FreeRepulic during the 1990′s would be familiar with Alamo-Girl. Her daughter Thermopylae posted there for the first time today. She asked about the tree of knowledge (of good and evil) and the snake.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2907653/posts?page=3
answers 9-14 even 15 a little imho are pretty good. I make the point in 16 that “A helpful way to understand both modernism (as opposed to post modernism)and Genesis is to compare Descartes’ Tree of Knowledge — with Genesis Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Recently the President gave an interview in which he said that he could be re-elected if he could tell the right “story”. He was widely mocked for that remark, even by Romney. But they shouldn’t laugh. Obama understands the power of “stories”; understands it maybe better than Romney.
People are tremendously vulnerable to stories. In many cases they prefer the story to the fact. Sometimes they will even prefer to believe the story when confronted with contrary facts. Obama may be right. People will endure some hunger, but they cannot endure a life without the comfort of a story.
The Oh incident, and the willingness in the West to think that North Korea treats defectors like any other country is an example of power of myth, the power of the story. Man is a deeply religious creature. Marxists understand this better than anyone else and despite their protestations do nothing else than serve up an obscurantist faith. They have the full panoply of saints, clergy, doctrine, confessions, liturgy, processions, iconography and even sacred music.
It is immensely depressing.
Although I hope for the best, deep down I suspect that Marxists would rather the ruin the world before they ruined their precious story. What they can’t ever hear is that their salvational arc is a lie. That is why the “progressive” agenda can never be discredited. North Korea, Cambodia, East Germany, Stalin, Detroit, Chicago, can fail ad infinitum. And they’ll try again. For their faith is true; and the only reason the progressive agenda ever crumbles is because it hasn’t been tried hard enough.
They’re set and there’s nothing whatsoever you can do about it.
Truth to tell I too am a prisoner of religion. I have an illogical reluctance to hurt people or clamp down on them, even though I know they mean to do harm to me. Maybe its the power of the Christian story. Maybe it was watching all those old Lone Ranger shows. Because even if had I the power I would not compel the Marxists to amend their destructive ways, though I am certain that if they had the power they would use it to an unlimited extent to do exactly what they did to Oh.
But I can’t bring myself to put on the Ring of Power, except in dire need. Call it crazy, but there’s nothing whatsoever I can do about it. I suspect many are like that. What sets apart conservatives from progressives is that conservatives fully intend to leave them alone, while progressives fully intend to bring everyone to heel.
And that’s how it is.
What clears the decks every now and again is reality. It is reality, not conservatives or libertarians, who thin out the progressives. The progressives start the wars, famines, economic collapses etc that trim them back. Literally.
The greatest of death among party members is the purge. The number of communists killed by the CIA is nothing as to the number of communists killed by the Cheka. And then there’s starvation, riot and disease which is actually the natural state of the progressive world once they run out of Other People’s Money.
I just hope to survive and emerge from some piece of fallen galvanized iron on the final day when all the progressives have reformed each other to death. And if not — well I told you religion was endemic — perhaps we need it for comfrt. Believing in God makes more sense than believing in Hope and Change. If Mr. Oh has any hope of seeing his wife and daughters ever again, it will be in some other paradise, not the Worker’s Paradise which he so foolishly believed in.
THIS IS THE MITT ROMNEY I WANT TO SEE MORE OF
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/07/ka-boom-romney-slams-big-fail-obama-in-irwin-pa-video/
The FULL speech (MSNBC cut it short):
http://www.therightscoop.com/soon-watch-romney-live-in-irwin-pennsylvania/
63. wretchard:
These are realities Sowell fears we are ignoring at our peril:
Why Aren’t Race Riots News?
The media ignore racially motivated violence — guaranteeing that it will get worse.
A Censored Race War
The media ignore racially motivated black-on-white crime.
By Thomas Sowell
Keep plucking that chicken, Sally.
I recall the boat people and other refugees from Viet Nam in the 1970s. They settled in California, New Jersey, Texas and other places in the USA as well.
They have thrived in the free market here.
I live in Florida where many Cubans I met in the 60s and 70s spoke of Cuba before and after Castro’s revolution. Some came in rowboats and on innertubes, and upon landing in the keys, asked the authorities, “When can we begin working?”.
66- Who do you think really sponsored Castro’s revolution?
Many immigrants have rushed to the U.S. based on myths, only to find themselves wage slaves at a 7-11 being shot at- just like in North Korea almost. I don’t think Oh is a fraud based on overall circumstances, but he is being exploited twice in a way: first by the North Koreans and now by the South. (4th post, I’m done)
64. Don Rodrigo – very encouraging speech by Romney. The whole speech at the rightscoop link is worth sitting through.
When the U.S. system emits bad economic or political smells, we in Canada are always down wind and we get a snoot full. We can’t vote in American elections but we surely suffer the consequences. This speech by Romney was way better than anything Obama has been presenting. It was almost good enough to have been written by the Belmont Club. I hope this is the start of something good.
Baobo@67:
You have very strange views of the conditions in both the USA and in North Korea. Or maybe that’s how it is in the parallel universe from which you originally came.
Our guest needs to read Doc Sanity on Projection.
Obama is demanding more tax returns from Romney. Romney should seize the opening to call Obama out as follows. “You want documents from me? Great because I want documents from you. Here is my list. I want your tax returns and your wife’s for the last 15 years. I want your college and law school transcripts. I want your financial aid records. I want your real Social Security number. I want, yes I really do, your real long form birth certificate. I don’t care what some house trained judge says. I sure as hell have “standing” to demand these things. So you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Put up or shut up and get off stage.”
In the military legal system there is a concept called “Cat out of the bag.” By demanding documents Obama just made everything OK.
…Waiting to see if (67. Baobo) can make good on his pledge in spite of
(69. Richard Cranium’s) comment!
“…only to find themselves wage slaves at a 7-11 being shot at- just like in North Korea almost.”
Ah huh. And I hear that working at Friendly’s is very similar to a Soviet Gulag, and that working at Walmart is very much like being at Auschwitz.
Richard F. “Although I hope for the best, deep down I suspect that Marxists would rather the ruin the world before they ruined their precious story. What they can’t ever hear is that their salvational arc is a lie. That is why the “progressive” agenda can never be discredited. North Korea, Cambodia, East Germany, Stalin, Detroit, Chicago, can fail ad infinitum. And they’ll try again. For their faith is true; and the only reason the progressive agenda ever crumbles is because it hasn’t been tried hard enough”
Someone said, that to keep repeating a failed experiment and getting the same result each time is a definition of insanity. So, the progressive agenda is a mental disorder.
@Baobo, I went to your blog. The Truth IS out there… I won’t be responding to your posts anymore.
@Sally, Wow. Such a disconnect. Sad, so very very sad. Send me a letter from your Socialist paradise when you get there. Oh, I am sure you never intend to leave your comfortable little nest. But one day the truth will surround you and you will not be able to close your mind to it.
I pray that Mr. Oh’s family found peace. Him, well he will reap what he sowed.
Oh, Oh, what can the matter be
Oh,Oh, people just love their favorite insanity
OH,Oh, I’ve got no personality
I must have cause so people will talk to me
Oh, Oh, why do the folk make such mock of me
I’ve got no brains under my hair.
“If you can’t do even THAT, please go away so as to not embarrass yourself again.”
Ignore him Sally. This club needs more fems that think whips, chains, handcuffs and leather when they see the word “Oh”. Plus other POV’s are always good. Clamps down on the echo chamber effect. One reason liberals have issues with reality is they don’t hear different opinions often enough.
“a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
During my brief stint as a professor I found out the law of 7′s was correct. Either sets of 3, 4 times or sets of 4, 3 times. Depending on how open their minds were.
As a consultant, you tell them what you are going to tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you told them. Do that 4 times and you have earned your fee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3FhrTDIVaA
Hadji can’t shoot.
63. wretchard
What clears the decks every now and again is reality. It is reality, not conservatives or libertarians, who thin out the progressives. The progressives start the wars, famines, economic collapses etc that trim them back. Literally.
The greatest of death among party members is the purge. The number of communists killed by the CIA is nothing as to the number of communists killed by the Cheka. And then there’s starvation, riot and disease which is actually the natural state of the progressive world once they run out of Other People’s Money.
Brilliant post, and as usual, your own comments are even better than the original post. I don’t know of any other blogger who does that so consistently.
Radag – That diagram on your link is just plain wrong according to most. Conflating Right with National Socialist? That does not even make sense.
Only the supremely comfortable could think that Oh did not really find such evil in NoK. Any who have viewed the true nature of most men know better.
Like our host.
Although I found Sally’s comments to be ignorant and reprehensible, I agree with stoicheion in #75. Stick around and discuss. We always have to be on guard against internet echo chambers. The blog format does tend to winnow out dissenters and those with unpopular opinions.
stoi @ 75 – You’re right of course. We do have a tendency to pummel the dissenting opinion on most occasions.
Perhaps you could administer a system where we draw straws to select one person to take up the fight. Then the visitor would be more likely to stick around. It’s not enjoyable to the same degree if we all are saying the same thing.
There are three countries whose primary interest to China is military; North Korea Burma and Pakistan.
Because the CPC and PLA bureaucracies are competitive (Why? Because the CPC gets its power and legitimacy from the PLA rather than the consent of people.)its likely that foreign relations with these three countries are not run through the CPC but rather through the PLA.
That means specific things. For one thing, the point made in an earlier post that some Chinese felt that they had been saddled with a basket case does not actually get the picture right. The reason you know this is that every time the PLA gets belligerent — soon after the North Koreans pull off some provocation. The Norks think that PLA are winners–therefor they are too.
The PLA would want a buffer state between them and South Korea. So there is no chance for unification on south korean terms.
But why the abysmal state of the economy for the north Koreans. I want to say that the norks are the recipients of an economic plan similar to the Japanese greater co prosperity sphere before wwII. But that doesn’t get it right. Why not? Well you can say the japanese co prosperity spheres were not economically beneficial to the koreans for example. Which is true. But japanese control of korea was direct. And you can say that the relationship between the PLA and the North Koreans is not economically beneficial to the North Koreans — except that the North Koreans get some welfare from the Chinese. But PLA control of North Korea is indirect. And it may not even be appropriate to use the word “control”.
But the effect looks to be the same. So how do you have different causes resulting in the same effect. Beats me.
Someone on the board might know however.
Sally obviously does not know anything about the culture of Korea.
Why would any wife follow her husband there? Because that is their culture. You cannot assume that everyone thinks like you do. Wives and children in the Far East are still very much subservient, far more so than they ever were in the West. The wife’s reaction is entirely consistent. Where wives have power in this type system is the “I told you so” under the blanket. An Asia wife can make her husband’s life miserable when his autocratic decisions go wrong.
Confucianism, the basis of their morality is based upon relationships and authority. Other than not having to wear veils Confucianism traps women every bit as much as Islam. What Sally sees as a self evident truth is not self-evident to a Korean wife at all. You can’t be fooled by the modern clothing. They still think in many cases like it is 800 years ago.
There are 4 Confucian relationships of authority
The man to the government.
The older to the younger
The wife to the husband
The child to the parent
This obedience is owed even if the authority ask you to do something foolish or illegal. Allegiance and obedience to the authority is the highest virtue.
Coming from that culture it would have been amazing if she HADN’T followed him
He is still a creep for abandoning his wife and children to a concentration camp
If he has an ounce of honor left in his body…he should put a bullet in his head for abandoning his wife and children.
I think it’s true to say that the whole of the North Korean government knows not, nor cares not for what Oh knew or had learned at academic institutions prior to the moment of his defection, despite the ignorant biases these [western] institutions and their academics have for a North Korean workers paradise that exists only in their fantasies. The North Korean government has no tolerance for any knowledge or theoretic knowledge Oh brought with him, and that communist contempt for his mind and his knowledge, however seriously flawed and indoctrinated into Oh, forbade him and his family a place anywhere in North Korean society except prison.
Sally ” The story described in Wikipedia is nothing like your summary of it above.”
I don’t mind people with different opinions, but Sally show some respect for Wretchard. Your statement above is simply false and without foundation. I found no major deviations from the what I read in Wikipedia and what Wretchard wrote.
You are the one who tried to speculate and spin the story, not Wretchard. Own it girl. It’s his blog and he does a absolutely wonderful service to his readers everywhere with his comments and insights. Your comments by comparison are just the usual sick, unfounded, leftist claptrap.
But still…
In regards to 75 and 79…
Let me point out that I did not simply tell Sally to beat it. I pointed out the ridiculous nature of her statement, and offered her a chance to show she was not merely a troll. Listening to alternative viewpoints is one thing, but entertaining laughably ludicrous assertions both wastes time and energy and diminishes the discussion.
One does not insure against an echo chamber by filling it up with gibberish is all I am saying…
Well, everybody’s already spoken far more eloquently to Sally than I ever could. Anyway Sally, to make it easier for you, here’s one link to a satellite night photo of the Korean Peninsula. There are several versions out there, including some that are labelled:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AtnGkCb4w3g/Tu_Z6LdJvRI/AAAAAAAAQec/l1mBmlxwcRI/s1600/1207koreaelectricitygrikf0.jpg
Can you pick out the boundaries of North Korea? South Korea?
Re Korean women and somewhat OT, I recently heard about a type of woman in S. Korea called “ajumma”. As far as I can tell these women are a S. Korean version of our Feminazi. Some people say that 3 genders exist in Korea: male, female, and ajumma.
I have read that the female, in a Korean marriage, may be reborn to be an ajumma, although a very impolite woman can be referred as and eventually turn into an ajumma. Females have long hair and males have short hair, while supposedly ajummas have permed hair just like our grandmothers. Their physical strength surpasses that of females. When they gather, they brag about their children to each other and talk men down behind their husbands’ back. Apparently it is said that females are pretty, ajummas are scary and they are closer to a male than a female in many ways.
A young Korean that we know is going to English school here and told us one day that an ajumma had appeared in his class. He was not happy about it. Since I don’t personally know any Korean women I’m not sure if the ajumma is myth or reality. Has anyone actually encountered an ajumma?
(4th post)
Oh makes a good comparison to Dean Reed, the American folksinger who defected to East Germany.
W writes: People are tremendously vulnerable to stories. In many cases they prefer the story to the fact. Sometimes they will even prefer to believe the story when confronted with contrary facts. Obama may be right. People will endure some hunger, but they cannot endure a life without the comfort of a story.
Absolutely correct, and the Left knows it, hence their obsession with “The Narrative.” The facts be damned, The Narrative goes on. George Zimmerman is a Hispanic with no background whatsoever of racism and Trayvon is widely known as an up and coming gang-banger? Well racist white men still kill innocent young black scholars. Which is just what happened in Florida that night. The Narrative insists upon it.
I can see why those wearing the Rings of Power in Mordor seek to maintain The Narrative — they know it’s a lie, and they know why they are lying — but what amazes me is how normal, regular schmucks get sucked into it and are completely blinded by it, even when reality slaps them in the face day after day.
Things so stupid only an intellectual could believe them
It brings a smirk to my face to see this story not only bring out our usual Chicom minder to denounce it as filthy running-dog capitalist propaganda, but also some extra reinforements (assuming they’re not sockpuppets). Good on ya, Wretchard.
And you absolutely nailed it in 63. The Narrative is everything. Which is why I have given up on putting stock in any political party or politicians reforming this country. The problem is in the population. Not so much the people, but the lies which have taken root in our culture. The seeds of this fruit were planted in academia and mass media years ago, and I’m firmly convinced they are our number one problem above all else. Why else do you think our comsymp guest would get so agitated at Wretchard pointing out what a seething mass of Marxism takes shelter in the ivory tower? That curtain must not be pulled back. Scorn, ridicule, laughter, and “McCarthy”-baiting must be deployed. It’s their tell.
67 @Baobo
I personally know a man who escaped North Vietnamese prison camp and drifted across the South China Sea in a boat packed to the gills with other refugees and dodging pirates, until he made it to Japan. He then managed to come to the United States, make a home for himself and start a family. I worked with this man at a high-skilled job, where I’m sure he made more pay than I did because he was there for much longer, and I did pretty well. He told me plenty of personal stories about the evils of Communism which he experienced first-hand. But I’m sure you’d tell me it is all lies and propaganda, and that he’s really a wage slave in the evil imperialist United States of AmeriKKKa.
82
No, he should have to live a long life with his shame, and spread his story as much as possible.
Stevesmith,
You already know adjummas in the U.S. They’re the grandmothers that have lived long enough to not be concerned about being falsely polite. They say exactly what they think and call them as they see them. Most Korean women won’t do that in public. It’s quite rare to see a Korean woman even smoke in public. They are very concerned about proper appearance and decorum. You very seldom see a Korean woman kiss someone. What happens behind closed doors is a different story but in public, appearances must be maintained.
However, once a Korean woman gets old enough to not be concerned about being attractive to men, they become adjummas. Adjumma, by the way, actually means “auntie” in Korean. At that point, they are all about having a good time by drinking, hanging out with their friends, not really caring so much about their looks (young Korean women ALWAYS think about this), and playing with their grandkids. I wouldn’t say they are closer to a male, it’s just that they lay down the ultra-intensive femininity that younger Korean women have and just act like themselves. Plus, over here in a culture where being old means automatic respect, they can get away with saying and doing things younger people would get hammered for doing.
Think Irene Ryan as Granny Clampett in “The Beverly Hillbillies” and you’re close to the mark.
The upshot of Sally’s comments is that there are “narratives” on the Right as well as on the Left. There are “narratives” in play here at the BC which are just as ridiculous as anything comming out of a Marxist graduate program, if not necessarily as mendacious. This is a point I have also tried to make repeatedly.
The person who tries to make such points has a very difficult job to do. It always appears to others as if he is attacking or defending things he is not really attacking or defending. He is only using examples drawn from the narrative to allude to the fact that it is a narrative; but most people miss that distinction entirely, no matter how many times he draws their attention to it. All his interlocuters see is that he is attacking their narrative, and therefore he is not one of “us” but one of “them.”
And he can only suffer their abuse patiently, for he knows how difficult it is for any human being to exist without narratives for very long. The reality is that he truly is one of “us,” which he proves by trying to make “us” even more perfect, but he usually goes through life abused, forgotten, and unthanked.
Thanks Matt.
Common sense is worth 1000 PhDs from an Ivy League school
“This is a point I have also tried to make repeatedly.”
Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
Look to your own narratives–or should I say “narratives”?–for ridiculousness. And for pomposity, vanity, and cluelessness.
WRT Victor Belenko: It’s said that he thought everything the Americans showed him was a Potemkin arrangement just for him. Then they showed him an aircraft carrier which, he figured, couldn’t have been run up in six months just to fool him. Takes a lot to get across to the truly indoctrinated.
WRT the devil appealing to vanity: In college, I studied psychology. Needed a degree for OCS and wasn’t interested in math. Got into anthro as well. The indoctrinating profs’ schtick was…”we’re superior, you and I, to those uneducated rednecks…because we know this stuff and they don’t and they’d deny it if you told them. And you’ll be even more superior if you believe more and more of what I tell you. You might even become like me, if you’re lucky. And those rednecks are hopeless.”
Later on, if I heard one guy refer to his college as “an island of civilization in a sea of barbarism”, I heard a score.
Funny thing. Being an undergrad was indicative of high intellectual accomplishment. Once you graduated and got into the real world, you had an IQ drop, according the The Kids.
”It’s said that he thought everything the Americans showed him was a Potemkin arrangement just for him.”
In the late ’80s I studied Russian with a woman who’d been a translator in the old USSR, married an American, and came to the US during a relative thaw in the ’70s. After a while she brought her mother for a visit and took her to a supermarket. The old woman refused to be impressed, claiming it was a Potemkin store.
So they went back to the car and my instructor challenged her mother to pick any street, stop at any store of her choice, and go in to look around (this was in Houston).
They did it once then the mother called it off but still refused to admit it wasn’t some kind of staged deal; she refused to believe her own eyes. The instructor told me that was often typical of her mother’s generation, shaped by war and brain-washed from early childhood.
In ’91 I had a chance to stroll through a few stores in Moscow and Odessa (not big ones) and could really appreciate the depth of the mother’s denial.
86. weary g
You’re right. I was reading between the lines and misread it, which is a hazard when reading between the lines.
Matt one can never quit. Paine was correct about time winning more arguments then logic but you still have to keep up the pressure long enough for reality to get it’s 2 cents in.
I was thinking of Marilyn Manson’s “Tainted Love” for Sally. Manson is into leather and does chains well but instead I found something for Charles;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqFUfdZwS9k&feature=relmfu
Possibly the worlds oldest song. The above is a modern cover.
96. Roughcoat…
Hey! Chill out…
…it ain’t easy painting a happy face on North Korea!
good grief, I’m exceeding the safety factor.
Seems like, part of the task of our gracious host is to do that activity that Sally disparages. That is, it’s his intention to include anectodal evidence, in the form of that BBC story, for the purpose of expositing the larger story.
Guy trains under the tutelage of the Marx brothers, goes to great land of worker’s paradise draging along reluctant wife and hapless daughters. He has misunderestimated the climatic conditions, namely evilpocentric social warming. Difficulty, hardship and cruelty ensues, at the hands of individuals that have authority under a ruthless tyrannical system.
We posit, he should have had more sense regarding the evils rampant in such a set-up. Sally demurs, thinking he knew what would actually obtain, since he was mature and educated.
We disagree, stating that the more likely case was he was deceived by a vast left wing conspiracy. We assert that, even mature educated folks can fall victum to malicious deception and provide various examples, including just about everyone who believes progressive nonsense will result in a free people who have plenty of free stuff, paid for by the filthy rich.
77. R Daneel – “Radag – That diagram on your link is just plain wrong according to most. Conflating Right with National Socialist? That does not even make sense.”
I thought the message of that essay was pretty clear, but I see that it needs some work. Your input is helpful.
The essay is preceded by this quote from Ronald Reagan:
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”
The first (horizontal) chart in the essay is a simple graphic depiction of “current political jargon”. It is NOT my world view – quite the contrary. And the chart is immediately followed by this disclaimer
“IF this chart were accurate…”
The 2nd (vertical) chart intentionally uses quotation marks when referring to “Left” and “Right” and is followed by this statement (the first part UNDERLINED and in BOLD)
“The debate between Left and Right is mainly a distraction; a foolish argument about which type of Totalitarianism is preferable.”
In an effort to clarify my point further, I will now place quotation marks around “Left” and “Right” in that passage.
If all of this still isn’t clear, please re-read the Reagan quote. That’s the main point of the essay. (I guess this business of proselytizing on behalf of the Ordered Liberty of the U.S. Constitution is harder than it looks.)
for those who are interested, the essay is here
http://fundamentalsofliberty.com/?page_id=576
this 4 minute video
https://vimeo.com/45163865
makes a similar point
(pardon the self-promotion, but it is for a good cause and there is no commercial angle – not that there would be anything wrong with that)
92. mac
Thank you for clearing away the adjumma mists. Just thinking that Granny Clampett used lady finger cookies for enhanced shotgun ammunition …. watch out for airborne bakery products moving at lethal speed among those apartment towers.
Gordon. The insistence of some, or many, to believe the Potemkin theme seems to me to indicate two things: One is that the regime–us–has an enormous stake in fooling people who will eventually find it out anyway and will pony up the resources to fake it. A lot. The actual cost of building the accumulation of things presumed to be Potemkin is huge. Took a fleet carrier to get past Belenko’s belief system.
The other issue is that the visitor thinks he is important enough that we’d bother. I don’t get that.
When you study Marxist economics you defect with your family to North Korea. When you defect with your family to North Korea you find you’re in a hell hole. When you find you’re in a hell hole you redefect to the West without your family. When you redefect to the West without your family your family ends up in a slave labor camp. Don’t let your family end up in a slave labor camp: avoid Marxist thinking and learn to appreciate democratic capitalism.
One of our great strengths as humans is to see patterns.
One of our great weaknesses as humans is that we see patterns that are not real. Wisdom is being able to discern the real, (thanks W).
We create stories, which are a version of pattern, called myth. Stories are not facts. For example the big 0 told us a story in 2008. A most “wonderful” myth. Many never looked past the facade. It is a very difficult thing to convince someone who is smart and certain of their myth that they are wrong.
One advantage a Christian has in the Bible is that it is a plumb line. A source of truth external to an individual’s perspective. When truth is internal and relative, no plumb line is available. Flying in the clouds, you need a source that knows which way is up.
Now our “leaders” have their heads in the clouds. They have thrown away all plumb lines. That is why history is in danger of repeating as farce.
This is why i appreciate Belmont Club, we are even willing to entertain the certainty that we are wrong. We sit here in the club in our PJs and drink in the truth. A most important thing, to learn what we don’t know. This is of course a paradox, since we will never know what we don’t know.
My goal is to be a cynical innocent, not 50-50, but 100%-100%. A true collapse of the wave function, fully cynical, fully trustin. Holding truth ever so lightly, always ready to let go.
I liked Wretchard’s choice of video, but the story reminded me more of this one. My wife told me that as a child, this scene scared the hell out of her. Not a bad thing, perhaps.
~ “120 years of failure and 100 million bodies proved Nothing! All Capitalistic running dog lies comrads. The glorious workers paradise, the perfect Utopia, is just aeound the next bend in the fearless leaders revolution!!!
(This message is beamed from Pravda and the Peoples central planning committee to comrads all over the world by Laika the space dog)
an education doesnt mean wisdom or smart,
an idiot who gets himself an education is just an idiot with an education.
heres an illustration—-
67. Baobo
66- Who do you think really sponsored Castro’s revolution?
Many immigrants have rushed to the U.S. based on myths, only to find themselves wage slaves at a 7-11 being shot at- just like in North Korea almost. I don’t think Oh is a fraud based on overall circumstances, but he is being exploited twice in a way: first by the North Koreans and now by the South.
you know all except they arent really slaves becuase slaves are property hunted down and punished or tortured if they decide to leave. and our “poor have the most luxurious “poor’ lives on the planet replete with cars tv’s cell phones and fat bellies from lots of good cheap plentiful food.
and exploited, yeah if by exploited your definition means cautionary tale told to explain to to others that the book of the enemy called serving man isnt a book about “serving man” as in being Of service…..
its a cook book.
Rumcrook…
There’s a campaign about to cross-confuse indoctrination with education…
Beware.