Image is from this CNN article.
The DPRK's history has been a rollercoaster, with admirable highs and heartbreaking lows, most notably the Korean War and the fall of the USSR. Its steadfast commitment to Juche, a variant of Marxism-Leninism that focuses on self-sufficiency, has both made the DPRK a target for imperialist genocidal powers, and allowed them to survive these attacks.
Lately, we seem to be seeing a transition from surviving to thriving. China and the DPRK have always had a much more complicated history than Western education and media allows its population to know, with periods of quite strong disagreement - it's not the case that China is somehow the DPRK's master. Russia is the DPRK's other neighour that isn't US-occupied, and while they obviously differ substantially in ideology since the USSR fell, the tsunami of sanctions on Russia has changed things. The stick has been removed from the equation, with Russia facing no possible punishment from the West because they were unable to enact sanctions effectively and used all their ammunition in the first few barrages rather than turning the screws over time (I don't care if we're on the 14th sanctions package, it's all been meaningless for Russia since the end of 2022).
The carrot is also more visible, with an alliance making a lot of sense for both. Once again, Western education and media would have you believe a Parenti-esque reality in which Korea is a massive and unpredictable danger to the world, but is simultaneously so poor and destitute that their artillery pieces are made of wood and their missiles out of paper-mache. The truth is that Korea has innovated greatly in missile technology, with some of their weapons matching or even exceeding those of the Russians, hence the Russians' use of them in Ukraine. Russia also finds it advantageous to invest in Korea to strengthen the anti-hegemonic alliance's presence in the Pacific, countering the US-occupied lower half of the peninsula who has naturally sided with Ukraine. Additionally, Russia is investing deeply in the Arctic sea route. This will open up as climate change continues; is naturally quite defensible for Russia so long as Korea is there to provide further defense at its eastern edge; and is both a faster and safer route for Russia to access China - especially in a world where straits can be blockaded by even impoverished yet determined countries like Yemen. The situation in the Red Sea benefits Russia and China now, but in the coming years, the US may apply the same lesson for their own benefit elsewhere.
It is perhaps this new sense of self-confidence that has let Korea give up on reunification with its lower half via peaceful measures. A new Korean War would be devastating for both sides even if it remained non-nuclear, but with a rising DPRK and with the South falling yet further into hypercapitalist exploitation and misery, and a US that remains non-committal to its "allies" when times get difficult (as in Ukraine and Europe), a reality where Korea may finally hold the upper hand and have the ability to liberate its south may be approaching in the years and decades to come.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is *the DPRK! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I wrote about this several times already, just not at this level of detail (and admittedly nowhere near the amount of research laid out in the article). Here’s one from last month.
It’s not so much like Wall Street financialization in the US, but the fact that there is simply way too much money thrown into real estate investment (including many companies that have nothing to do with real estate) that when the property bubble inevitably bursts (the government has to crack down the property market at some point, and has been doing so), a lot of their investments are going to evaporate.
It’s a very complex problem entangling the real estate developers, financial institutions and local governments - the three of them have been chained together in such a way that if one of them inevitably gets into trouble, they’re all screwed in one way or another.
The central government has to walk a tightrope in mediating the resolution of this issue. I don’t think damages can be avoided (though not to the level of the 2007 US subprime mortgage crisis), the question is how much can be mitigated? The system needs to be revamped if we’re being honest, the question is how to do this without adversely affecting the dozens and dozens of other sectors in the economy already linked to this?
I also talked about China going into deficit spending mode (i.e. turning to internal consumption mode to give money i.e. high wages to its own people to sustain a high level of domestic consumption) as a way to partially offset this imbalance. If people’s money (both households and corporations that have over-invested in real estate) are going to go up in smoke, the government HAS to spend much much more in order to keep the liquidity running in the economy.
In this case, turning China into a consumption economy is sort of inevitable (investment in China is already through the roof, more investment is not going to help, while the Western countries have been reducing their imports from China, so more exports isn’t going to help either. Consumption is the only way forward.) In other words, it’s time to make the Chinese citizens rich as a means of keeping the economy moving.
The difference between China and the US is that the latter is completely controlled by private banks, so when it comes to bailing out the economy, the people are the ones getting screwed (Obama let the bankers who stole $4 trillion to run free). China still has a state bank, so it has a lot more power to exert on the situation, but it’s not going to be easy.
Years ago I was able to chat with an economist at the Fed about the 2008/9 financial crisis (it was one of his areas of research). He wasn’t on the Board of Governors or anything he was a research economist, so he had a lot more freedom in exploring various explanations and paths of action.
In short, he basically said his research all pointed to the fact that the US should have followed what Sweden did in the early 90s and temporarily nationalize the banks. That would have saved the US a lot of pain - especially the pain homeowners felt. Bank shareholders ate the cat poop but homeowners were spared. Not perfect but way better than what Americans got - homeowners getting screwed and bank shareholders and bondholders bailed out.
All this to say, I think simply by not having a fully private banking sector (and having a DotP, of course), the real estate problem in China can be solved with relatively less pain. Having a centralized plan and ability to resolve makes a huge difference. It will be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s not insurmountable for China. The real estate crash in the US was bad but it was made worse by the political decision to only bail out capital and not homeowners. The US government chose to make the overall situation worse by maximally protecting the bourgeoisie, and taking no real steps to actually fix the underlying problems.