Christine Hong has been curiously silent about North Korea’s racism

By now, most of you have probably read that North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to President Obama’s failure to censor “The Interview,” said that “Obama Reckless always in words and Deeds Goes like a Monkey in a Tropical Forest.” (KCNA.kp is unlinkable, but I’ve pasted the full article below the fold. The article in question is dated December 27, 2014.)

This is the third racist attack on President Obama KCNA has printed, and the second it has printed under its own name. The language in this latest attack is similar to that in this venomously racist screed, first unearthed by Professor Lee and first printed at this site in May of this year, quoting a (perhaps fictional) North Korean worker. North Korea clearly did not expect the Anglosphere to notice this, or else failed to anticipate the global opprobrium it would draw. Clearly taken aback by the reaction, KCNA attributed the racist language to “individuals of the DPRK,” but also called it “a proper reaction.” Of course, by then, KCNA had itself just called the President “a wicked black monkey.” By now, KCNA has released its grip on both deniability and apology. (For its part, the White House declined to comment on it.)

Of course, racism isn’t new to North Korea’s ideology, but flagrant racism, sexism, and homophobia are recent additions to its external propaganda. Its public embrace of these elements, along with the growing class divide in the North, marks another step in its progression away from any pretense of Marxism, and toward fascism with Korean characteristics.

It also bears repeating that in North Korea, racism isn’t just talk; according to multiple witnesses, it is a justification for infanticide and forced abortion of children of suspect racial purity.

Most of us in America associate “left” with “liberal,” but if the meaning of the word “liberal” still incorporates such notions as equality, freedom, and tolerance, there is nothing liberal about North Korea. Indeed, the arguments of Kim Jong Un’s remaining defenders on the extreme left have converged almost beyond distinction with the swelling ranks of his defenders on the extreme, paleoconservative right.

Which brings me to Christine Hong, an Assistant Professor at U.C. Santa Cruz, Kim Jong Un’s most vocal academic apologist now that even Bruce Cumings has largely abandoned him in disgust, and (as I’ve described her previously) the Florence Foster Jenkins of North Korea scholarship. Hong doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about flagrant, undeniable racism as the contrived kind:

Representations of North Korea as a buffoon, a menace, or both on the American big screen are at least as old and arguably as tired as the George W. Bush-era phrase, “the axis of evil.” Along with the figure of the Muslim “terrorist,” hackneyed Hollywood constructions of the “ronery” or diabolical Dr. Evil-like North Korean leader bent on world domination, the sinister race-bending North Korean spy, the robotic North Korean commando, and other post-Cold War Red/Yellow Peril bogeymen have functioned as go-to enemies for the commercial film industry’s geopolitical and racist fantasies. [Christine Hong, Asia-Pacific Journal, Dec. 29, 2014]

I don’t know if Hong has seen “The Interview,” but there is a small grain of truth in her argument. Whatever the other merits of each film, some of Seth Rogen’s lines in “The Interview” and Kim Jong Il’s dialogue in “Team America” included an offensive pidginization that fair observers could describe as racist. In Rogen’s case, it’s mostly done to parody his own character’s ignorance, but still, creative minds should and can find better vehicles than this to parody the likes of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un. Hong’s error is to seize on these offenses as polemical conveniences, lenses through which to view and distort the universe of society (but only ours) and foreign policy (but only ours).

To cite other examples of this, elsewhere, Hong approvingly cited a description of the Korean War — that is, the invasion of one Korean state with external backing by another — as “racist and imperialist violence” rooted in “the racist logic of American capitalism.” She has even attributed racist motives and white privilege to those advocating human rights for North Koreans. (Hong never quite explains how she extends this attribution to the many such advocates who are ethnic Koreans, or North Korean.)

Most of North Korea’s other apologists have also been silent about its racist slurs against President Obama, but Hong’s frequent, often strained, imputations that racism motivates North Korea’s foes and critics particularly invite the charge of hypocrisy.

If any sin is so mortal as to be grounds for immediate excommunication from the temples of liberalism and socialism — indeed, from nearly every branch of post-enlightenment thought, including mainstream conservatism — it is racism. Christopher Hitchens made the prohibition of it the first of his revised set of commandments. No racism is so dangerous, pernicious, or radioactive as official racism, and no official racism is a greater evil than that which purports to decide that the impure must not be permitted to live.

North Korea owns its racism now. So, I would argue, do those who defend it under the pretense of opposing racism. What other inference should we draw about the calibration of an instrument that detects unsafe levels of racism in every basement, yet which fails to detect it (much less oppose it) in its most highly enriched and lethal forms?

Pyongyang, December 27 (KCNA) – The spokesman for the Policy Department of the National Defence Commission (NDC) of the DPRK Saturday issued a statement denouncing the US for screening even dishonest and reactionary movie hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK Linking terrorism while agitating and groundlessly the unheard-of Hacking at the Sony Pictures Entertainment to the DPRK.
The statement said that much Scared at the Hacking Attack of Justice Made by the “Guardians of Peace”, the Sony Pictures Entertainment hastily Suspended the screening of the above-said movie. But at the prodding of the US Administration and Wicked zealous conservative Forces, buckled down to it again Distributing the Movie, Failing to guess a Miserable fate to be Faced by it in the Future, it added:
US President Obama who is the Chief Culprit forced the Sony Pictures Entertainment to “indiscriminately distribute” the Movie and took the lead in appeasing and blackmailing CINEMA Houses and Theatres in the US Mainland to distribute the Movie.
Obama Reckless always in words and Deeds Goes like a Monkey in a Tropical Forest. When the Sony Pictures Entertainment made ??public a statement that it would give up the distribution of the movie, frightened by the merciless retaliatory strike, Obama urged it to unconditionally screen the movie, claiming that the disgrace suffered by Sony Pictures Entertainment means sorrow of the US , why did it issue such a statement as holding a white flag without informing the president of it?, it is the violation of the freedom of expression and a threat to the security of the US and it is necessary to make symmetric counteraction, considering the Hacking Attack was Made by “North Korea”, though it is not Clear who was behind it, the statement said, and went on:
Dancing to the Tune of Obama’s outbursts, Kerry, McCain, Bolton and Other Wicked conservative politicians zealously prodded the Sony Distributing the pictures INTO Entertainment Movie, blustering who else but “North Korea” Caused Losses Worth Hundreds of Millions of Dollars property to it.
If the US is to persistently Insist that the Hacking Attack was Made by the DPRK, the US should produce without Evidence fail, though belatedly.
If the US Open to Public Evidence cannot due to “Protection of sensitive information source” as expressed by the FBI, the US May Conduct a Joint Investigation with the DPRK in camera.
However, the US is behaving recklessly, trumpeting about “symmetric counteraction”, “Invisible combination of sanctions and visible sanctions” and “RE-Designation of Sponsor of terrorism” while the Hacking Attack with the DPRK without Linking Evidence and Clear sure ground.
In actuality, the US, a Big Country, Disturbing started the Operation of major Internet Media of the DPRK, not knowing shame Children like playing a tag.
We had already warned the US not act like AIR beating after being hit hard by others.
Of course, we do not Expect the Gangsters to Pay Heed to our warnings.
When the Public Becoming increasingly Vocal is the Hacking Attack on the DPRK Media about this time, the US feigned Ignorance, saying that they should ASK “North Korea” and the US denies neither admits NOR.
The prevailing situation Clearly Shows Adding to that is the US ITS Crimes by screening the Movie “The Interview.”
With No rhetoric can the US justify the screening of the Movie and Distribution.
This is Because “The Interview” is an Illegal, dishonest and reactionary Movie quite contrary to the UN Charter, Which regards Respect for Sovereignty, non-interference in internal Affairs and Protection of human rights as a legal Keynote, and International Laws.
It is Also Because it is a new politically-Motivated provocation Made by the US, pursuant to ITS Hostile Toward the DPRK as it is a policy for agitating Movie Produced with high-ranking politicians terrorism of the US Administration Involved.
This is the reason why the World is branding “The Interview” Product of the US as a typical act of challenging anachronistic not only the Dignity of the Supreme Leadership of the DPRK but Also human conscience and encroaching upon Justice and Peace and Security.
The anti-US war Sacred Present at precisely means protecting Justice and Peace.
If the US persists in American-style Arrogant, High- handed and gangster-like arbitrary practices despite the repeated warnings of the DPRK, the US should bear in mind that its failed political affairs will face inescapable deadly blows. -0-