The world’s unanimous curiosity about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is how the country has been able to withstand the harsh sanctions by the West.
But the country’s image in the face of sanctions is “mysteriously” positive. It is doubtful whether it is under the unprecedentedly harsh sanctions.
“Mysterious” Strength
The sanctions and pressure imposed by the West on the DPRK is aimed at leading it to “wither away” by making all its fields and its economy in particular stagnant, suffocated and collapsed.
However, the country’s economy remains stabilized under the super-intense sanctions. It is recording a rising curve, not a rising and then falling curve that is frequently witnessed in the capitalist economies.
The country is furnished with the system that relies on the domestic materials and techniques in iron and steel making and in the production of fibre and fertilizer; it is making a change in construction in line with the demands of the new era, and turning out its indigenous tube trains, tractors, trams, trolley buses, buses and trucks.
The shops are stocked mostly with the goods of domestic brands, and this demonstrates the qualitative and quantitative growth of the country’s light industry. The newly-built or renovated architectural structures are in no way inferior to the world’s best.
Ryomyong Street, which foreigners visiting the DPRK praise as a “people’s street in the 21st century,” was built in a year; the 44 blocks of skyscraping, multi-storeyed apartment houses of 4 800 flats and the 40 public facilities are energy-saving and green buildings.
The “mysterious” strength that propels such remarkable development is none other than the spirit of self-reliance. It is the invariable will of the DPRK not to rely on others but advance by its own efforts.
The reality of the DPRK, which is growing stronger, achieving a miraculous development and creating a happier life in the face of the harsh sanctions, serves as a textbook that teaches how countries and nations that aspire after anti-imperialist independence should fight the arrogant and high-handed Western countries.
Reality of the Country of “Mystery”
“North Korea is a country of evil. The people are uncouth and there is nothing complete. Not a taxi can be found. Many people are homeless.”
What is the country’s reality that is reflected on the eyes of the foreign visitors?
They are unanimous in saying that the DPRK is a country free of not only the unemployed, wanderers and beggars but also murder, robbery, drug abuse and prostitution, the outcome of mental deformation and an inevitable product of the capitalist society.
The DPRK is invariably enforcing policies of love for the people and future even in the face of the inhuman blockades, pressure and sanctions by the West.
The children are regarded as the kings of the country; in the palaces and halls for them, which are ubiquitous in the country, children give fullest play to their wishes and talents without paying a penny, a reality quite different from the Western countries where children regard it as essential to them to possess bulletproof blankets against gun violence.
In the Okryu Children’s Hospital situated in Pyongyang, the capital city of the country, there are classrooms and teachers for the in-patients for their uninterrupted learning during hospitalization. Visiting this hospital constitutes a good chance for experiencing the free medical care and compulsory education enforced in the country.
The Pyongyang Maternity Hospital delivers triplets now and then, and the state’s policy for them is worthy of attention; mothers are not subject to any charges from the day of being hospitalized to the day of leaving the hospital; moreover, a silver dagger is awarded to a boy baby and the father of triplets and a gold ring to a girl baby and the mother of the triplets.
Someone once said that the era without gold was truly a “golden era,” and the DPRK, which is full of affection and human feeling, harmony and happiness, is an “ideal land” in a “golden era,” isn’t it?
If this is a “country of evil” as the West claims it to be, how should we call the Western society, in which fraudulence, trickery, conflict, confrontation and the law of the jungle are the mainstay of the social relations?