By Jin Joo-dong
Jin Joo-dong, a North Korean defector who entered South Korea in 2022, stated that North Korea is the country that has benefited the most from the Ukraine-Russia war. He published an article titled “The Kim Jong-un Dictatorship Sustained by the U.S.,” analyzing why the North Korean regime cannot exist without war and military instability, based on his personal experiences in North Korea.
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Territorial Expansion Ambitions, and North Korea’s Involvement in the War While Blaming the U.S.
On February 24, 2022, Russian President Putin initiated the Ukraine-Russia war under the pretext of a so-called “special military operation.” Regardless of Putin’s excuses, this is a war crime of the 21st century, and Putin can never shed the disgrace of being a war criminal.
Governments around the world perceived Putin’s war as a violent challenge to international peace, condemning it and providing political and military support to Ukraine.
While the world anxiously monitors the Ukraine-Russia war, one country alone cheered and sent political and military support to the invader and war criminal, Russia, rather than the war-torn Ukraine.
Why was this war, stained with the blood of Ukrainian and Russian people, such a joy and gift to this country?
Clearly, for a normal country, the war in a neighboring country cannot be a source of joy. However, the Kim Jong-un regime, a unique dictatorship that relies on war and military instability to justify its existence, welcomed it.
The regime claimed that the war was caused by the United States, and thus they are intervening.
On April 22, North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Im Chon-il, responsible for Russian affairs, issued a statement blaming the United States for prolonging the war to benefit military monopolies and using Ukraine as a pawn in its strategy to restrain Russia.
He also insulted Ukrainian President Zelensky, a hero leading the righteous fight, calling his actions the “ridiculous bravado of a 21st-century Don Quixote.” He did not hesitate to personally attack Zelensky, describing him as more of an “actor” performing a role scripted by the U.S. rather than a president of a country.
After the war broke out, North Korea began actively and blatantly selling weapons to the isolated Russia, already a pariah at the UN for violating various UN sanctions. An old Korean proverb says, “Injured deer gather in one place.” It means that the inferior ones gather together.
North Korea, already ostracized at the UN for its defiance of international norms, found a companion in Russia, another pariah.
While the world condemns war criminal Russia and supports Ukraine, North Korea alone mocks the brave Ukrainian people fighting for their country and makes nonsensical interferences in the name of the government, drawing condemnation from UN member states.
According to North Korea, the war is prolonged because of the United States, hence their support for Russia.
Covert Military Support
On October 15, 2023, the BBC reported on North Korea supplying a vast amount of military equipment to Russia for use in the Ukraine war.
According to the report, John Kirby, the National Security Council’s Coordinator for Strategic Communications, stated on the 13th (local time) that North Korea had supplied Russia with “equipment and munitions” equivalent to nearly 1,000 containers over the past few weeks.
U.S. authorities also released photos of 300 containers assembled in North Korea’s Rajin for transport.
U.S. intelligence tracked these shipments, which reportedly moved between September 7 and October 1.
At a press conference on the 13th, Coordinator Kirby stated that these supplies were transported by ship and train to a supply depot near Tikhoretsk, about 290 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Additionally, North Korean inscriptions found on the debris of shells and missiles fired at Ukraine confirmed North Korea’s military support to Russia.
Why is North Korea Supporting War Criminal Russia?
The ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, which has resulted in countless casualties and entered its second year, has been a timely boon for North Korea, struggling with economic difficulties due to international isolation and the consequences of its dictatorship.
Due to this war, North Korea has been able to find a reliable partner who can help it avoid UN sanctions, and has opened up broad prospects for earning foreign currency abroad through various means such as arms sales and labor exports.
What Kim Jong-un Gained from the Ukraine War
One of the things North Korean leader Kim Jong-un received from Russia’s Putin in exchange for political and military support to Russia is a high-end, bulletproof luxury vehicle. On February 18 this year, Kim Jong-un received this expensive luxury bulletproof vehicle as a gift from Putin. Kim Jong-un declined Putin’s offer of food aid and instead accepted the vehicle, which is said to be called Aurus.
Known as the ‘Russian Rolls-Royce,’ Aurus is a Russian luxury car brand. According to various South Korean media outlets, including KBS, the ‘Senat’ model is sold locally in Russia for approximately 500 million to 1.1 billion won (about 400,000 to 880,000 USD) depending on the options.
The Russian state news agency TASS reported, “Chairman Kim is the first leader to receive an Aurus as a gift from President Putin.”
Our government condemned this gift as a violation of UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, which prohibit all means of transportation supply, sale, and transfer to North Korea.
Before the Ukraine war, Russia formally adhered to UN Security Council Resolution 2397, adopted in 2017, by not officially accepting North Korean overseas workers. However, they showed a degree of “consideration” by turning a blind eye to domestic universities colluding with North Korea to bring in workers under the guise of student status.
However, after the Ukraine war began and North Korea expressed support for it, Russia is now flagrantly ignoring UN sanctions and allowing North Korean workers to enter the country en masse. According to a local source in Khabarovsk on June 8, hundreds of North Korean workers are currently entering Russia by ship through the port of Vladivostok.
Furthermore, North Korean workers who previously entered Russia as students and engaged in illegal labor while hiding from the police are now openly active, and the police no longer crack down on them.
According to the source, North Korean workers currently entering Russia do so openly as workers rather than under the guise of student status. Additionally, it is reported that Putin, in collusion with Kim Jong-un, has also actively taken measures to prevent North Korean workers in Russia from defecting. In January this year, South Korean Christian organizations reported that Baek, a South Korean missionary arrested by Russian special police on espionage charges, was known to have helped North Korean defectors.
This action by the Russian government was a warning message to South Korean nationals helping North Korean defectors. The Russian government is known to have taken strong measures not only against South Korean nationals but also against its own citizens to prevent them from helping North Korean defectors.
Kim, a Russian national of Korean descent who was helping North Korean defectors in Moscow, informed this publication in an interview on June 8 that he received a warning from the Russian police for aiding defectors. According to his testimony, he has been under surveillance by the Russian special police for his past assistance to North Korean defectors.
In the end, the Ukraine-Russia war served as an opportunity for Kim Jong-un to promise political, economic, and military cooperation with Russia.
Why does North Korea blame the United States for the war between Russia and Ukraine?
The existence of the United States plays a decisive role in maintaining the legitimacy of the Kim family’s dictatorship in North Korea. Whether the U.S. actually poses a threat to North Korea is irrelevant. The mere existence of the U.S. is a godsend for the Kim family dictatorship.
Blaming the United States for the Ukraine-Russia war also serves to convince their own people. The Kim family’s “blame America” style of governance has a long tradition.
I will mention some of my personal experiences below.
From a young age, I was indoctrinated to believe that Americans were wolves and truly thought they were beasts. From kindergarten, our favorite games were hitting Americans and defeating Americans.
Unknowingly, I was brainwashed with anti-American ideology imposed by the North Korean regime. This is not unique to me but is a common experience for North Korean residents from childhood.
The basic game for North Korean children, “Beating the American Bastard,” is a mandatory event in the spring and autumn sports competitions held at educational institutions nationwide. The climax of this event is when the last player pours gasoline on the scarecrow and sets it on fire.
In North Korea, where even lighter fluid is scarce and they struggle to meet the essential economic and defense needs due to the limited supply of crude oil, this one day sees all educational institutions, from kindergartens and elementary schools to middle schools, colleges, and technical schools, burn precious gasoline. While North Korean residents might find this wasteful, for Kim Jong-un, it is not wasteful at all.
The ideology of hatred toward America is like a spell that protects Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship.
Since the time of Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the Kim family has incessantly brainwashed North Korean residents with ideas such as “North Koreans are impoverished because of America,” “The Korean Peninsula is divided because of America,” and “North Korea and its residents cannot survive without military power, nuclear weapons, and missiles because America and South Korea are constantly plotting military invasions against North Korea.”
Whether it was Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il, the Kim family spared no expense or effort to instill hatred for America in the residents.
A representative example of the creations made to instill the Kim family’s ideology of American hatred is the Sinchon Museum. Located in Sinchon-eup, Sinchon County, South Hwanghae Province, North Korea, the “Sinchon Museum” opened on June 25, 1960.
North Korea claims that during the Korean War, from October 17 to December 7, 1950, U.S. troops stationed in Sinchon County, South Hwanghae Province, massacred about 30,000 residents. Additionally, they claim that among the approximately 30,000 victims, 16,234 were children, the elderly, and women. This museum was built with the intent to ensure that residents do not forget these events.
The museum is filled with chilling stories and illustrations. According to the museum guides, during that time, the U.S. soldiers “eradicated communists” by mutilating young women’s breasts, burning infants alive, driving nails into elderly people’s heads, sawing them in half, tying living people’s limbs to oxen to tear them apart, cutting off limbs with a cutting board, and dragging young women and women by iron chains pierced through their breasts, genitals, and noses through the village.
This museum is a place filled with tales of horror. It serves to nurture hatred against America, instill the need for revenge against Americans, emphasize the importance of unity, and assert that the Kim family must be at the center of this unity. It provides the ideological basis that supports the North Korean dictatorship’s narrative.
The Kim family dictatorship in North Korea designed this place to be as close to hell as possible for their personal purposes. The more scared the viewers were, the more satisfaction it brought to Kim Il-sung and the Kim family.
So what is the actual truth about Sinchon?
South Korean writer Hwang Sok-yong describes the reality of what happened in this area in his book “The Guest.” According to him, although a horrific massacre did occur in Sinchon, the U.S. military quickly passed through the area due to the rapidly advancing front lines and had little involvement.
The stories involving the U.S. military were fabricated by North Korea’s first dictator, Kim Il-sung. The actual massacre began when people who had been expelled to South Korea, having lost their land and property to the North Korean regime, returned to their hometowns during the Korean War as the North Korean army retreated.
These returnees, often placed in positions where they could exercise authority under the South Korean government or police in the name of maintaining public order, initiated the killings. The decisive trigger for the massacre was the return of these individuals to their hometowns, driven by the anguish of discovering that their family members, left behind in North Korea, had been killed or disappeared due to the regime’s oppression.
In their rage, these returnees began a brutal campaign of revenge, targeting those who had been loyal to the North Korean regime and had persecuted their own family members, starting a vicious cycle of slaughter. Sinchon became engulfed in a sea of blood.
This vicious cycle repeated when the North Korean army reoccupied Sinchon. Thus, the painful history of fratricidal slaughter experienced by the Korean people during the Korean War is epitomized by the tragedy of Sinchon County in South Hwanghae Province.
When the armistice was signed, Kim Il-sung exploited the situation to maintain his dictatorship by falsely blaming the massacre on the U.S. military, which had merely passed through Sinchon without staying. Using an external enemy to justify his dictatorship was the most effective strategy.
This is the reality of the anti-American indoctrination in North Korea and why the Kim family dictatorship persistently inculcates the notion that “Americans are wolves” in the North Korean people.
On November 24, 2014, Kim Jong-un visited the Sinchon Museum and ordered further modernization and reconstruction. The renovated Sinchon Museum has been transformed to resemble hell even more closely.+
Photo / Screenshot from Minjok TV YouTube
Kim Jong-un Tries to Offset Weakening Dictatorship with Anti-American Sentiment
To compensate for the weakening dictatorship due to economic hardships, Kim Jong-un has intensified the anti-American sentiment. Scenes of massacres have been transformed from paintings into sculptures, and the museum’s interior constantly resonates with the sounds of men, women, and children groaning and crying out in pain. The closer the depiction of American atrocities resembles hell, the more it helps to maintain the dictatorship, according to Kim Jong-un’s calculations.
A War Criminal’s Grandson Befriends Another War Criminal
Putin recently showcased his close relationship with Kim Jong-un by gifting him a bulletproof car, the Aurus. The Russian state news agency, TASS, reported that “Chairman Kim is the first leader to receive an Aurus from President Putin.” This indicates the increasing closeness between the two leaders. The issue is that Putin is not a normal state leader but a war criminal, and Kim Jong-un is the grandson of Kim Il-sung, the war criminal who started the Korean War in 1950. It seems that war criminals have a certain affinity for each other. Their alliance is particularly dangerous given that both possess nuclear weapons.
The world already knows that the Korean War was started by Kim Il-sung’s invasion. However, from Kim Il-sung to his son Kim Jong-il and now Kim Jong-un, they have tried their best to convince the people that the war was initiated by an invasion from South Korea and the United States. Every year, from June 25, the start of the war, to July 27, the day of the armistice agreement, North Korea designates a “week of anti-American struggle” and holds various war-related events. There are two particularly interesting points about this:
First, they falsely claim that July 27, the day the armistice agreement was signed, is the day of North Korea’s victory and celebrate it as Victory Day.
Second, during the “week of anti-American struggle,” they continuously broadcast a state-produced documentary called “The Fatherland Liberation War,” which glorifies the false narrative that the Korean War was initiated by South Korea and the United States.
This is essentially a state-led fake news brainwashing week.
However, even among North Korean residents, there is some skepticism about the claim that the Korean War was started by an invasion from South Korea and the United States. There is a common belief that Kim Il-sung had preemptively supplied the military, especially those stationed near the military demarcation line, with wartime combat rations six months before the war broke out, anticipating the conflict.
This suggests that from the beginning of 1950, they had received supplies intended for wartime use.
While some might think Kim Il-sung was simply prudent, it is implausible that anyone, except perhaps a deity, could foresee such a significant event as a war and prepare the entire military with wartime supplies accordingly.
Yet, the North Korean regime has consistently portrayed this as a testament to Kim Il-sung’s greatness, and the residents have stopped questioning it.
In reality, Kim Il-sung had decided to start the war and had increased food supply standards to boost military morale. Kim Il-sung is a war criminal who initiated the Korean War and is responsible for the deaths of over 50,000 South Koreans, and he can never be free from this responsibility in the eyes of history.
Today, Kim Jong-un continues his grandfather’s tradition of committing war crimes. The saying “history repeats itself” holds true as Kim Il-sung’s legacy of war crimes is being repeated by his grandson Kim Jong-un. By supporting the invader, Russia, and supplying them with missiles and shells, Kim Jong-un, who supports the aggressor Russian army, will undoubtedly face a reckoning for his war crimes before the suffering and dying people of Ukraine.
Note: The views expressed by the author have no relationship with Pakistan Today’s policy.
