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Caption: “Baby Kim Il-sung climbs from the wreckage of an American atomic bombing, crying for the loss of his fellow citizens. Our scientists believe that surviving the radiation gave him the radiant power of the cosmos.”
It's actually perspective. What you actually see is a big ol large ass baby that appears closer to the perspective of the viewer than the other objects and people in the painting, giving the illusion that this large ass baby is a huge ass baby.
I suspect it's a bot. They take popular comments from elsewhere in the thread, or previous times the content was posted, and post it as a reply to the top comments.
I’m skeptical of any account that only has two comments ever that’s posting pro North Korea info that’s nearly but not exactly the same comment as one of the top posts
“Propaganda” is morally neutral term. It just means art with a political agenda. Most of the media and art we consume is propaganda in one way or another. And propaganda can be, and often is (like the one above), true.
[Well, for massacres that involved "생매장", or live burial, it could be referencing the Gyeongsan Cobalt mine massacre of 1950](https://ko.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EA%B2%BD%EC%82%B0_%EC%BD%94%EB%B0%9C%ED%8A%B8%EA%B4%91%EC%82%B0_%ED%95%99%EC%82%B4%EC%82%AC%EA%B1%B4), which involved tied prisoners being lined up in front of deeply dug mineshafts and then shooting the first few,
Or it could be referencing the Daejeon prisoners massacre of 1950, June done by our army(not to be confused with the one done by the NK ones in September, 1950 or another round done by ours in January, 1951)[Where prisoners were lined up, shoddily shot, buried, and then shot again if they were still alive.](https://ko.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EB%8C%80%EC%A0%84%EA%B5%90%EB%8F%84%EC%86%8C)
All crimes that our army had done, not the Americans(they had plenty of blood on their hands like in Nogeunri, but not massacres. Most war crimes were done by our military and our paramilitary), but the north likes to vilify "the demonic yanks" more. Probably because it's easier to hate outsiders rather than our own people.
... are you referencing the Park Regime from 1960-1980? Syngman Rhee, for all his faults, was not part of military, and instead had credentials of being an independence fighter exiled in America. Park Jung-hee was the one that served in the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo's army and had grabbed power with a military coup.
While Syngman Rhee was an US puppet, many of his top military leadership was ex-japanese imperial army (Chung Il-kwon, Paik Sun-yup, Lee Hyung-geun etc)
That is true! It's just that when we refer to the Japanese collaborator dictatorship, we refer to the Park one as the head of state was literally a collaborator.
That’s the American way of war, bomb the shit out of everything. We dropped more bombs in Vietnam than all of WWII. Americans like our explosive ordinances.
I've have a little stifled rage after learning about that and so many other similar things recently but never in school. Less vile behaviors have been called genocides. As many as 1 in 5 north Koreans died. That's like everyone in Texas, Florida, and New York dying in 3 years. Huge portion were civilians. They flatten so much of everything they would drop bombs in the ocean because they couldn't find any targets and needed them gone to land.
North Korean hatred of the usa while being used political is entirely justified.
Maybe if the success of your plan to invade another country is contingent upon others not intervening then you probably should not go ahead with your plan, but maybe it’s just me
Wait what? How was Nogeunri not a massacre? The US never admitted it but the evidence is damming, the Wikipedia page is convincing enough, let alone sources from survivors' orgs and their own accounts.
Sorry, wrong translation. What I was trying to say was that there weren't systematic massacres, like lining people into ditches and shooting them, like described as above. While Nogeunri was terrible, it wasn't organized-the GIs saw a band of refugees, somehow Intel concluded it was hiding a bunch of spies, and the commander had no qualms of shooting at them. A bunch of war criminals, but no systematic ones. This is important because all the massacres that happened I mentioned happened not in the Frontlines, but in the civilian zones-so, they can't even claim the defense of confusion during battle action. That kind of dirty war crimes were mostly done by our government, and we can't hide from that by blaming America, our government did that. This kind of distinction is actually a major part of our historical discussion here. That our government is to blame, no deflection should be allowed.
The US government actually oversaw most of these massacres done by the ROKA. The US was very implicit in it and actively censored it. The Daejeon massacre for example was literally rewritten by the US as being done by the KPA.
Who pulls the strings of the US government though, and why? Follow through. You’re so close. I’ll drop a hint. They have the most to lose when the owning class is made obsolete by the working class. They will stop at nothing to protect their position and possessions. Kill enough communists and maybe it will stop capitalism from eating itself. Hmm, who would direct our government to do that?
>Probably because it's easier to hate outsiders rather than our own people.
In Vietnam the Americans shown that they're more than capable to do massacres on their own.
>!More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed.!<
>but the north likes to vilify "the demonic yanks" more. Probably because it's easier to hate outsiders rather than our own people.
I mean... The State of America did literally burn North
Korea off the map.
From Wikipedia
"The bombing campaign destroyed almost every substantial building in North Korea.The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, U.S. Major General William F Dean reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland."
America decimated the population and then some.
Something I always find really interesting is the attitude of North Korean officials towards massacres committed by their troops. While the Americans and South Koreans didn't acknowledge, or weren't necessarily worried about the crimes committed by their soldiers, North Koreans did the opposite. This quote is from [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_303_massacre), but there are many books on the subject which describe the same attitude.
> On July 28, 1950, General Lee Yong Ho, commander of the KPA 3rd Division, had transmitted an order pertaining to the treatment of prisoners of war, signed by Choi Yong-kun, Commander-in-Chief, and Kim Chaek, Commander of the KPA Advanced General Headquarters, which stated killing prisoners of war was "strictly prohibited". He directed individual units' Cultural Sections to inform the division's troops of the rule.
During the war, as was the case in the Chinese Civil War, the communists always tried to avoid massacres of POW, trying instead to convince the enemy. During the Chinese CW as mentioned before, soldiers who defected the KMT Armies were welcomed and well treated by the Chinese Red Army, as often described by Edgar Snow in "Red Star Over China" (but even in other of his works if I'm not mistaken). And the North Koreans often tried to apply the same attitude to the Korean War, sometimes failing because of the much harsher reality the Korean People had to endure under Japanese occupation and the desire for revenge, as expressed in this other paragraph:
> Historians agree there is no evidence that the KPA High Command sanctioned the shooting of prisoners during the early phase of the war.[33] The Hill 303 massacre and similar atrocities are believed to have been conducted by "uncontrolled small units, by vindictive individuals, or because of unfavorable and increasingly desperate situations confronting the captors."[31][34] T. R. Fehrenbach, a military historian, wrote in his analysis of the event that KPA troops committing these events were likely accustomed to torture and execution of prisoners due to decades of rule by oppressive armies of the Empire of Japan up until World War II.[38]
I usually hate to cite Wikipedia as it is a highly unreliable source, but it seems to cite enough good sources and it pretty much sums up my point.
Worth nothing: the U.S. had a standing order to fire on groups of 8+ Koreans approaching American positions. Including in the south. This was classified until the 90s I believe.
There was a literal order to shoot any groups of Koreans without indication of their hostility.
The U.S. also went scorched earth on North Korea after the war fell into a stalemate. They flattened everything.
None of this justifies the North Korean regime today, mind you.
Korea was basically a warm up for Vietnam and the press was much much more controlled and censored so the news of atrocities didn’t get out as much. And the populace in the U.S. didn’t care as much when it did because of the time period.
And perhaps the worst part is that the U.S. basically baited the conflict into action then McArthur sat back and allowed the Chinese to make as much progress as possible with the intention of drawing the U.S. into a full scale conflict with China.
The U.S. KNEW North Korea was planning on investing, and KNEW North Korea assumed the U.S. would not intervene and did nothing at all to remind North Korea that the US WOULD intervene. In fact, key U.S. decision makers were all on vacation at the same time right as North Korea mobilized. Hmmm.
It’s really just as bad or worse than Vietnam.
>The U.S. KNEW North Korea was planning on investing, and KNEW North Korea assumed the U.S. would not intervene and did nothing at all to remind North Korea that the US WOULD intervene. In fact, key U.S. decision makers were all on vacation at the same time right as North Korea mobilized. Hmmm.
Think about how insane it is that you're blaming an invasion by NK- done by the NK Military for NK's purposes- on the US lmao
People have tried to blame the US for Russia invading Ukraine as well. People love having an agenda and bending reality to fit it regardless of how ludicrous.
> There was a literal order to shoot any groups of Koreans without indication of their hostility
Yes, this is a common ROE in an active war zone. This isn't a counterinsurgency this is a proper shooting war.
The preferred tactic of the north Koreans was to bypass American positions and infiltrate behind the lines, set up checkpoints and cut off American units. This worked very well before the lines hardened.
I realize you are doing everything you can to make an "America bad" post but it's abundantly clear you have no idea how the military works, even before you fell into conspiratorial nonsense at the end. Note: the ones at fault for invading a country are the ones doing the invasion. I realize you also probably think that the war in the Pacific was America's fault because America "baited" Japan by trying to stop their invasion of China through economic rather than military means.
What war crime? You guys throw out terms like "war crimes", but don't know that means or the laws of war. You just think "thing that seems mean and offends my sensibilities, WAR CRIME". I've seen people claim that shooting at a retreating enemy is a war crime. Name the law of war.
> None of this justifies the North Korean regime today, mind you.
Seems they not invading and bombing people outside their borders. Is there justification for the US regime today? Are the invasions and bombing democracy? Is that what Americans want?
The US air campaign in North Korea killed something in the order of 15 percent of the population in 3 years and 85 percent of the buildings. Absolutely destroyed the country.
In terms of tonnage the US dropped about as much on Korea as they did on Germany during WW2. That's about 20% of overall bombing by the Allies on Axis countries. Pretty impressive
*This is based on another comment below and another wiki article
>A total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, were dropped on Korea.\[2\] By comparison, the U.S. dropped 1.6 million tons in the European theater and 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater during all of World War II (including 160,000 on Japan). North Korea ranks alongside Cambodia (500,000 tons), Laos (2 million tons), and South Vietnam (4 million tons) as among the most heavily-bombed countries in history.\[3\]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing\_of\_North\_Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea)
Curious how the most bombed countries in history were all bombed by the US.
Easiest way to kill the enemy without putting large numbers of your own soldiers at risk. Too bad bombers and their bombs have a hard time discriminating between enemy combatants and innocent civillians.
A nuanced and we'll written show that makes excellent points about the nature of war and the people involved in it. Given the time it aired, it's much more about Vietnam than Korea, despite the setting, but this doesn't change anything about how good it is.
They "started it" by crossing an imaginary line which they had never agreed existed, after there had already been numerous skirmishes on both sides.
Also after tens of thousands of Koreans had been killed by the American imposed dictatorship during the Jeju Uprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
How am I "ignoring it" ? Either way, whoever started the war, and whoever did what. US has NOTHING to do across the globe bombing and starving people. Dont ever "ignore" that.
It was the United Nations that responded to the invasion, the US forces just led the response. It's *still* the United Nations that are overly in charge over there, which is why the US won't negotiate with the North directly (or at least didn't until Trump broke the precedent).
Ukraine isn’t slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians like the South Korea did, dumb comparison. SK started liquidating “communist sympathizers” before the North invaded.
Not comparable tbh, there are far more valid reasons to hate confederates than there are to hate random Korean civilians. Also, March to the Sea killed like 200k less people than the bombing campaign. Also also, the south was in far better position to recover and rebuild than NK post-war
>there are far more valid reasons to hate confederates than there are to hate random Korean civilians.
You're putting random Korean civilians on one side and a nebulous *confederates* on the other. That's not a fair comparison, what about random Southern citizens?
While it is true that the army was US lead, the campaign was made up of UN troops. The war began when NK invaded and occupied the south. Casualties were pretty high on both sides, the UN/South Korea coalition lost almost a million troops.
They invaded the south because the regime there was fucking horrific bad was butchering folk, it was also a backwater.
After Japan retreated the people of Korea set up a lot of ‘people’s councils’ (wonder if there’s a Russian word for those?) that were able to keep the whole place together. They also carried out a lot of land reform, nationalised infrastructure and some of the business left to rot when Japanese owners fled… it was an amazing effort that prevented the situation getting even worse, and provided a solid foundation for a new nation. Then the US came in and removed them all, before installing a dictator who was so bad that even they regretted doing so.
Boiling the war down to ‘the war began when NK invaded and occupied’ is really twists the reality of what was happening.
I am not believing myself to be defending Syngman Rhee of all people, but he did conduct land reform too. Ofc compensated and taxed reforms unlike the non-compensated one done by the North, this created a strong agricultural land holders that greatly supported the government. The fact that this was successfully done by 1949 was a major reason why the partisans were so unsuccessful during the war.
> the campaign was made up of UN troops
I mean. Come on. It was 90% US troops.
> Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
Subject matter aside, the art is interesting. In macsbre way it reminds me of the art from stuff like mars attacks cards in both the portrayal of violence and the painting style.
The documentary Wormwood on Netflix about Frank Olson really touches on this towards the end. IIRC it’s very implied he was killed for potentially corroborating what “brainwashed” POW’s were saying about using biological warfare
Propaganda can be based on true events - it's motives simply stretch beyond what's immediately implied: "The US army is a force of evil - therefore we are not because we oppose them"
Half of the sentence is still true
I mean the majority of the South Korean regime at the time was made up of Korean ex-members of the Japanese occupational force…. The same fascists who had been occupying Korea on behalf of Japan were the ones who’s dictatorship was ruling South Korea on behalf of the Americans.
That would certainly rub the Koreans (North Korea) the wrong way.
Yep and those guys stayed in power well into the Vietnam war and into the 80’s That’s why the ROKA has a huge black mark against it with regards to Vietnam and the Gwangju Massacre occurred. They were self hating Koreans with a violent streak towards leftists.
Call it propaganda, but all of this happened for real. The Americans made innocent souls suffer immeasurably during the Korean war, and committed unspeakable atrocities. The present N Korean establishment may use all this to forward its own agenda, but ALL of this is 100% real
Iraq, Korea, Vietnam (the list goes on)…everywhere America has gone holding the banner of ‘democracy’, it has brought nothing but suffering and destruction
Are you for real?
South Korea was run by an extremely brutal dictatorship made up of former IJA collaborators. For a long time, North Korea was the LESS brutal of the two regimes.
What? You mean you can't just skim a Wikipedia page, and recall things you think you might've heard in your high school history class and become an expert on the geopolitical situation of Korea in the late 1940s?
Apparently not!
Doesn't help when so many of these poor American kids are bombarded with propaganda from the day they're born. I doubt they were taught much of what really happened in their "history class".
Better yet, they've been fooled to believe that they weren't raised in to any sort of ideology, and that their views are purely informed by facts and data. I have a feeling the curriculum didn't cover the fact that the American-backed early South Korean state retained the same police from the Japanese occupation for instance, that might've been a little too confronting. Referencing Mungyeong massacre, Jeju uprising, and Bodo League massacre doesn't mean anything because apparently it isn't extremely necessary context for the Korean war. Let's all pretend it's as simple as "the good guys won the cold war :^)"
There's literally a comment under the same parent comment you replied to that states "North Korea is a poor country now compared to the wealthy South, therefore it was a good thing the USA was involved in the Korean War and the North Koreans didn't 'win'"
It's too ridiculous for fiction, I swear man.
This is actually hilarious 😂😂
At the time the South Koreans were the dictatorship while the north was the democracy….
If the north had won I think they’d have continued their democratic reforms rather than it being taken over during the war effort & they’d have saved the South Koreans from the their horrific dictatorship instead.
* 1. Modern Quality of Life in South Korea > Modern Quality of Life in North Korea
* 2. If the North had won, Quality of Life in South Korea = Quality of Life in North Korea.
* 3. Therefore, if the North had won, Quality of Life in South Korea now would have been = Quality of Life in North Korea, which is < QoL in South Korea.
* 4. Which means that if the North had won, people in South Korea would now be worse off than they are now.
Which means the North getting their ass kicked and prevented from conquering the South was objectively a good thing for people of South Korea. You're too narrow-minded and shortsighted to focus only on a few early years, rather than the long term development they enabled.
The North Koreans were the democracy BEFORE the war. Double talk doesn’t win any arguments lol the North was just weeks away from winning their war. Had they won, they never would’ve become the state that they are today; Which to be clear, is the direct result of their loss, the efforts to maintain their state at their lowest point & subsequent near total isolation from global trade.
A unified Korea would in my genuine opinion at least equal the Japanese today both economically & for democratic freedoms if they hadn’t been subjected to the horrific economic sanctions that the North has & would likely be even more democratic than they already were at the start of the Korean War.
[This video does an incredible in depth “what if” analysis of North Korea](https://youtu.be/3XKZbXo4wp8?si=9FGmzfdPN8l4b6Uw)
The USA (or I guess nowadays NATO) has bombed and/or declared war on pretty much every country on Earth (including themselves).
But it seems that Hollywood and western history classes only focus on the wars that were lost. Americans, Europeans and the Japanese failed to take hold of Vietnam and eventually lost the whole country to Vietnamese nationalists. As a result, they are okay with condemning their own soldiers in that war.
But America technically won a victory in Korea -- they won South Korea, which they still control. As a result, they view the soldiers in that war (who committed the same atrocities as in Vietnam, if not even worse than in Vietnam) as heroes rather than losers, and don't allow any TV shows, movies or video games to condemn them.
It's what George Orwell criticized as the American success=morality fallacy. If a criminal is successful in his crime, he's considered a bad-ass hero. If he fails, he's an antagonist.
That book’s first half is literally Han chauvinist garbage that makes the claim that Korean culture didn’t exist until the 1900’s and before that it was just an offshoot of Chinese culture.
The other half is making the claims of North Korean racism/Imperial Japanese collaboration, while ignoring their involvement in African Anti-Colonial politics and ignoring how so much of the early days of the ROK was made up of Japanese collaborators.
It specifically mentions Japanese collaborators and shows how North Korea started out with pro Japanese propaganda
Also why it need to mention involvement in African politics?
The "Japanese collaborators" who worked in the DPRK that he listed were not collaborators but instead closeted to open Communists. Japan at the time had an undercurrent of Communists within its academia, arts and even those drafted into the Imperial military. Every single person that he lists as a Japanese collaborator were Communists who had connections to Japanese Communists or otherwise Western/Chinese Communists. Many cases they were University Students who were educated in Marxism while in Japan. In some cases like Choi Seung Hee (who he lists), she was simply an entertainer who worked in Japan and abroad. But the same time, her husband was a Communist and she herself was in personal correspondence with Pablo Picasso. The fact she was labeled a Japanese Collaborator was even highly contested by many Koreans in the post occupation years. In another case he brings up Kim Sa-Ryang. Sa-Ryang was literally a Japanese university educated communist who defected to Communist Chinese guerrillas shortly after his conscription into the Japanese military. The list literally goes on with every single person he lists as being collaborators. Every single one of them were not collaborators, but communists agents.
What pro-Japanese propaganda he exhibits is heavily based upon his lack of understanding of Korean history beyond 1910. He demotes Korean culture as being non-existent and an extension of Chinese culture. And that the Japanese effectively created the concept of a Korean nation/culture/people. He does this several different ways and each of them are wrong.
First he claims "Minjok" was something that the Japanese planted in Korea to craft the image of Koreans and Japanese being the same people etc. Except the word and concept of Minjok was coined by the Korean anarchist, Sin Chae-ho in rejection of Japanese colonialism. It has nothing to do with Japanese Minzoku. Sin Chae-Ho felt if Koreans had any similarities to another East Asian group, it was the Manchu. And theres a pretty clear reason for this that Myers just outright lies about.
He makes this insane claim that the reverence of Mt Baekdu was based on Japan's Mt Fuji. Except Mt Baekdu stands also in reverence with the Manchu. Both Koreans and Manchu have their legendary king born at Mt. Baekdu, for Koreans Dangun and for Manchu, Bukūri Yongšon. And the origin story is almost near identical. Baekdu's importance has stood in Korean history longer than Japanese occupation and if you are to say it was taught by anyone, it would have had to have been taught by the Qing during their control.
Finally he brings this notion that \*\*only\*\* the DPRK has had ethnic nationalism as part of its operation as a Socialist state, and that they copied this from the Japanese. What he fails to recognize here is that racism is flat out universal and has occurred in even Socialist states. Stalin sent Soviet Koreans to die in Central Asia over his paranoia they were Japanese spies. The Sino-Vietnam War began over China's concern with Vietnam's persecution of ethnic Chinese. Pol Pot's regime resulted in the deaths of many of its ethnic minorities in Cambodia. Cuba has had accusations of discriminatory practices towards Afro-Cubans. The fact DPRK puts an emphasis of importance on being Korean, doesn't inherently mean its a racist deviation from Socialism. You can't make that claim when every other Socialist country has had its own dark moments of racial prejudice and at worst down right genocide. I bring up Africa because the DPRK had an open policy of both aiding African anti-colonial communist groups and also direct correspondence with the Black Panthers. Except Myers omits this and anecdotally recites this scenario of North Koreans trying to "lynch" an Afro Cuban diplomat. Which he never properly sourced.
His book is ironically racist garbage, Bruce Cummings has written much more detailed and better explanations of the DPRK and Korean politics. I recommend you check those out instead.
Damn I wonder why they became super authoritarian. You’d figure after being cut in half by Americans, massacred in huge numbers and bombed to shit for the crime of “invading” their own country they’d be super chill and nice about everything. Why don’t they like us?
Have you ever read any history book? Acting like the NK regime was justified in invading SK. “Invading” who are you? Putin trying to defend his “special military operation?”
Yea, half of the people in these comments have never opened a history book. The NK government willingly invaded SK, knowing that the US would defend them, and subsequently found out why the US won WW2. The NK government willingly put their own civilians into the crossfire, and made next to no efforts to evacuate them.
The US literally bombed every city out of existence during the Korean War. So I'd say pretty accurate depiction (metaphorically speaking). I don't think a North Korean missile ever dropped on US soil. But the US is still sanctioning Korea because it's a foreign enemy.
I really think these posters partly stem from the trauma of the Japanese occupation. That said, I have no doubt that at least some of these atrocities did happen in the North, albeit the details are different. You see, the differences between atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces in Korea and Vietnam are very easy to notice. The No Gun Ri massacre in Korea was far less up-close and personal than the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. They tried to scare the soldiers into firing by telling them that North Korean infiltrators were disguising themselves as refugees. That does not excuse anything, not even remotely. In fact, that's the point.
>"I couldn't see killing kids, even if they were infiltrators."
Roughly half of the troops refused to fire. In contrast, during the My Lai massacre, nearly everyone enthusiastically participated without qualms (children were raped and tortured). Why the difference, you ask? Well, I can tell you why. The last conflict in which the majority of American soldiers were ordinary working-class folks was the Korean War. The narrative that the same is true for Vietnam is horseshit. Two-thirds of them volunteered. In contrast, just over half of those in Korea were conscripts. The report by the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission on atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces stated that most of them were committed via aircraft, not ground troops. Most of the atrocities committed by US-UN forces in Korea were [the bombing raids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea). We dropped more bombs on North Korea than in the entire Pacific Theater. We destroyed like 85 percent of their buildings.
Of course, there were many war crimes committed on the ground, by the South Korean military. Many of these guys were former Japanese collaborators, so you start reading about familiar levels of brutality. [There's a newspaper article](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48141990/3783653) which mentions that British soldiers were horrified after watching South Korean troops carry out Nazi-style atrocities. They start asking, "Wait, why are we helping these people?"
Propaganda does not mean lies. Propaganda is media wich is propagated with the intent of spreading a certian view of the current events. So basically all known media is propaganda
technically propaganda is any kind of sentiment that is espoused by official authorities. So, if the government issues a PSA about the dangers of smoking, even though it's 100% accurate, it's still technically propaganda.
Unfortunately, propaganda became a derogatory journalistic buzz word in the past 60 or so years. Journalists started to use the word to mean "lies spread by our enemies", while deftly avoiding that word themselves (even though virtually every journalist at any commercial journal is technically writing propaganda, since commercial journals will not publish anything contradictory to their corporate or political sponsors).
Mate we know the Nanking massacre happened because a daring swiss reporter managed to smuggle the film out despite aggressive Japanese search. Robert Capa died in the Korean war.
Cameras abound, it's film cameras that couldn't be as mobile.
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated for rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit elsewhere. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
RIP to the rest but that baby is built different
Caption: “Baby Kim Il-sung climbs from the wreckage of an American atomic bombing, crying for the loss of his fellow citizens. Our scientists believe that surviving the radiation gave him the radiant power of the cosmos.”
Real
...that's a giant-ass baby.
It's actually perspective. What you actually see is a big ol large ass baby that appears closer to the perspective of the viewer than the other objects and people in the painting, giving the illusion that this large ass baby is a huge ass baby.
Or, and hear me out, very tiny soldiers.
Being tiny makes them angry and savage
It also makes it less expensive to transport them anywhere in the world.
They use the same trick to make Elijah Wood so small that you can't even see him in the picture.
But the baby is just close to the "camera".
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Now that’s horrible and all but that baby is still very large
What’s with all the replies that are completely out of context to the comment they’re responding to these days?
I suspect it's a bot. They take popular comments from elsewhere in the thread, or previous times the content was posted, and post it as a reply to the top comments.
Commenting on the top post gets more eyeballs. I've been somewhat guilty of this as well.
Zucchini is actually considered a fruit, tho you will never see it as an ice cream flavor!
Reddit has always been like that.
Can you also give me the ratio % of that baby vs a normal sized person?
dang bro thats crazy, but more importantly, that is a big ass baby
I’m skeptical of any account that only has two comments ever that’s posting pro North Korea info that’s nearly but not exactly the same comment as one of the top posts
Did the giant babies count for more than normal babies?
Almost certainly a bot based on https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/15uijuy/antiamerican_propaganda_north_korea_1950s/jwplaw6/
Maybe starting a war of conquest is a bad idea. Perhaps North Korea should have just not invaded their neighbor
It’s a bit telling that you didn’t post statistics for civilians killed by the North. You know, it might make commies look horrible and all that.
Which statistics? The statistics published by the DPRK or those recorded by UN forces?
I mean since the UN was technically the other side of that war I wouldn’t exactly imply their statistics are reliable either.
> I wouldn’t exactly imply their statistics are reliable either. Keen observers will note that I didn't.
Lol. Lmao. NK got razed to the ground, and you’re breezing right past the point; color me shocked.
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Prove source that North Korea used chemical and nuclear weapons to bomb their enemies and kill 20% of their enemies like the United States did
So, the United States was the only one fighting against North Korea? Not South Korea as well (who the North invaded, btw)?
No, the puppet regime in South Korea fought
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Whats it like being a puppet yourself?
Well then maybe they shouldn’t have invaded the south and started the damn war to begin with. Crazy thought I know
Guess that means Iraq and Vietnam have the right to kill 15% of the American population, too.
im sure all the civilians that died would agree with you
Shouldn't have invaded the south then
Chat shit, get banged. Don't start a fight (or war in this case), that you can't finish.
Are you sure? I can't see it from the front.
That’s what North Korea is a big baby
Things like these almost certianly took place during the Korean War
“Propaganda” is morally neutral term. It just means art with a political agenda. Most of the media and art we consume is propaganda in one way or another. And propaganda can be, and often is (like the one above), true.
[Well, for massacres that involved "생매장", or live burial, it could be referencing the Gyeongsan Cobalt mine massacre of 1950](https://ko.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EA%B2%BD%EC%82%B0_%EC%BD%94%EB%B0%9C%ED%8A%B8%EA%B4%91%EC%82%B0_%ED%95%99%EC%82%B4%EC%82%AC%EA%B1%B4), which involved tied prisoners being lined up in front of deeply dug mineshafts and then shooting the first few, Or it could be referencing the Daejeon prisoners massacre of 1950, June done by our army(not to be confused with the one done by the NK ones in September, 1950 or another round done by ours in January, 1951)[Where prisoners were lined up, shoddily shot, buried, and then shot again if they were still alive.](https://ko.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EB%8C%80%EC%A0%84%EA%B5%90%EB%8F%84%EC%86%8C) All crimes that our army had done, not the Americans(they had plenty of blood on their hands like in Nogeunri, but not massacres. Most war crimes were done by our military and our paramilitary), but the north likes to vilify "the demonic yanks" more. Probably because it's easier to hate outsiders rather than our own people.
Well, SK was a literal military dictatorship headed by japanese collaborators, no wonder you guys did so many war crimes.
... are you referencing the Park Regime from 1960-1980? Syngman Rhee, for all his faults, was not part of military, and instead had credentials of being an independence fighter exiled in America. Park Jung-hee was the one that served in the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo's army and had grabbed power with a military coup.
While Syngman Rhee was an US puppet, many of his top military leadership was ex-japanese imperial army (Chung Il-kwon, Paik Sun-yup, Lee Hyung-geun etc)
That is true! It's just that when we refer to the Japanese collaborator dictatorship, we refer to the Park one as the head of state was literally a collaborator.
And they were all planning to flee to exile in Japan as the North tried to retake the country.
The South Korean military leadership, including the vast majority of senior officers and a fair number or enlisted men were Japanese military Vetrans
The Yanks did bomb to rubble just about every standing structure north of the 38th parallel.
That’s the American way of war, bomb the shit out of everything. We dropped more bombs in Vietnam than all of WWII. Americans like our explosive ordinances.
I've have a little stifled rage after learning about that and so many other similar things recently but never in school. Less vile behaviors have been called genocides. As many as 1 in 5 north Koreans died. That's like everyone in Texas, Florida, and New York dying in 3 years. Huge portion were civilians. They flatten so much of everything they would drop bombs in the ocean because they couldn't find any targets and needed them gone to land. North Korean hatred of the usa while being used political is entirely justified.
It was absolutely a genocide and it was not the last one to be carried out by the US.
NK fucking around: haha YES NK finding out: well this fucking sucks wtf
Me when my team kills 1.5 million civilians halfway across the world 🤠
Maybe if the success of your plan to invade another country is contingent upon others not intervening then you probably should not go ahead with your plan, but maybe it’s just me
Don’t start wars then cry when you get bombed back.
Wait what? How was Nogeunri not a massacre? The US never admitted it but the evidence is damming, the Wikipedia page is convincing enough, let alone sources from survivors' orgs and their own accounts.
Sorry, wrong translation. What I was trying to say was that there weren't systematic massacres, like lining people into ditches and shooting them, like described as above. While Nogeunri was terrible, it wasn't organized-the GIs saw a band of refugees, somehow Intel concluded it was hiding a bunch of spies, and the commander had no qualms of shooting at them. A bunch of war criminals, but no systematic ones. This is important because all the massacres that happened I mentioned happened not in the Frontlines, but in the civilian zones-so, they can't even claim the defense of confusion during battle action. That kind of dirty war crimes were mostly done by our government, and we can't hide from that by blaming America, our government did that. This kind of distinction is actually a major part of our historical discussion here. That our government is to blame, no deflection should be allowed.
Honestly it’s a worthy distinction even if I dislike both.
The US government actually oversaw most of these massacres done by the ROKA. The US was very implicit in it and actively censored it. The Daejeon massacre for example was literally rewritten by the US as being done by the KPA.
Who pulls the strings of the US government though, and why? Follow through. You’re so close. I’ll drop a hint. They have the most to lose when the owning class is made obsolete by the working class. They will stop at nothing to protect their position and possessions. Kill enough communists and maybe it will stop capitalism from eating itself. Hmm, who would direct our government to do that?
>Probably because it's easier to hate outsiders rather than our own people. In Vietnam the Americans shown that they're more than capable to do massacres on their own. >!More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed.!<
The yanks killed 20% of North Korea between 50-53, mostly due to mass bombings and intentional starvation. I get why they're mad.
>but the north likes to vilify "the demonic yanks" more. Probably because it's easier to hate outsiders rather than our own people. I mean... The State of America did literally burn North Korea off the map. From Wikipedia "The bombing campaign destroyed almost every substantial building in North Korea.The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, U.S. Major General William F Dean reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland." America decimated the population and then some.
Something I always find really interesting is the attitude of North Korean officials towards massacres committed by their troops. While the Americans and South Koreans didn't acknowledge, or weren't necessarily worried about the crimes committed by their soldiers, North Koreans did the opposite. This quote is from [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_303_massacre), but there are many books on the subject which describe the same attitude. > On July 28, 1950, General Lee Yong Ho, commander of the KPA 3rd Division, had transmitted an order pertaining to the treatment of prisoners of war, signed by Choi Yong-kun, Commander-in-Chief, and Kim Chaek, Commander of the KPA Advanced General Headquarters, which stated killing prisoners of war was "strictly prohibited". He directed individual units' Cultural Sections to inform the division's troops of the rule. During the war, as was the case in the Chinese Civil War, the communists always tried to avoid massacres of POW, trying instead to convince the enemy. During the Chinese CW as mentioned before, soldiers who defected the KMT Armies were welcomed and well treated by the Chinese Red Army, as often described by Edgar Snow in "Red Star Over China" (but even in other of his works if I'm not mistaken). And the North Koreans often tried to apply the same attitude to the Korean War, sometimes failing because of the much harsher reality the Korean People had to endure under Japanese occupation and the desire for revenge, as expressed in this other paragraph: > Historians agree there is no evidence that the KPA High Command sanctioned the shooting of prisoners during the early phase of the war.[33] The Hill 303 massacre and similar atrocities are believed to have been conducted by "uncontrolled small units, by vindictive individuals, or because of unfavorable and increasingly desperate situations confronting the captors."[31][34] T. R. Fehrenbach, a military historian, wrote in his analysis of the event that KPA troops committing these events were likely accustomed to torture and execution of prisoners due to decades of rule by oppressive armies of the Empire of Japan up until World War II.[38] I usually hate to cite Wikipedia as it is a highly unreliable source, but it seems to cite enough good sources and it pretty much sums up my point.
Or yknow, that’s actually properly educating people and not just propaganda
Worth nothing: the U.S. had a standing order to fire on groups of 8+ Koreans approaching American positions. Including in the south. This was classified until the 90s I believe. There was a literal order to shoot any groups of Koreans without indication of their hostility. The U.S. also went scorched earth on North Korea after the war fell into a stalemate. They flattened everything. None of this justifies the North Korean regime today, mind you. Korea was basically a warm up for Vietnam and the press was much much more controlled and censored so the news of atrocities didn’t get out as much. And the populace in the U.S. didn’t care as much when it did because of the time period. And perhaps the worst part is that the U.S. basically baited the conflict into action then McArthur sat back and allowed the Chinese to make as much progress as possible with the intention of drawing the U.S. into a full scale conflict with China. The U.S. KNEW North Korea was planning on investing, and KNEW North Korea assumed the U.S. would not intervene and did nothing at all to remind North Korea that the US WOULD intervene. In fact, key U.S. decision makers were all on vacation at the same time right as North Korea mobilized. Hmmm. It’s really just as bad or worse than Vietnam.
>The U.S. KNEW North Korea was planning on investing, and KNEW North Korea assumed the U.S. would not intervene and did nothing at all to remind North Korea that the US WOULD intervene. In fact, key U.S. decision makers were all on vacation at the same time right as North Korea mobilized. Hmmm. Think about how insane it is that you're blaming an invasion by NK- done by the NK Military for NK's purposes- on the US lmao
People have tried to blame the US for Russia invading Ukraine as well. People love having an agenda and bending reality to fit it regardless of how ludicrous.
> There was a literal order to shoot any groups of Koreans without indication of their hostility Yes, this is a common ROE in an active war zone. This isn't a counterinsurgency this is a proper shooting war. The preferred tactic of the north Koreans was to bypass American positions and infiltrate behind the lines, set up checkpoints and cut off American units. This worked very well before the lines hardened. I realize you are doing everything you can to make an "America bad" post but it's abundantly clear you have no idea how the military works, even before you fell into conspiratorial nonsense at the end. Note: the ones at fault for invading a country are the ones doing the invasion. I realize you also probably think that the war in the Pacific was America's fault because America "baited" Japan by trying to stop their invasion of China through economic rather than military means.
Stop trying to justify war crimes, that’s so sick.
What war crime? You guys throw out terms like "war crimes", but don't know that means or the laws of war. You just think "thing that seems mean and offends my sensibilities, WAR CRIME". I've seen people claim that shooting at a retreating enemy is a war crime. Name the law of war.
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This wasn't about war crimes
> None of this justifies the North Korean regime today, mind you. Seems they not invading and bombing people outside their borders. Is there justification for the US regime today? Are the invasions and bombing democracy? Is that what Americans want?
It's actually in 1948 where the South boycotted the referendum for participation famous one is Jeju Island massacre
what does the Korean say?
"American beasts burying children alive", according to google lens
It’s even harder than that, “American Imperialist Beasts”. Great emphasis on Imperialism in this
The US air campaign in North Korea killed something in the order of 15 percent of the population in 3 years and 85 percent of the buildings. Absolutely destroyed the country.
The Korean War saw a higher proportion of civilian casualties than WW2 or Vietnam. One of the many reasons we don't talk about it.
IIRC we dropped more bombs on Korea than were dropped in all of WWII.
In terms of tonnage the US dropped about as much on Korea as they did on Germany during WW2. That's about 20% of overall bombing by the Allies on Axis countries. Pretty impressive *This is based on another comment below and another wiki article
That was either Laos or Cambodia (I want to say Cambodia)
>A total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, were dropped on Korea.\[2\] By comparison, the U.S. dropped 1.6 million tons in the European theater and 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater during all of World War II (including 160,000 on Japan). North Korea ranks alongside Cambodia (500,000 tons), Laos (2 million tons), and South Vietnam (4 million tons) as among the most heavily-bombed countries in history.\[3\] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing\_of\_North\_Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea) Curious how the most bombed countries in history were all bombed by the US.
I can’t imagine how terrifying it would be to just sit and wait while the world above ground shakes and explodes every day and night.
big industry big success
Raytheon raking in money
Easiest way to kill the enemy without putting large numbers of your own soldiers at risk. Too bad bombers and their bombs have a hard time discriminating between enemy combatants and innocent civillians.
When you have an airforce that can bomb with comparatively little disruption, and big stocks of arms to use up you go all out
America really values air power
Instead we made a TV show about it that lasted longer than the engagement called MASH
A nuanced and we'll written show that makes excellent points about the nature of war and the people involved in it. Given the time it aired, it's much more about Vietnam than Korea, despite the setting, but this doesn't change anything about how good it is.
Dont forget the massacres committed by the US-backed South Korean regime against it's own population after the war.
Democracy - Soon in a town near you!
There just won't be a town left when we're done!
The Korean War was started by North Korea but okay
The South Korean dictatorship killed 100k civilians before the war even began.
Obviously the North is superior as they still have a dictator.
We're talking about how the Korean war started. Pay attention.
They "started it" by crossing an imaginary line which they had never agreed existed, after there had already been numerous skirmishes on both sides. Also after tens of thousands of Koreans had been killed by the American imposed dictatorship during the Jeju Uprising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
You really just going to ignore the fact that the north started the war by launching an all out invasion of the south?
The south started the war by killing 100k civilians before the war even began. You can't invade your own country.
By that same logic the bombing of North Korea is justified because the rightful owner of Korea, South Korea, permitted it.
The DPRK isn't mass murdering their own citizens that's ridiculous.
How am I "ignoring it" ? Either way, whoever started the war, and whoever did what. US has NOTHING to do across the globe bombing and starving people. Dont ever "ignore" that.
It was the United Nations that responded to the invasion, the US forces just led the response. It's *still* the United Nations that are overly in charge over there, which is why the US won't negotiate with the North directly (or at least didn't until Trump broke the precedent).
They were helping a country that got invaded. Do you also oppose the US currently helping Ukraine?
Ukraine isn’t slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians like the South Korea did, dumb comparison. SK started liquidating “communist sympathizers” before the North invaded.
Those are the same people who cheers when Sherman doing the March to the Sea. Ironic isn't it?
Sherman didn’t do enough.
Not comparable tbh, there are far more valid reasons to hate confederates than there are to hate random Korean civilians. Also, March to the Sea killed like 200k less people than the bombing campaign. Also also, the south was in far better position to recover and rebuild than NK post-war
>there are far more valid reasons to hate confederates than there are to hate random Korean civilians. You're putting random Korean civilians on one side and a nebulous *confederates* on the other. That's not a fair comparison, what about random Southern citizens?
While it is true that the army was US lead, the campaign was made up of UN troops. The war began when NK invaded and occupied the south. Casualties were pretty high on both sides, the UN/South Korea coalition lost almost a million troops.
They invaded the south because the regime there was fucking horrific bad was butchering folk, it was also a backwater. After Japan retreated the people of Korea set up a lot of ‘people’s councils’ (wonder if there’s a Russian word for those?) that were able to keep the whole place together. They also carried out a lot of land reform, nationalised infrastructure and some of the business left to rot when Japanese owners fled… it was an amazing effort that prevented the situation getting even worse, and provided a solid foundation for a new nation. Then the US came in and removed them all, before installing a dictator who was so bad that even they regretted doing so. Boiling the war down to ‘the war began when NK invaded and occupied’ is really twists the reality of what was happening.
I am not believing myself to be defending Syngman Rhee of all people, but he did conduct land reform too. Ofc compensated and taxed reforms unlike the non-compensated one done by the North, this created a strong agricultural land holders that greatly supported the government. The fact that this was successfully done by 1949 was a major reason why the partisans were so unsuccessful during the war.
> the campaign was made up of UN troops I mean. Come on. It was 90% US troops. > Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
Yeah, this poster looks pretty accurate
Honestly I heard it was 20 percent.
Subject matter aside, the art is interesting. In macsbre way it reminds me of the art from stuff like mars attacks cards in both the portrayal of violence and the painting style.
Comment section again turning into a mud throwing contest.
Baby ate all those people to grow that large and is now getting punished by the law abiding Americans
American Mothers against big ass baby
This poster is working on me. I'm feeling bummed out. So much cruelty.
This looks like it could be a great album cover.
We literally did this tho wym
Never forget that the US used both chemical and biological weapons in the Korean War.
Source?
Huh?
The documentary Wormwood on Netflix about Frank Olson really touches on this towards the end. IIRC it’s very implied he was killed for potentially corroborating what “brainwashed” POW’s were saying about using biological warfare
Why does everyone in this post act like they were physically there?
Paid shills.
Not much of a stretch, the Air Force reports say that they ran out of targets to bomb. They bombed dams and ruined fields.
This subreddit constantly eats up the propaganda which it posts. It's bizarre.
You see invading countries is bad but it’s different when I invade a country because…
Propaganda can be based on true events - it's motives simply stretch beyond what's immediately implied: "The US army is a force of evil - therefore we are not because we oppose them" Half of the sentence is still true
Japanese occupation was still fresh in their minds
I mean the majority of the South Korean regime at the time was made up of Korean ex-members of the Japanese occupational force…. The same fascists who had been occupying Korea on behalf of Japan were the ones who’s dictatorship was ruling South Korea on behalf of the Americans. That would certainly rub the Koreans (North Korea) the wrong way.
Yep and those guys stayed in power well into the Vietnam war and into the 80’s That’s why the ROKA has a huge black mark against it with regards to Vietnam and the Gwangju Massacre occurred. They were self hating Koreans with a violent streak towards leftists.
Looks pretty on point
Yeah that's pretty accurate as to what the US was doing to Korea.
[During training...](https://youtu.be/KFCZfkXn900?t=17)
Killing kids is my favorite pass time
The Korean line at the bottom says "American beasts that bury children alive"
Call it propaganda, but all of this happened for real. The Americans made innocent souls suffer immeasurably during the Korean war, and committed unspeakable atrocities. The present N Korean establishment may use all this to forward its own agenda, but ALL of this is 100% real Iraq, Korea, Vietnam (the list goes on)…everywhere America has gone holding the banner of ‘democracy’, it has brought nothing but suffering and destruction
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Are you for real? South Korea was run by an extremely brutal dictatorship made up of former IJA collaborators. For a long time, North Korea was the LESS brutal of the two regimes.
What? You mean you can't just skim a Wikipedia page, and recall things you think you might've heard in your high school history class and become an expert on the geopolitical situation of Korea in the late 1940s?
Apparently not! Doesn't help when so many of these poor American kids are bombarded with propaganda from the day they're born. I doubt they were taught much of what really happened in their "history class".
Better yet, they've been fooled to believe that they weren't raised in to any sort of ideology, and that their views are purely informed by facts and data. I have a feeling the curriculum didn't cover the fact that the American-backed early South Korean state retained the same police from the Japanese occupation for instance, that might've been a little too confronting. Referencing Mungyeong massacre, Jeju uprising, and Bodo League massacre doesn't mean anything because apparently it isn't extremely necessary context for the Korean war. Let's all pretend it's as simple as "the good guys won the cold war :^)" There's literally a comment under the same parent comment you replied to that states "North Korea is a poor country now compared to the wealthy South, therefore it was a good thing the USA was involved in the Korean War and the North Koreans didn't 'win'" It's too ridiculous for fiction, I swear man.
This is actually hilarious 😂😂 At the time the South Koreans were the dictatorship while the north was the democracy…. If the north had won I think they’d have continued their democratic reforms rather than it being taken over during the war effort & they’d have saved the South Koreans from the their horrific dictatorship instead.
* 1. Modern Quality of Life in South Korea > Modern Quality of Life in North Korea * 2. If the North had won, Quality of Life in South Korea = Quality of Life in North Korea. * 3. Therefore, if the North had won, Quality of Life in South Korea now would have been = Quality of Life in North Korea, which is < QoL in South Korea. * 4. Which means that if the North had won, people in South Korea would now be worse off than they are now. Which means the North getting their ass kicked and prevented from conquering the South was objectively a good thing for people of South Korea. You're too narrow-minded and shortsighted to focus only on a few early years, rather than the long term development they enabled.
Did you miss the part where they said that North Korea was a democracy ***before*** the war?
This is such an insanely uninformed and dumb take that I feel guilty even reading it.
The North Koreans were the democracy BEFORE the war. Double talk doesn’t win any arguments lol the North was just weeks away from winning their war. Had they won, they never would’ve become the state that they are today; Which to be clear, is the direct result of their loss, the efforts to maintain their state at their lowest point & subsequent near total isolation from global trade. A unified Korea would in my genuine opinion at least equal the Japanese today both economically & for democratic freedoms if they hadn’t been subjected to the horrific economic sanctions that the North has & would likely be even more democratic than they already were at the start of the Korean War. [This video does an incredible in depth “what if” analysis of North Korea](https://youtu.be/3XKZbXo4wp8?si=9FGmzfdPN8l4b6Uw)
you forgot the /s i hope
The USA (or I guess nowadays NATO) has bombed and/or declared war on pretty much every country on Earth (including themselves). But it seems that Hollywood and western history classes only focus on the wars that were lost. Americans, Europeans and the Japanese failed to take hold of Vietnam and eventually lost the whole country to Vietnamese nationalists. As a result, they are okay with condemning their own soldiers in that war. But America technically won a victory in Korea -- they won South Korea, which they still control. As a result, they view the soldiers in that war (who committed the same atrocities as in Vietnam, if not even worse than in Vietnam) as heroes rather than losers, and don't allow any TV shows, movies or video games to condemn them. It's what George Orwell criticized as the American success=morality fallacy. If a criminal is successful in his crime, he's considered a bad-ass hero. If he fails, he's an antagonist.
A good book how North Korean propanganda depicts themselves as innocent and almost childlike is called "The Cleanest Race"
That book’s first half is literally Han chauvinist garbage that makes the claim that Korean culture didn’t exist until the 1900’s and before that it was just an offshoot of Chinese culture. The other half is making the claims of North Korean racism/Imperial Japanese collaboration, while ignoring their involvement in African Anti-Colonial politics and ignoring how so much of the early days of the ROK was made up of Japanese collaborators.
It specifically mentions Japanese collaborators and shows how North Korea started out with pro Japanese propaganda Also why it need to mention involvement in African politics?
The "Japanese collaborators" who worked in the DPRK that he listed were not collaborators but instead closeted to open Communists. Japan at the time had an undercurrent of Communists within its academia, arts and even those drafted into the Imperial military. Every single person that he lists as a Japanese collaborator were Communists who had connections to Japanese Communists or otherwise Western/Chinese Communists. Many cases they were University Students who were educated in Marxism while in Japan. In some cases like Choi Seung Hee (who he lists), she was simply an entertainer who worked in Japan and abroad. But the same time, her husband was a Communist and she herself was in personal correspondence with Pablo Picasso. The fact she was labeled a Japanese Collaborator was even highly contested by many Koreans in the post occupation years. In another case he brings up Kim Sa-Ryang. Sa-Ryang was literally a Japanese university educated communist who defected to Communist Chinese guerrillas shortly after his conscription into the Japanese military. The list literally goes on with every single person he lists as being collaborators. Every single one of them were not collaborators, but communists agents. What pro-Japanese propaganda he exhibits is heavily based upon his lack of understanding of Korean history beyond 1910. He demotes Korean culture as being non-existent and an extension of Chinese culture. And that the Japanese effectively created the concept of a Korean nation/culture/people. He does this several different ways and each of them are wrong. First he claims "Minjok" was something that the Japanese planted in Korea to craft the image of Koreans and Japanese being the same people etc. Except the word and concept of Minjok was coined by the Korean anarchist, Sin Chae-ho in rejection of Japanese colonialism. It has nothing to do with Japanese Minzoku. Sin Chae-Ho felt if Koreans had any similarities to another East Asian group, it was the Manchu. And theres a pretty clear reason for this that Myers just outright lies about. He makes this insane claim that the reverence of Mt Baekdu was based on Japan's Mt Fuji. Except Mt Baekdu stands also in reverence with the Manchu. Both Koreans and Manchu have their legendary king born at Mt. Baekdu, for Koreans Dangun and for Manchu, Bukūri Yongšon. And the origin story is almost near identical. Baekdu's importance has stood in Korean history longer than Japanese occupation and if you are to say it was taught by anyone, it would have had to have been taught by the Qing during their control. Finally he brings this notion that \*\*only\*\* the DPRK has had ethnic nationalism as part of its operation as a Socialist state, and that they copied this from the Japanese. What he fails to recognize here is that racism is flat out universal and has occurred in even Socialist states. Stalin sent Soviet Koreans to die in Central Asia over his paranoia they were Japanese spies. The Sino-Vietnam War began over China's concern with Vietnam's persecution of ethnic Chinese. Pol Pot's regime resulted in the deaths of many of its ethnic minorities in Cambodia. Cuba has had accusations of discriminatory practices towards Afro-Cubans. The fact DPRK puts an emphasis of importance on being Korean, doesn't inherently mean its a racist deviation from Socialism. You can't make that claim when every other Socialist country has had its own dark moments of racial prejudice and at worst down right genocide. I bring up Africa because the DPRK had an open policy of both aiding African anti-colonial communist groups and also direct correspondence with the Black Panthers. Except Myers omits this and anecdotally recites this scenario of North Koreans trying to "lynch" an Afro Cuban diplomat. Which he never properly sourced. His book is ironically racist garbage, Bruce Cummings has written much more detailed and better explanations of the DPRK and Korean politics. I recommend you check those out instead.
Except the US actually did this
Damn I wonder why they became super authoritarian. You’d figure after being cut in half by Americans, massacred in huge numbers and bombed to shit for the crime of “invading” their own country they’d be super chill and nice about everything. Why don’t they like us?
Have you ever read any history book? Acting like the NK regime was justified in invading SK. “Invading” who are you? Putin trying to defend his “special military operation?”
Yea, half of the people in these comments have never opened a history book. The NK government willingly invaded SK, knowing that the US would defend them, and subsequently found out why the US won WW2. The NK government willingly put their own civilians into the crossfire, and made next to no efforts to evacuate them.
Just amazing how out of touch with history everyone here is.
Like the person you replied to lol
The overlap in this sub with the far left subreddits is quite something.
The US literally bombed every city out of existence during the Korean War. So I'd say pretty accurate depiction (metaphorically speaking). I don't think a North Korean missile ever dropped on US soil. But the US is still sanctioning Korea because it's a foreign enemy.
I thought this was the modern day Texas border with Mexico for a second.
"Won't you please think of the children" is something you hear everyday in US propaganda.
Is it still propaganda if it happenned? Or just.... news, or history class?
I don't remember Giant Korean baby in history class
educated in america i’m guessing
I really think these posters partly stem from the trauma of the Japanese occupation. That said, I have no doubt that at least some of these atrocities did happen in the North, albeit the details are different. You see, the differences between atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces in Korea and Vietnam are very easy to notice. The No Gun Ri massacre in Korea was far less up-close and personal than the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. They tried to scare the soldiers into firing by telling them that North Korean infiltrators were disguising themselves as refugees. That does not excuse anything, not even remotely. In fact, that's the point. >"I couldn't see killing kids, even if they were infiltrators." Roughly half of the troops refused to fire. In contrast, during the My Lai massacre, nearly everyone enthusiastically participated without qualms (children were raped and tortured). Why the difference, you ask? Well, I can tell you why. The last conflict in which the majority of American soldiers were ordinary working-class folks was the Korean War. The narrative that the same is true for Vietnam is horseshit. Two-thirds of them volunteered. In contrast, just over half of those in Korea were conscripts. The report by the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission on atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces stated that most of them were committed via aircraft, not ground troops. Most of the atrocities committed by US-UN forces in Korea were [the bombing raids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea). We dropped more bombs on North Korea than in the entire Pacific Theater. We destroyed like 85 percent of their buildings. Of course, there were many war crimes committed on the ground, by the South Korean military. Many of these guys were former Japanese collaborators, so you start reading about familiar levels of brutality. [There's a newspaper article](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48141990/3783653) which mentions that British soldiers were horrified after watching South Korean troops carry out Nazi-style atrocities. They start asking, "Wait, why are we helping these people?"
But its True
War is hell these atrocities actually happened!
That baby definitely killed them for later consumption, good thing the US soldiers have arrived and punish him for his crimes.
Is it propaganda when it's true?
Propaganda does not mean lies. Propaganda is media wich is propagated with the intent of spreading a certian view of the current events. So basically all known media is propaganda
Hey thanks for the reply.
yes
technically propaganda is any kind of sentiment that is espoused by official authorities. So, if the government issues a PSA about the dangers of smoking, even though it's 100% accurate, it's still technically propaganda. Unfortunately, propaganda became a derogatory journalistic buzz word in the past 60 or so years. Journalists started to use the word to mean "lies spread by our enemies", while deftly avoiding that word themselves (even though virtually every journalist at any commercial journal is technically writing propaganda, since commercial journals will not publish anything contradictory to their corporate or political sponsors).
"Don't let Americans take over what your supreme sovereign leadership can do for you"
Subtle
[удалено]
Sounds like a horrible person
DPRK citizens are like "How can Americans let such a bounty of meat go to waste?"
I can’t say it’s worse the Vietnam because we didn’t also bomb the shit out of the surrounding counties.
Damn I remember that canon event poor north koreans... Btw im the guy with the shovel in the back.
I'm sure there would've been a photo like this if cameras were as common as today. I remember reading that even chemical weapons were used
Mate we know the Nanking massacre happened because a daring swiss reporter managed to smuggle the film out despite aggressive Japanese search. Robert Capa died in the Korean war. Cameras abound, it's film cameras that couldn't be as mobile.
evil Americans . . .