Trump –
in North Korea You will be Murdering Human
Beings!
By Andre
Vltchek
April
21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- When I think about North Korea, what first
comes to my mind is a mist over the calm and
majestic surface of the Taedong River near
Pyongyang. Next I always recall two lovers,
locked in a tender and almost desperate embrace,
sitting side by side on the shore. I saw them
every day, while taking brisk walks at dawn. Now
I don’t know for sure whether they were real or
just a product of my fantasy; a sad and gentle
reminder of all that has been already lost, as
well as of all that should have happened but
never really materialized.
Public Housing Pyongyang (photo
by Andre Vltchek)
Currently, as Donald Trump’s “armada” is
speeding towards China and DPRK, I keep
recalling those moments: the cliff, the lovers
and a lone fisherman with his long rod at the
other side of the river. Everything in my memory
connected to those dawns is now motionless,
serene.
Sometimes I wonder whether words still have the
power they once used to have. In the past, a
beautiful poem, a confession, or a declaration
of love, were capable of changing one’s entire
life, and sometimes even the entire destiny of a
nation. But is this still the case, in this time
and age? As a writer I often feel futility, even
despair. Still, as an internationalist, I refuse
to succumb to pessimism, and I try to use words
as my weapons, again and again.
I have already said a lot about North Korea. I
have shown images. I have spoken about the
unimaginable pain this country has had to
endure. I have spoken broadly about its
tremendous gesture – of helping to liberate and
then to educate so many parts of the world,
including the enormous and devastated continent
of Africa.
Still the propaganda against the people of DPRK
rules.
Let me try again; let me try again and again and
again:
North Korea is a beautiful country, inhabited by
human beings, with blood circulating through
their veins. Despite what you are directly and
indirectly told, these people feel pain and they
are capable of experiencing great joy. Like
others, they often dream, fall in love, and
suffer when being insulted or betrayed or
abandoned. They laugh and cry, they hold hands,
get angry, even desperate. They have great hopes
for a better life and they work very hard trying
to build their future.
So listen well, manager, or supervisor of what
you yourself call the “free world”. Or how
should I call you, President? Ok, fine,
President… If you shoot your Tomahawk missiles
at them, at DPRK, (as you recently did at
Syria), or if you drop your bloody “Mother of
All Bombs” on them (as you just did on some
god-forsaken hamlet in Afghanistan, just in
order to demonstrate your spite and destructive
force), their bodies will be torn to pieces,
people will die in tremendous agony; wives will
be howling in despair burying their husbands,
grandparents will be forced to cover the dead
bodies of their tiny grandchildren with white
sheets, entire neighborhoods and villages will
cease to exist.
Of course you people do it everywhere; you think
that you are the masters of the world, so used
to spreading agony and desolation all over the
world, but let me remind you one more time and
put it on the record: it may all look like some
fun-to-play computer game or a TV show, but it
is not; it is all real, when your shit hits the
targets, it’s damn real! I have seen plenty of
it, and I have had really enough!
I know this is not what you have been told, and
this is not what you tell the others.
North Koreans are supposed to look and behave
like a nation of brainless robots, lacking all
basic emotions and individuality, staring
forward without seeing much, unable to feel
pain, compassion or love.
You don’t want to see the truth, the reality,
and you want others to be blind as well.
Even if you’ll blow the entire DPRK to pieces,
you’ll actually not see much anyway, you’ll see
almost nothing: just your own missiles shooting
from battleships and submarines, your own
airplanes taking-off from aircraft carriers, as
well as some computer-generated images of
powerful explosions. No pain, no reality, and no
agony: nothing will get to you; nothing will
reach you and your citizens.
It is you who is blind; it is not they.
You actually like it, don’t you? Admit you do.
Let’s have it all in the open. And many citizens
in the West like it as well – new titillating
experiences, free ‘entertainment’, and a welcome
break from the dire and empty, grey, loveless
and meaningless routine of daily life in both
North America and Europe. Hundreds of millions
glued to their TV screens. Your popularity is
going down, lately, isn’t it? The more missiles
you shoot, the more bombs you drop, and the more
countries you intimidate and confront, the
broader your ‘support base’ gets.
You are a businessman, after all. The trade, the
deal is simple, easy to grasp: you give to the
majority of your people what they desire, and
they give you support and admiration. True,
isn’t it, if stripped of all that ‘political
correctness’.
The psychologist Jung called this culture
‘pathological’. It has already destroyed
basically all continents on Earth. It is now,
perhaps, attempting to finish what is left of
the world.
Still, you ought to know and understand and
should be fully aware of the following: you
might now get some generous endorsement from
your fellow mentally ill citizens, but if you
blow up the DPRK or any other country on Earth,
sky-high, and if we as the planet Earth still
somehow manage to survive, you and your
‘culture’ will be cursed for centuries and
millennia to come! Think about it. Is it really
worth it?
Perhaps you don’t give a damn. Most likely you
don’t. Still, give it a try, try to think, and
try to imagine: you will go down in history as a
degenerate mass murderer and a bigot!
***
Three
years ago, this is how I described the 60th
anniversary of the Victory Day in the DPRK:
“The brass band begins to play yet another
military tune. I zoom on an old lady, her chest
decorated with medals. As I get ready to press
the shutter, two large tears begin rolling down
her cheeks. And suddenly I realize that I cannot
photograph her. I really cannot. Her face is all
wrinkled, and yet it is both youthful and
endlessly tender. Here is my face, I think, the
face I was looking for all those days. And yet I
cannot even press the shutter of my Leica.
Then something squeezes my throat and I have to
search in my equipment bag for some tissue, as
my glasses get foggy, and for a short time I
cannot see anything at all. I sob loudly, just
once. Nobody can hear, because of the loud
playing of the band.
Later I get closer to her, and I bow, and she
reciprocates. We make our separate peace in the
middle of the boiling-hot main square. I am
suddenly happy to be here. We have both lost
something. She lost more. I was certain she lost
at least half of her loved-ones in the carnage
of those bygone years. I lost something too, and
now I also lost all respect and belonging, to
the culture that is still ruling the world; the
culture that was once mine, but a culture that
is still robbing people of their faces, and then
burns their bodies with napalm and flames.
It is the 60th Anniversary of Victory Day in the
DPRK. An anniversary marked by tears, grey hair,
tremendous fireworks, parades, and by the
‘memories of fire’.
That evening, after returning to the capital, I
finally made it to the river. It was covered by
a gentle but impenetrable fog. There were two
lovers sitting by the shore, motionless, in
silent embrace. The woman’s hair was gently
falling on her lover’s shoulder. He was holding
her hand, reverently. I was going to lift my big
professional camera, but then I stopped,
abruptly, all of a sudden too afraid that what
my eyes were seeing or my brain imagining, would
not be reflected in the viewfinder.”
This is how I still remember the event.
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The West has already killed millions of North
Koreans. How many more have to vanish, just for
not surrendering? What is the price of not
agreeing to serve the Empire? Would it be one
million more, or ten million? The number,
please: you are a businessman; so do define the
price truthfully!
On
one of the riverbanks (photo by Andre Vltchek)
The DPRK has never attacked anybody. The United
States which claims it now ‘feels threatened’,
has attacked dozens and dozens of countries,
robbed millions of people of life, and raped
freedom, democracy and cultures all over the
world.
There is one image inside my head, which I want
to share with all my readers, even if I will be
risking that this time my writing will be
bordering on sentimentality. I don’t give a
fuck, for once; this is no time for ‘polished
and elegant style’. So here it is:
At one point I managed to break free from our
delegation. It was in the capital, Pyongyang. I
just walked and walked, along the mighty river,
through an enormous park alongside ancient
fortifications.
I spotted a girl, tiny, with a big ribbon in her
hair. She was wearing white shoes. It was
sunset. Her mother, a simple but beautiful lady,
was talking to her. It was so obvious how much
she loved and cherished her daughter. The two of
them could not see me; I was observing them from
some distance. There was so much tenderness, so
much serenity between these two human beings.
The mother was caressing her daughter’s face,
explaining something, pointing at the trees.
Their faces were totally relaxed, no fear, no
tension, just love.
I walked further, and still in the park, I saw a
couple surrounded by a group of people. It was a
family photo session. A man and a woman were
obviously getting married; he was wearing a
formal suit, she was dressed in a wedding gown.
Then I noticed that large black sunglasses were
hiding a large part of the man’s face. He was
blind. Most likely, he was badly burned behind
the dark spectacles. His future wife was
younger, and she was attractive. She was happy!
She kept chatting, laughing cheerfully. I was
stunned. In the West, people have been betraying
each other, abandoning one another over the
tiniest inconveniences or doubts, for the most
egotistic reasons. And here, a young attractive
woman was joining, happily, her badly injured
man, so they could walk together, side-by-side,
for the rest of their life journey.
***
I saw a
lot of North Korea after those few hours in the
park. I was faced with the most fortified border
on Earth. I met and discussed philosophy and how
the West tries to de-humanize its enemies, with
Yang Hyong Sob, the Vice President of the
Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s
Committee. I discussed philosophy and
existentialism with the great theologian and
philosopher John Cobb, on board a bus that was
taking us from Pyongyang to the borderline.
Subway in Pyongyang (photo by
Andre Vltchek)
There were ‘big moments’ during that trip, great
celebrations all around me. There were elaborate
performances and speeches, marches and music.
Yet, nothing touched me so deeply as those
moments in the park. There, I observed enormous
tenderness given to a child by her mother. And I
witnessed that natural and beautiful, simplicity
and joy of love, mixed with serenity and dignity
radiating from a young woman marrying her blind
and injured partner.
That is North Korea, which I have been
privileged enough to have observed with my own
eyes. That is North Korea which the manager
wants to ‘take care of’, which means ‘to
destroy’. And that is North Korea where I
realized, as on so many other occasions, in so
many countries, that there is still so much love
that resides on this Earth, and that no
barbarity, no cruelty, would ever be able to
defeat it.
***
This
essay is not my ‘usual stuff’. It is not a
philosophy, or reportage. I don’t know what it
is. I don’t care what it is. I just wanted to
share something with my readers: something that
is inside me right now, something that is
breaking and shouting and rebelling against the
state of things.
What I am certain of is that at this moment, I
want to be there, in Pyongyang. I want to go
back, although no one has invited me to return,
yet.
If the supervisor, the manager, decides to
attack, I want to be on my feet and alert and
ready, facing his ships and missiles. Just like
that, as always, without any cover or
bulletproof vest, just with my cameras, and a
pen and a simple notepad, as well as a tiny
Asian dragon – a good luck charm – in my pocket.
I will not be afraid. I don’t think most of the
people of North Korea would be afraid. Only
those who are ready to commit mass murder, over
and over again, in all corners of the world, are
now most likely scared; at least subconsciously,
at least in their own essence as well as of
their own insanity.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist,
filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has
covered wars and conflicts in dozens of
countries. Three of his latest books are
revolutionary novel
“Aurora”
and two bestselling works of political
non-fiction: “Exposing
Lies Of The Empire”
and “Fighting
Against Western Imperialism”.
View his other books
here.
Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen.
Watch
Rwanda
Gambit,
his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and
DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America,
Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in
East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to
work around the world. He can be reached through
his website
and his
Twitter.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
