EDITORIAL
The real thing
The problem for any ruling class that wields a
huge propaganda apparatus designed to feed whatever it wants to
the public is that it can so effectively turn night into day
and fantasy into virtual reality that it can start to believe
its own lies.
Take the false picture of the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea that is repeated endlessly, usually in the same pat
phrases, by all the capitalist media in this country.
Disparaging terms like "hermit kingdom" assume that the DPRK is
a pariah among nations that shuns society and has no contact
with or friends in the rest of the world. The editorial writers
who toss off such phrases seem totally oblivious to the fact
that most of the world today sees the U.S., not North Korea, as
the pariah, the international outlaw, the huge threat to peace,
from the Middle East to the Far East.
When U.S. representatives went to Beijing in early September
for a six-nation meeting on Korea, they assumed that the other
countries would acquiesce in Washington's strong-arm tactics
against the DPRK. The north had been asking for one-on-one
meetings with Washington to finally get a peace treaty ending
the Korean War of 1950-53, or at the very least a pact with the
U.S. that would be a guarantee against aggression.
The Koreans have pressed this issue ever since Bush put them
on his "Axis of Evil" list and the Pentagon openly stated its
right to start a war with Korea--the so-called "first-strike"
policy.
The Bush administration thought it would put more pressure
on the DPRK by making Russia, China, Japan and South Korea sit
down at the table, too. After all, it has enormous economic and
military leverage in the world and is used to getting its
way.
But the administration is in trouble--in Iraq, in the world
and at home, too. Everyone knows that now. The kind of brutal
demands it is used to flinging out don't have the same weight
they once did.
So when the U.S. representatives made it very clear that all
they want is to disarm North Korea without giving it any
guarantees not to attack, the Koreans rejected such a
non-offer. China's vice foreign minister, Wang Yi, the host of
the six-nation talks, then declared the United States was "the
main obstacle" to any settlement.
It was another taste of reality--not the virtual kind--that
the Bush gang hadn't bargained for.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, the population was ecstatically
welcoming the DPRK's soccer team. A Washington Post reporter
wrote on Sept. 8 from Seoul about the tumultuous welcome given
a group of the team's cheerleaders. "'They give me chills of
excitement,' said Park Seung Jin, a 27-year-old restaurateur
who came to the games just to see the women. 'We are one nation
divided by foreign powers. These women help us to see Korea as
one. ... North Korea is no longer my enemy. It is not South
Korea's enemy either.'"
Reprinted from the Sept. 18, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page