President-elect Joe Biden's foreign policy team will soon have access to the letters President Donald Trump exchanged with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, correspondence that belongs to the US government -- not Trump -- and could provide insight into one of the world's most enigmatic leaders.
and the new president scrubbed all mention of the words “socialism” or “communism” from the new constitution through a shadowban shortly after becoming president.
There is no possible source, and it's not like their constitution is a secret, you can go to naenara and read the English translation.
Here I copy-pasted the first chapter for convenience. It mentions socialism literally in the first article, as well as:
Revolution
Imperialism
Soviets
Democratic Centralism
Universal secret suffrage with recall
Exploitation, materialism,
Dictatorship of the people and the goal of the proletariat as the only class
Alliance of workers, peasants and intelligentsia
Human rights
One-party state, and
The Mass Line:
CHAPTER I. POLITICS
Article 1. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an independent socialist State representing the interests of all the Korean people.
Article 2. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a revolutionary State which has inherited the brilliant traditions formed during the glorious revolutionary struggle against the imperialist aggressors and in the struggle to achieve the liberation of the homeland and the freedom and well-being of the people.
Article 3. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is guided in its building and activities only by great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.
Article 4. The sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea resides in the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and all other working people. The working people exercise State power through their representative organs–the Supreme People’s Assembly and local People’s Assemblies at all levels.
Article 5. All State organs in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are formed and function on the principle of democratic centralism.
Article 6. The organs of State power at all levels, from the county People’s Assembly to the Supreme People’s Assembly, are elected on the principle of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot.
Article 7. Deputies to the organs of State power at all levels have close ties with their constituents and are accountable to them for their work. The electors may recall at any time the deputies they have elected if the latter lose the trust of the former.
Article 8. The social system of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a people-centred system under which the working people are the masters of everything and everything in society serves them. The State shall defend the interests of the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and all other working people who have been freed from exploitation and oppression and become the masters of the State and society, and respect and protect human rights.
Article 9. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall strive to achieve the complete victory of socialism in the northern half of Korea by strengthening the people’s power and vigorously performing the three revolutions–ideological, technological and cultural–and reunify the country on the principle of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity.
Article 10. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is underpinned by the politico-ideological unity of all the people based on the worker-peasant alliance led by the working class. The State shall revolutionize all the members of society, and assimilate them to the working class by intensifying the ideological revolution, and shall turn the whole of society into a collective, united in a comradely way.
Article 11. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall conduct all activities under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
Article 12. The State shall adhere to the class line and strengthen the dictatorship of the people’s democracy so as to firmly defend the people’s power and socialist system against all subversive acts of hostile elements at home and abroad.
Article 13. The State shall maintain the revolutionary work method of going among the masses to find solutions to problems by implementing the mass line and of giving full play to the spiritual strength and creativity of the masses by giving precedence to political work, work with people.
Article 14. The State shall determinedly conduct the Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement and other mass movements so as to accelerate the building of socialism to the maximum.
Article 15. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall champion the democratic national rights of Koreans overseas and their rights recognized by international law as well as their interests.
Article 16. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall guarantee the legal rights and interests of foreigners in its territory.
Article 17. Independence, peace and friendship are the basic ideals of the foreign policy and the principles of the external activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The State shall establish diplomatic as well as political, economic and cultural relations with all friendly countries, on the principles of complete equality, independence, mutual respect, non-interference in each other’s affairs and mutual benefit. The State shall promote unity with people all over the world who defend their independence, and resolutely support and encourage the struggles of all people who oppose all forms of aggression and interference and fight for their countries’ independence and national and class emancipation.
Article 18. The law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea reflects the wishes and interests of the working people and is a basic instrument for State administration. Respect for the law and strict adherence to and execution of it is the duty of all institutions, enterprises, organizations and citizens. The State shall perfect the system of socialist law and promote the socialist law-abiding life."
I copied and pasted it from the DPRK's own translation at (warning: you probably should not click this link without a VPN if you're in the Republic of Korea) http://naenara.com.kp/index.php/Main/index/en/politics?arg_val=constitution
The articles you've been linking are from 2009, and the constitution in Naenara is the August 2019 consitution. You can tell (among other things) because it says 'Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism' instead of 'Juche', and because (sadly) the Taean Work System is officialy gone.
I don't see the point of reading third-hand articles about their constitution instead of just reading the constitution itself. It's laughable that it can be a hot topic in the West whether or not the DPRK calls itself a socialist, revolutionary state, when they say so in every opportunity. They did remove, in 2009, the 3 mentions of communism they had. These were in the sections on the economy and culture, not in the first chapter I copied above.
Naenara is the website of the foreign languages publishing house of the DPRK. It's controlled by the Worker's Party of Korea. They also have http://www.korean-books.com.kp/en/
You should be extremely careful with Wikipedia: there's an edit war going on in the DPRK articles, with about half of them locked and policed by the admins to only include imperialist sources, including non-existent and fictional works in order to paint the DPRK dirty (notably, the songbun article), while other, smaller articles are free and have much better sourcing, mostly written by the user Jack Upland like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea .
North Korea is also governed by the Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System, which some claim have come to supersede the constitution and in practice serve as the supreme law of the country.
This is one of the fictional articles. No such document exists in Korean, there's a similar one from an old speech by Kim Jong Il (I think) that you can find in korean-books but the content is completely different from what is claimed.
I realised I had nothing saved on this so I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get of the bottom of it. In the end I concluded the principles exist, although I was unable to find a list of these principles that was not published by the CIA and it's unclear how they are relevant in modern Korean society.
What confuses me is, why hide it so much? Even though the principles seem to be taught at school in DPRK, the speech where KJI supposedly codified these principles is in volume 4 of his collected works, which is not translated to English and I cannot find in Korean either on the Internet. I found two reviews of his collected works in korean, and the authors mention that they could not get volume 4. There's a South Korean website with the full text of KJI collected works, and the table of contents for volume 4 is censored and there's a note 'if you really need the full text, call this number'. Why does this happen, it's weird.
My research went way, way, way beyond the character limit so here's a link to it if you're interested: https://rentry.co/dk2ey
I've only seen you link this article: https://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO253213 which says September 28, 2009. Is there another one I haven't seen?
Source would be good for this if you could.
There is no possible source, and it's not like their constitution is a secret, you can go to naenara and read the English translation.
Here I copy-pasted the first chapter for convenience. It mentions socialism literally in the first article, as well as:
@fuckthepolice what do you have to say for yourself bucko????
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I copied and pasted it from the DPRK's own translation at (warning: you probably should not click this link without a VPN if you're in the Republic of Korea) http://naenara.com.kp/index.php/Main/index/en/politics?arg_val=constitution
The articles you've been linking are from 2009, and the constitution in Naenara is the August 2019 consitution. You can tell (among other things) because it says 'Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism' instead of 'Juche', and because (sadly) the Taean Work System is officialy gone.
I don't see the point of reading third-hand articles about their constitution instead of just reading the constitution itself. It's laughable that it can be a hot topic in the West whether or not the DPRK calls itself a socialist, revolutionary state, when they say so in every opportunity. They did remove, in 2009, the 3 mentions of communism they had. These were in the sections on the economy and culture, not in the first chapter I copied above.
deleted by creator
Naenara is the website of the foreign languages publishing house of the DPRK. It's controlled by the Worker's Party of Korea. They also have http://www.korean-books.com.kp/en/
deleted by creator
You should be extremely careful with Wikipedia: there's an edit war going on in the DPRK articles, with about half of them locked and policed by the admins to only include imperialist sources, including non-existent and fictional works in order to paint the DPRK dirty (notably, the songbun article), while other, smaller articles are free and have much better sourcing, mostly written by the user Jack Upland like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea .
deleted by creator
This is one of the fictional articles. No such document exists in Korean, there's a similar one from an old speech by Kim Jong Il (I think) that you can find in korean-books but the content is completely different from what is claimed.
deleted by creator
I realised I had nothing saved on this so I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get of the bottom of it. In the end I concluded the principles exist, although I was unable to find a list of these principles that was not published by the CIA and it's unclear how they are relevant in modern Korean society.
What confuses me is, why hide it so much? Even though the principles seem to be taught at school in DPRK, the speech where KJI supposedly codified these principles is in volume 4 of his collected works, which is not translated to English and I cannot find in Korean either on the Internet. I found two reviews of his collected works in korean, and the authors mention that they could not get volume 4. There's a South Korean website with the full text of KJI collected works, and the table of contents for volume 4 is censored and there's a note 'if you really need the full text, call this number'. Why does this happen, it's weird.
My research went way, way, way beyond the character limit so here's a link to it if you're interested: https://rentry.co/dk2ey
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I've only seen you link this article: https://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO253213 which says September 28, 2009. Is there another one I haven't seen?
deleted by creator
Plus Kim himself has a bunch of quotes that mention socialism. You can read them on Wikiquote or whatever.
deleted by creator