Friends of North Korea
North Korea being is back in the news over probable nuclear testing.
Traditionally NZ has had little to do with the "Hermit Kingdom" since we sent troops to defend South Korea from a northern invasion in the early '50s.
This country only established diplomatic relations with North Korea in March 2001.
However for many years North Korea has had a small band of supporters in this country, busily beavering away to paint Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il's tyranny in the best possible light.
Their main vehicle has been the DPRK/New Zealand Friendship Society, founded in 1974 by a group of Maoist student radicals, geriatric Marxist economist Wolfgang Rosenberg and Porirua based "clergyman", Don Borrie.
I partially credit the Society with paving the way for the opening of NZ/NK diplomatic relations and other overtures from the NZ Government.
Certainly I think it was significant that then Labour MP, Graham Kelly led a delegation to North Korea in July 2001 as Chair of the Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Defence Committee that included representatives of the DPRK/New Zealand Friendship Society.
The Society's offshoot, the NZ Korea Peace Committee has also continued this work.
I thought it might be timely to profile some of North Korea's friends in New Zealand.
posted by Trevor Loudon at
10/11/2006 11:26:00 AM
5 Comments:
I disagree. Doing the killing is worse than supporting the killing.
In some ways anon, in some ways not.
I think there's a special place in hell for people who live in free countries and rncourage brutal dictators to suppress and murder their own people.
I have an atom of respect for the likes of a Kim Jong Il, a Castro or a Saddam Hussein.
At least they take some form of responsibility for their evil.
I have no respect at all for their Western lackeys.
Take some responsibility??? You mean by hiding it, lying about it, hunting down and killing those who expose it?
I take your point though - I despise them too - I've met Borrie, I simply think he is a naive idiot who blinds himself to reality and has done so for over 30 years. He told me that he has been disappointed that North Korea never showed him a mental hospital, although he has requested to see one many times - but then they can't create a Potemkin hospital full of the mentally ill because most of them are either 1) dead or 2) in prison, and they can't patrol what they do or say too easily (and at best will be no more interested in looking after them than Ceausescu was).
Trev we have more in common than we probably both first realised. I also hate people who live in free countries and act as apologists to dictators and brutal regimes. The special place in hell isn't just reserved for members of the DPRK/New Zealand Friendship Society and Hoxha loving former CPNZ members. Many NZ Parliamentarians, from both sides of the house and bureaucrats will be in hell too for supporting General Suharto and his genocidal wars against East Timor and West Papua.
Burn fuckers burn!
While we disagree on much Cameron, we both want a better world.
I repect those who care and try to make a difference, even if I think their efforts are misguided.
I have no time for those who don't care about others, or who are willing to condemn human beings to misery for the sake of wealth, ego, prestige or a feeling of smug self satisfaction.
Maybe one day we'll be on the same side of the barricades Cameron.
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