By Eva Bartlett
*all photos/videos by Eva Bartlett
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA — North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) is one of the least understood and most lied about countries on Earth. In Western corporate media renditions, most news about the country is alarmist (of “the North Koreans want to kill you” type), fake (“all men have to have the same haircut,” a story originating from Washington itself), or about the North’s military.
Accounts of the nation’s military prowess and threat generally ignore (as noted here) the presence of the 28,500 U.S. troops occupying South Korea, their 38 military installations, and more recently their Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea — “a U.S. radar system opposed by the Korean people, in the North and South, as well as China.”
On September 19, 2017, in the forum of the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea.
This is not the first time threats against the DPRK have been issued. Colin Powell in 1995 threatened to turn North Korea into “a charcoal briquette” and in 2013 reiterated that threat to “destroy” the country.
Not broadcast in corporate media is the fact that America had already annihilated North Korea, destroying the capital city, Pyongyang, and cities around the country, with 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of Napalm — indeed turning the North into a ‘charcoal briquette’.
Retired U.S. General Curtis E. LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command during that earlier war, said that they had “burned down every town in North Korea.” In LeMay’s words, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure?”
Also omitted in news on North Korea are the criminal sanctions against the North, enforced since 1950, making even more difficult the efforts to rebuild following decimation. The sanctions are against the people, affecting all sectors of life (as humorously noted in this clip). Yet, in spite of all odds, the country maintains an enviable health system. As Professor Michel Chossudovsky noted: “North Korea’s health system is the envy of the developing world.” And, according to World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan, North Korea has “no lack of doctors and nurses.”
Further obfuscated in Western reporting are the simulated attacks (what America euphemistically calls ‘war games’) on North Korea twice a year. Involving “hundreds of thousands of troops.” As researcher and author Stephen Gowans noted, “It is never clear to the North Korean military whether the U.S.–directed maneuvers are defensive exercises or preparations for an invasion.”
A purposeful and familiar crime against reality
The absurdly cartoonish “news” one hears in Western media about North Korea is meant to detract from America’s past and current crimes against the Korean people, and to garner support for yet another American-led slaughter of innocent people.
The stories are designed to vilify the leadership and provide no context, while completely ignoring the North Korean perspective. This is standard operating procedure with respect to countries like Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, and wherever America and its allies have set their sights on establishing control (and military bases). As historian Bruce Cumings wrote:
The demonization of North Korea transcends party lines, drawing on a host of subliminal racist and Orientalist imagery; no one is willing to accept that North Koreans may have valid reasons for not accepting the American definition of reality.”
We are meant to believe that the North Korean leader is a maniac, inexplicably hell-bent on bombing America. Utterly deleted from the story is the fact that North Koreans have a different perspective: the right to a deterrent against yet another U.S. annihilation of their country. The right to self-defense.
In response to Trump’s threats of annihilation, DPRK Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ri Yong Ho, on September 23, stated:
The United States is the country that first produced nuclear weapons and the only country that actually used them, massacring hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. It is the U.S. that threatened to use nuclear weapons against the DPRK during the Korean war in the 1950s, and first introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean peninsula after the war.
…The very reason the DPRK had to possess nuclear weapons is because of the U.S. and it had to strengthen and develop its nuclear force to the current level to cope with the U.S.”
North Koreans as seen through a visitor’s lens
Propaganda and history aside, what we hardly ever see in articles on North Korea is the human side, some of the faces among the 25 million people at risk of being murdered or maimed by an American-led attack.
From August 24 to 31, 2017, I was part of a three-person delegation that independently visited the DPRK, with the intent of hearing from Koreans themselves about their country and history.
As it turned out, we heard also about their wishes for reunification with the South, their past efforts towards that goal, their desire for peace, but their refusal to be destroyed again. Following are snapshots and videos from my week in the country, with an effort to show the people and some of the impressive infrastructure and developments that corporate media almost certainly will never show.
Impact of U.S. travel ban on unfiltered views of North Korea
My visit coincided with the impending U.S. travel ban to the DPRK, which came into effect one day after I left the country.
As a dual citizen holding Canadian and U.S. citizenship, I can still choose to return to the DPRK after September 2017 on my Canadian passport. However, for Americans, the ban means they will only in limited instances be permitted to travel to the DPRK. The U.S. State Department advisory notes:
“Persons who wish to travel to North Korea on a U.S. passport after that time must obtain a special passport validation under 22 C.F.R. 51.64, and such validations will be granted only under very limited circumstances.”
While the U.S. pretends that the travel ban is for the safety of U.S. citizens, the same advisory contains this threat:
Using a U.S. passport in violation of these restrictions could result in criminal penalties. In addition, the Department may revoke a passport used in violation of these restrictions.”
This wording reveals that the intent of the ban is far more likely to prevent the American public from seeing the human face, and positive aspects, of the DPRK.
Indeed, in an August 2017 Forbes essay on North Korea, amid the predictable Western rhetoric were surprising admissions of truths:
Pyongyang looks much more like a normal city than 25 years ago. Then there were no private cars and few government ones. I wondered why they bothered with traffic lights. Today there is traffic. It’s not much by U.S. (or Chinese!) standards. But there’s no longer the ghostly sense of empty boulevards. …Visitors on longer tours with more guides often have more meaningful informal interaction with “real” North Koreans. It’s one of the reasons I believe banning travel to the North is foolish and counterproductive.”
For more photos and videos from the DPRK, please see my Facebook album and my Youtube playlist, and watch my conversation with the creators of the satirical documentary, “The Haircut, a North Korean Adventure.”
This is something former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who has visited the DPRK three times, confirmed — saying he had met with Kim Il-Sung in 1994 “in a time of crisis, when he agreed to put all their nuclear programs under strict supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and to seek mutual agreement with the United States on a permanent peace treaty, to have summit talks with the president of South Korea.” Carter maintained Kim Jong-Il pledged he would honor these promises.
A superb article..fantastic job done.
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Thank you, thank you, and thank you for this!
Thank you very much, Eva, for this wonderful report about DPR Korea! 🙂
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Dear Eva Bartlett,
allways thankful for the reports you are writing, not least on the Korean people’s Republic! At the end you are shortly mentioning the Juche Philosophy. Would it be possible to get a more deeper insight on the thinking of the Juche Philosophy, or may be you might know a link etc. It might help to understand the country and its standfeastness better. Just in case you come along some information.
Thank you. Cordially Detlev
Wonderful docu-logue. The N. Koreans have created a beautiful country, a paradise for children. Any country that develops outside Washington’s domination is going to be targeted and there will be attempts to destabilize not only the DPRK, but Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Iran and there are others. The lies are endless and outrageous. The assumption is that the US owns the world and it is joined by cowardly vassal states (NATO), all capitalists, that share the booty with the criminal mafioso ringleader and until the world realizes this, there will always be questions about “what the hell is going on.”
China and Russia have been victimized for centuries by the West. They are not included in the organization of capitalist gangsters, they are our allies.
Thanks, Norman!
Thanks Sascha! 🙂
Thanks, Detlev, I would recommend checking out Professor Tim Anderson’s writings on DPRK, he did quite a bit of reading about Juche.
Thanks Eva, you do very good work. Any advice for an American desiring to visit Syria? I tried in 2015 and could not get a visa; the Syrian government doesn’t trust Americans for some reason….
such a relief to see a human article on this so cruelly treated nation
BTW, here is a LTE that I am sending this week. A good essay on the reality of Korea is offered by Brian Willson here: http://www.brianwillson.com/korea-like-vietnam-a-war-originated-and-maintained-by-deceit/
Korea
The real history of the Korean War is different from what we were taught in school. Korea was a unified kingdom for hundreds of years before it was invaded by Japan in 1905. There was no North and South Korea. When the Japanese surrendered in August of 1945 the Koreans were jubilant. The country was divided into North and South by the United States on August 15, 1945. Russia later agreed to this unilateral American action but had no part in setting it at the 38 Parallel.
South Korea formed a national government on September 6th 1945; the US military arrived on September 8th and dissolved it, setting up a puppet dictatorship. Many Koreans resisted this foreign domination; it is estimated that more than 500,000 South Koreans were murdered by the South Korean government (with American complicity) before the beginning of the war.
There were over one thousand border conflicts along the 38th Parallel between 1948 and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, many of them initiated by the South. During the war itself the US military savaged North Korea, destroying every city, every village. every road, every rail line, every dam. One third of the entire population of the North was slaughtered, 3 million people, many vaporized by napalm. Those who survived did so by eating grass and tree bark. The war was 100% a fabrication of the United States; remember, the U.S. created two countries that had been one.
One year after the 1953 truce that ended the Korean War, The U.S. went to war in Vietnam. Since then we have ravaged Laos, Cambodia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria in that order. The United States is addicted to war, addicted to killing other human beings. Anyone with a shred of compassion will be overwhelmed by the death and destruction we sow in the world.
Dana Visalli
THE THING ABOUT THE ANTI-NORTH KOREA PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
IS THAT WHEN ONE SEES EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY–LIKE HERE–IT BRINGS INTO SHARP RELIEF HOW IS SO THOROUGHLY A MISLEADING AND DEHUMANIZING A PICTURE IS PRESENTED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
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Thanks so much Eva! If Americans an others would watch these videos and read your words, there could be some understanding instead of lies and hatred about the DPRK, which has achieved so much and puts the rest of the world to shame in its buildings, health and education systems.
if it was anyone else I would find it impossible to believe…are you saying you went ‘off the official reservations’ and took a look around, and got to see the ‘real north korea’? Of course after realising 911 was a joint U.S-Israeli false flag, and that ‘The Holocaust’ never happened, and that Venezuala is actually doing quite well, like Cuba, despite U.S sanctions, this is an easier ‘fact’ to swallow… Who financed this trip? Did you really get to see ‘the real’ north korea?
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Eva I would love to work with you, I am a veteran for peace ex officer in the 187th Airborne who served in Korea in 53.I learned how my government lied about who started the war in Korea in 1950 many years after the fact. I learned it from I.F.Stone and Bruce Cummings, The US needed the war because their candidate S Rhee lost the election in May 1950 and So Korea was poised to rejoin the North. This was the start of the cold war and the US would not let aNY DEPENDENCY OF THEIR GO COMMUNIST. So they had the south military engage the North and when the North responded and started coming south, the US used that to claim the North Started the war. Russ Christensen from West Farmington, Me. My middle name is Bartlett after my grandfather on my mother’s side.
Thank you for so much for your article! In a perfect world, great work such as yours, should have been published in the mainstream media (along with many others). I am ashamed of our corporate media and governments working so diligently to promote ignorance while continuing criminal conduct globally. Our journalists seem to have been neutered and gutted, now only suited for nonsense about; haircuts, flag waving and who stands during anthems…In this regard, we should all be seated, never mind taking a knee. Unless or until we have something to be proud of other than the march towards totalitarianism…
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I admit I learned something about a beautiful, impressive country and her brave people and reduced in a small way the brainwashing we are exposed to day and night by our slavemasters . Thanks to the Internet do we still have an opportunity, although under assault, to see the world a bit more realistic. Fabulaous job, Eva. Thank you… from a German citizen who needed to move to the US nearly 30 years ago to discover what evil place my host country really is.
Thank you, Eva, for this wonderful report.
@ Detlev Quintern
Here you can read a lot about Juche, in many languages, directly from the DPRK for free download.
http://www.korean-books.com.kp/en/search/?page=all&keyword=juche
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Always love it when someone asks “who financed this trip” when I go to Syria or in this case DPRK.
Answer, its really none of your business. But it was myself with support from individuals who like my advocacy work.
Thanks, Sami, very true about MSM. Many of us joke that they are the dinosaur media. Another appropriate term, colonial media.
They’ll 99% or more of the time lie or distort on important issues. I’m proud to not be a part of that system. I’ve maintained my values and principles and no one can put words in my mouth nor edit my writing beyond the odd grammatical and typo fixes. Thanks again.
Thank you for your very interesting comment, Russ, sincerely appreciated!
Thanks, Jenny!
Hi Dana. Depends where and how you tried. I know many Americans who have gone to Syria, including within a month or so ago. Most Western governments closed Syrian embassies making it difficult for people to apply for visas to Syria, but more importantly making it more difficult for Syrians living abroad to do things like get/renew passports, register children, vote in their elections.
For what it is worth, I’ve waited for over a month on many occasions in Lebanon for a visa to Syria. Never easy. I don’t at all hold at fault a country that is being warred upon by most Western (and Gulf, etc…) nations for taking their time with visa applications. They have a lot more to deal with. That said, try applying in Lebanon or another country which has not forced the Syrian embassy to close.
Thanks for posting that, Dana. I’m familiar with the great writing of Brian Willson, but hopefully others will see it too.
Take note how immaculate , and well dressed everyone are in the photos . All seem content ,and purposeful . The children especially impressive . A community feeling is evident ,pride ,and progress. Similer photos of the US , and increasingly Europe ,display a sense of sloppy , chaos , and scrambling desperation. These scenes are anathama to the NWO / International Finance Capital / Cultural Marxism matrix controlling the West . They endorse a scrambled , sick , fragmented of desperation ,and economic division . The world of ” freedom and democracy ” , which in Orwellian Double Speak means nothing to anyone but their power . North Korea should be left alone . Ironically the nation was a result of Roosevelt ,and Churchill bringing Stalin into the war against Japan late in 1945 ! Then when the West decided to turn on it’s Red Ally circa 1947 , North Korea suddenly became no good . This scenario includes North ,and South Vietnam ,and indeed East and West Germany . The later never resulted in open war .
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This is a very important story that all Americans should see, and all the world. There is so much propaganda against North Korea! Perhaps social and independent media can change this. We also need more cultural exchanges among ordinary workers and students.
Hi Again Eva, I agree with Babacharles simmons, in that a “cultural exchange” (perhaps a Canadian style outdoor hockey or even a three on three tournament) could be instrumental in highlighting our similarities and inspire a long overdue dialog. If this type of event were to be documented…”kids at play”…”making friends”… “sharing meals”…”exchanging gifts” – The resulting powerful and transparent images would have a positive educational effect for all to see.
I’m not suggesting a competitive elite team, intended to make some kind of statement, just regular kids having fun and learning by being together.
I propose the aforementioned to be far superior for the purposes of peace and understanding.
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Eva, just read your report from DPRK. A link was posted on https://syrianperspective.com/.
Thanks so much for all you do. You are a hero. Keep it up!
Eva, do you have a 501(c)(3) set up so donations tax deductible?
Thanks very much!
Hi, no, I’m not very tech savy. I just have the Paypal link set up.
Yes, the image of the enemy North Korea can not be upheld if travelers from the West could form their own image. The photo report gives you an idea of what the reality really looks like (I liked the houses in the Jangchon Cooperative Vegetable Farm and the Okryu Children’s Hospital) .Thank Eva Bartlett!
Thanks Alberto! Just uploading an interview I did with the amazing Christine Hong, I’ll be sure to post it on the blog.
I was looking for tips on how to find people to help me do similar stuff…not pry into your business…sorry for bothering you … someone else went to Venezuala and did similar, so no need for you to… all the best …
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