When
I saw the book for the first time about three weeks ago, the book
called out to me. The title of the book was “A
Capitalist in North Korea – My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom.”
As
though the title wasn't enough to pique my curiosity, the cover of
the book showed a picture of what looks like a typical North Korean
propaganda poster – communist revolutionaries looking proudly
toward their bright future. However, instead of being represented by
a picture of Kim Il-sung or his son or his grandson, the bright
future is represented by the Sign of the Dollar.
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I
had never heard of either the book or the author, Felix Abt, a Swiss
national who was appointed by ABB
as its director for North Korea, before. As soon as I saw the book,
I knew that I had to read it.
I
expected to read about bureaucratic red tape, the effects of
sanctions, the “culture shock” of introducing capitalism to a
citizenry that has known nothing but the Kim Dynasty's juche,
and the slow but sure growth of capitalism in North Korea. I
expected to get enlightenment. What I got was disappointment.
The
book is only 317 pages long. It should not take more than a couple
of days to finish reading such a book. It took me three weeks; and
what a painful three weeks it was as I had to figuratively flog
myself to finally finish it.
In
the first opening pages of the book, he mentions the 2010 sinking of
the ROKS Cheonan.
Despite the mountains of evidence that points to North Korea's
involvement in the sinking of the corvette (here,
here, here,
here,
and here),
Abt openly doubts North Korea's involvement
because
“a prominent Korean seismologist and and an Israeli geologist
suggested, based on an analysis of seismic and acoustic waves, that
the ship probably hit a South Korean mine.”
A
bitter taste in my mouth began to form before I even
began the first chapter. However, he then immediately says that “all
of it plays into a bigger picture of geopolitical bullying.”
The
last time I checked, it was the North Koreans who were firing
artillery, rockets, missiles, kidnapping foreign citizens, and
threatening war against its
neighbors.
The
book is not without its merits. There were the bits of information
that I had hoped for and expected. However, out of the book's 317
pages, relevant information could not have been printed on more than
twenty to thirty pages. The rest of it was utter rubbish.
Abt
seems to find
it funny as he acknowledges that others have called him North
Korea's “useful idiot.” But what he does not seem to know is that
he
also seems to have gone fully native after he had lived in North
Korea for so long. By that, I mean
that Abt seems to have fully adopted the North Korean method of being
as erratically contradictory
as often as possible.
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For
example, Abt insists that North Koreans are not at all brainwashed.
In fact, he compares North Korean propaganda to advertisements that
people see in other countries. Specifically, he says “the world
businesses engage in another form of propaganda: advertising. The
only difference is that it advances a cause of consumerism rather
than politics.” To hammer home the point, he also rhetorically
asks if Americans “get brainwashed by cravings for McDonald's and
Starbucks seeing their logos smothered all over the country.”
Never
mind that McDonald's and Starbucks are merely corporations that do
not have the ability to arrest or gun down those who do not like
their products. But as far as Abt is concerned, they are both
morally equivalent.
But
I was willing to let it go. Perhaps we did have it all wrong about
the North Koreans being brainwashed. After all, he lived in North
Korea for seven years. Wouldn't he know better? However, even
before I could acclimate myself to believing what he said, he
contradicts himself by saying that the
patriotic songs that North Koreans sing are not about their love for
their country, but rather their love for their leaders. In fact,
North Korea's supposedly most popular melody is a catchy tune about
how North Koreans cannot exist without “General” Kim Jong-il who
has “extraordinary talents and virtues.”
But
it's just a song with a catchy tune. Who cares about that? It's
true. One song does not brainwash an entire country. But then Abt
later says that North Koreans “would jump into torrential floods at
the risk of their lives to save portraits of Kim Il-sung.”
He
then mentions that “around 40 percent of elementary school classes
are on the childhood of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il” and that North
Koreans are “taught from an early age to be proud of being Koreans
rather than coming from a “less fortunate” race such as the
Japanese.” And during art festivals for schoolchildren, kindergartners make drawings titled “Let's cut the throat of US
imperialism!”
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According
to Abt, North Koreans are so the-opposite-of-brainwashed that a
senior party cadre asked rhetorically why North Koreans should have
statistics about suicide. After all, “Our people are among the
happiest on earth,” the senior party cadre supposedly claimed.
It
is a sentiment that Abt seems to share as he adds, “Astoundingly, I
never came across people (North Koreans) who would have criticized or
even challenged the system, nor did I meet expatriates who had heard
about such cases.”
Because your average North Korean, who has learned his whole life to be careful of what he says in front of even those that he loves and trusts, would then outwardly speak ill of the regime to a foreigner?
Because your average North Korean, who has learned his whole life to be careful of what he says in front of even those that he loves and trusts, would then outwardly speak ill of the regime to a foreigner?
I
suppose Abt thinks that people ought to have their minds so broken
that they would become unwitting assassins a la “The Manchurian Candidate”
for Abt to consider someone to have become brainwashed.
Another
glaring contradiction in his book was about the way Christians are
treated in the country. He says:
“A true Christian believer in today's North Korea would be branded as a traitor of the worst kind. During the century before the DPRK was founded, white American Protestants from the Bible belt promoted Christianity as the religion of a superior foreign race, making it today antithetical to the revolution.”
However,
a few pages later, he says:
“Despite stereotypes that North Korea overwhelmingly represses the Christian religion, the government usually doesn't see the Lord as a serious threat to its earthly system. I once asked a senior security official if they did not feel threatened by Moon's Unification Church, active in North Korea in the hospitality and car manufacturing industries. He answered quite candidly: “Well, you know, it's a cat-and-mouse game.” It's a never-ending contest that the North Koreans will make sure the other side can never win.”
So
which is it? Are North Korean Christians branded as traitors or does
the North Korean regime not see Christianity as a threat? As I said,
just like the regime itself, Abt appears to have embraced its
dual-personality disorder.
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The
part where Abt appears to have accepted North Korean propaganda as
his own is when he complains on numerous occasions about the havoc
that international sanctions have had on North Korea's economy. He
mentions that if it just weren't for the sanctions, the North Koreans
would have access to state-of-the-art technology that they so richly
deserve.
However,
he never once mentions why North Korea is the most heavily sanctioned
nation in the world. He mentions North Korea's nuclear tests in
passing, but never once stops to ponder that the North Korean
leadership has no one to blame for the sanctions that have been
placed on it but itself.
Throughout the whole book, Abt does not
utter a single word about North Korea being the
country that instigated the Korean War or the fact that North
Korea secretly
bought nuclear technology from Pakistan or that it has launched
missiles over its neighbors or kidnapped
foreign citizens or conducted terrorist attacks against South
Korea in the past (here
and here).
The
only thing that he said that seemed to make any sense was how
ineffective the sanctions were. He claimed that, too often,
sanctions do not hurt criminals or government officials, but rather
ordinary citizens.
So
what does he say when sanctions are finally fine-tuned so that it will only
specifically hurt the North Korean leadership? He says:
“In
July 2012, the UN Security Council released a report on sanctions,
according to the AP news agency, which wrote: “No violations
involving nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons or ballistic
missiles were mentioned in the 74-page report to the Security Council
committee monitoring sanctions, published Friday.” On the other
hand, the document highlighted North Korea's responsibility for
illegally imported luxury goods including tobacco, bottles of sake,
secondhand pianos, and several secondhand Mercedes Benz cars. It is
stunning that these would be considered serious crimes which the
Security Council had to urgently address.”
So now that the Security Council has gotten it right, he thinks it's a waste of time. How very convenient.
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However,
the most outrageous thing that he claims in the book is about the human rights violations in that country, which the world is
finally paying
some attention to.
Abt
admits that anywhere between 120,000 to 200,000 people are being held
in prison camps, but then brushes it all aside by saying that that
figure “represents less than 1 per cent of the total population.”
He further acts as a North Korea-apologist by comparing that figure
to American incarceration rates, because America is “home to the highest
documented percentage of prison inmates in the world.” Like as
though the conditions of imprisoned Americans could be compared to
the North Korean practice of imprisoning three generations of an
entire family in gulags for the “political crimes” of one person!
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But
then probably to defend himself, he claims:
“While I clearly disavow any human rights abuses in North Korea and anywhere else in the world, I'm a businessman who has never visited any gulag or prison. I am not a human rights expert.”
Seeing
how he admits that he is not a human rights expert, one would think
that he would remain silent about this topic from here on out.
However, he does not.
To
be specific, Abt has some choice words about North Korean defectors
who speak ill of North Korean human rights violations. He claims
that “as 70 percent of them (North
Korean defectors) remain jobless in South Korea, they can make a
living by selling dubious information.”
There
are approximately 27,000
North Korean defectors currently living in South Korea. And
there are thousands more who live elsewhere around the world. You
would think that if there was, indeed, a conspiracy among North Korean
defectors to sell a grand lie, it would be a matter of time before that
lie was punctured. But such logic seems to escape Abt.
Abt
also adds that “the intelligence services, academics, book authors,
journalists, and human rights and political activists who interview
these defectors almost ceaselessly after their arrival in South Korea
have an impact on their narrative, too. Those who know the North
Korean refugee resettlement process in South Korea are aware of how
easily individual accounts evolve over time from mild accounts of
hunger or seeking economic opportunities to romantic tales of escape
against all odds.”
To
add the cherry to his insult against North Korean defectors and their
testimony, he adds that “while it is a serious issue, North Korea's
foes are equally guilty of using rights rhetoric as a political tool
to further isolate and corner the regime.”
Like
as though the regime did not isolate and corner itself for decades
with its juche
and
songun
policies.
In
a different but related issue, Abt also says that throughout his
seven years in North Korea, he had never seen a single starving
person. To be specific, he claims, “In the mid-2000s, I did not
come across starving people, though I did see scores of thin Koreans
who looked malnourished.”
I
suppose that it's possible that Abt had never seen this
young woman or others like her (see here, here, and here). But do they not exist because
he had never seen them? In his mind, it seems to be so.
And
what does Abt have to say about those videos of North Koreans who are
foraging for food? They're not starving! He claims that foraging
for food is a traditional pastime. To be specific, he says:
“What many outside North Korea generally ignore is that the much-quoted “foraging for food” is an age-old North and South Korean tradition, a result of the absence of arable land in the North to grow crops. For centuries, Koreans from all over the peninsula have consumed wild mushrooms and edibles – long before the foundation of the DPRK – and they still love to eat them.”
Of course. That must be why so many South Koreans also go out to forage for food everyday. Oh right. They don't.
But
just so that Abt makes it clear that there is hunger in North Korea
and that the North Korean government is doing its best to “take
care of its people,” Abt says “Amazingly, Kim Jong-il was, unlike
other Asian leaders, highly enthusiastic about potatoes and soybeans
and gave them a role in agricultural development.”
Abt
never mentions that it is likely that other Asian leaders were not
enthusiastic about potatoes or soybeans for their own countries'
agricultural development because they did not have to be.
There
are far too many other contradictions that he writes, as well as far
too many statements that cannot be taken as anything other than the
defense of the North Korean dictatorship. In fact, I dog-eared all
the pages that I felt contained such statements. If I mentioned
every single instance of this, however, I would have to scan and
upload the entire book!
Despite Abt's insistence that he is apolitical, this book is essentially a political book more than anything else; and it is excruciatingly awful. In Abt's narrative, North Korea is not evil
in the slightest bit. In fact, there are plenty of other evil
regimes in the world, which, therefore, naturally, exonerates North
Korea of all its sins. And if it has sinned, Abt never saw any of
it! He's just a businessman, for heaven's sake! Nobody is
either good or bad. Never mind reality!
Truly “A Capitalist in North Korea” can be called enlightening only by devaluing the term.
Truly “A Capitalist in North Korea” can be called enlightening only by devaluing the term.
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Throughout
this entire book, it is amazing how Abt manages to sustain an oozy,
cynical tone, which is the book's most striking feature. Its sheer
stupidity is disgusting and without reprieve. Its sense of morality
is non-existent. From almost any page of the book, I could hear a
hollow, ghostly voice droning on repeatedly “There is no good or
evil – it just is.”
Well,
I saw evil in the pages of this book. And I saw that evil was
impotent, irrational, stupid, vain, and blind.
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