Policy Towards North Korea

North Korea is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key… to view its future direction. That key is contained in Marxist dogma. In Anti-Dühring, in discussing the Franco-German war of 1870-1871, Engels made the following observation: [T]his war [the Franco-German War] compelled all continental powers to introduce in a stricter form the Prussian Landwehr system [militia in addition to regular army], and with it a military burden which must bring them to ruin within a few years. The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. But this militarism also bears within it the seed of its own destruction. Competition among the individual state forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the army, navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the warlords in command. And this moment will arrive as soon as the mass of the people—town and country workers and peasants—will have a will. At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work and militarism collapses by the dialectics on its own evolution. (Marx-Engels, Collected Works (International Publishers 1987), Vol. 25, p. 158). North Korea’s Songun or “military first” policy has become the main purpose of the state, an end in itself. The Korean Workers Party no longer controls the military but is controlled by it—violating Mao’s dictum. “Political power grows from the barrel of a gun. And the party must control the gun.” Now the gun controls the party and everything else. However, North Korea’s effort to compete militarily against South Korea, the United States and pretty much everyone else… has in fact caused its financial collapse. Moreover, the complete militarization of the population clearly make the people familiar with the use of arms, enabling them to turn against the regime—as soon as the mass of the people will have a will. Our policies should be to do everything possible to enable the Korean people to have a will… To will a self is to become a self (Nietzche). The North Korean people are intelligent, hard-working and their lives being made unnecessarily difficult by a group of militarists whose only aim is ultimately to protect their own status—at the expense of the people. People are people; and as Abraham Lincoln said: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. This is the information age. Our policy objective and task is to inform the North Korean people through any and all means available of the reality of the world at large and how their own government is fooling them. The Korean people will free themselves. Gonzalo I. Vergara, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.).