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Excerpts from The Black Book of Communism; Crimes, Terror, and Secrecy in North Korea by Pierre Rigoulot.
[… pg. 559]  Repression and terror affect the mind and spirit as well as the body. The effects of deliberate total isolation on the inhabitants of the country, together with the permanent ideological barrage to which they are subjected on a scale unknown elsewhere, must also be counted among the crimes of Communism. The reports of the few who have managed to slip through the net and leave the country are a remarkable testimony to the resilience of the human spirit.

There are two main forms of propaganda in North Korea. One is the classic Marxist-Leninist axis, which claims that the socialist and revolutionary state offers the best of all possible worlds to its citizens. People are to be constantly alert, on the lookout for the imperialist enemy, all the more so today since so many erstwhile friends on the outside have now "surrendered." The second type of propaganda is peculiarly national and almost mystical. Instead of relying on the arguments of dialectical materialism, the government has created a whole mythology around the idea that the Kim dynasty represents the will of both heaven and earth. A few examples from among the thousands that could be cited may clarify this type of propaganda. On 24 November 1996 in Panmunjon--the village where the armistice was negotiated, and the only place where the armies of North and South Korea and the United States are in immediate contact--during an inspection of the North Korean army by Kim Jong Il, a thick fog suddenly covered the area. The leader could thus come and go in the mist, examining the positions while remaining more or less hidden. Equally mysteriously, the fog lifted at the moment he was to be photographed with a group of soldiers. . . A similar thing happened on an island in the Yellow Sea. He came to an observation post and began to study a map of the operations. The wind and rain suddenly stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun came out and shone radiantly. Dispatches from the same official agency also mention "a series of mysterious phenomena that have been noted all over Korea as the third anniversary of the death of the Great Leader [Kim Il Sung] approaches. . . The dark sky was suddenly filled with light in the Kumchon canton. . . Three groups of red clouds were seen to be heading toward Pyongyang . . . At 8:10 P.M. on 4 July the rain that had been falling since early morning suddenly stopped, and a double rainbow unfolded over the statue of the President . . . then a bright star shone in the sky right above the statue."

A Strict Hierarchy
In a state claiming to base itself on socialism, the population is not only carefully monitored and controlled; it is also subject to disparate treatment depending on social origin, geographic origin (that is, whether the family originates in North or South Korea), political affiliation, and recent signs of loyalty toward the regime. In the 1950s the whole society was carefully subdivided into fifty-one social categories that powerfully determined people's social, political, and material future. This extremely cumbersome system was streamlined in the 1980s; now there are only three social categories. Even so, the system of classification remains very complex. In addition to these three basic classes, the secret services are particularly vigilant in regard to certain categories within the classes, particularly people who have come from abroad, who have traveled overseas, or who have received visitors.

The country is divided into a "central" class, which forms the core of society, an "undecided" class, and a "hostile" class, which includes approximately one-quarter of the North Korean population. The North Korean Communist system uses these divisions to create what is in effect a sort of apartheid: "a young man of 'good origin,' who might have relatives who fought against the Japanese, cannot marry a girl of 'bad origin,' such as a family that originated in the South. One former North Korean diplomat, Koh Young Hwan, notes that 'North Korea has what is in effect an extremely inflexible caste system.'"

Although this system in its early days may have had some basis in Marxist-Leninist theory, biological discrimination is much harder to justify. Yet the facts are there: anyone who is handicapped in North Korea suffers terrible social exclusion. The handicapped are not allowed to live in Pyongyang. Until recently they were all kept in special locations in the suburbs so that family members could visit them. Today they are exiled to remote mountainous regions or to islands in the Yellow Sea. Two such locations have been identified with certainty: Boujun and Euijo, in the north of the country, close to the Chinese border. This policy of discrimination has recently spread beyond Pyongyang to Nampo, Kaesong, and Chongjin.

Similar treatment applies to anyone out of the ordinary. Dwarves, for instance, are now arrested and sent to camps; they are not only forced to live in isolation but also prevented from having children. Kim Jong Il himself has said that "the race of dwarves must disappear."

[… pg. 563] Final Figures
In North Korea, perhaps more than anywhere else, the effects of Communism are difficult to translate into numbers. Some of the reasons are insufficient statistical data, the impossibility of carrying out any field research, and the inaccessibility of all the relevant archives. But there are also other reasons. How can one calculate the soul-destroying effects of constant, mindless propaganda? How can one put a figure on the absence of freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of movement; on the ways in which a child's life is destroyed simply because his grandfather received a prison sentence; on the consequences for a woman who is forced to have an abortion in atrocious conditions? How could statistics show what life is really like when people are obsessed by the possibility of starvation, by lack of heating, and by other acute shortages and privations? How can one compare the admittedly imperfect democracy in the South with the nightmarish situation in North Korea?

Some have argued that North Korean Communism is a caricature, a throwback to Stalinism. But this museum of Communism, the Asian Madame Tussaud's, is all too alive.

To the 100,000 who have died in Party purges and the 1.5 million deaths in concentration camps must be added at least 1.3 million deaths stemming from the war, which was organized and instigated by the Communists, a war that continues in small but murderous actions, including commando attacks on the South and acts of terrorism; and the uncertain but growing number of direct and indirect victims of malnutrition. Even if we content ourselves with a figure of 500,000 victims of the primary or even secondary effects of malnutrition (including the usual, unverifiable reports of cannibalism), we end up with an overall figure of more than 3 million victims in a country of 23 million inhabitants that has lived under Communism for fifty years.