K-Hitchens and North Korea: A decade of death and dictatorship

Courtesy of Kai Schreiber

By David A. Tizzard

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Christopher Hitchens, columnist, orator and public intellectual famed for his drinking, charm, wit and polemics. Hitchens was human: fallible and emotional, yet at the same time kind, poetic and capable of great artistry with the English language. God was certainly not on his Christmas card list, neither were the Clintons, Mother Theresa or Princess Diana. But he was principled and stood by many people, including former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

Hitchens spent time with the former president in the United States and then accompanied him back to South Korea in 1985 despite the repeated threats, murder attempts and suffocating presence of a brutal military dictatorship led by Chun Doo-hwan. Hitchens described Kim as a rare man, unwilling to compromise his principles to preserve his own safety. He closed out an article in Mother Jones saying, "Kim never resorts to anti-Japanese rhetoric, though his grievances against the Japanese authorities are genuine… At the slight risk of sounding sentimental, I would observe that history is very often made, even if only by accident, by men and women who draw a line beyond which they will not be pushed."

Hitchens demonstrated that line many times. When Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini ordered a fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie four years later in 1989, Hitchens came to Rushdie's defense publically and loudly. And in case you are not sure what a fatwa is, it was Tehran's theocratic tyrant demanding Muslims around the world execute Rushdie and all those associated with the publication of "The Satanic Verses." A $6-million-dollar bounty was placed on Rushdie's head, the Norwegian publisher was shot three times, explosions rocked book stores, and protestors burned effigies. In the face of such murderous violence, Hitchens stood by Rushdie and defended free speech. He was a man who would not be cancelled by others.

But while many associate Hitchens with an anti-religious position, it is worth remembering that his principles ran deeper. He was keenly aware of the dangers of totalitarianism. A reader of Orwell. He would not abide those seeking power to be able to arbitrarily dictate what other people could say or think. In a piece penned shortly before his death, he stated: "I can say with as much certainty as is possible that, wherever the light of free debate and expression is extinguished, the darkness is very much deeper, more palpable, and more protracted. But the urge to shut out bad news or unwelcome opinions will always be a very strong one, which is why the battle to reaffirm freedom of speech needs to be refought in every generation."

And as the past decade does little to diminish the light of his that once shone, we now approach ten years of Kim Jong-un's rule in Pyongyang. A man once championed in various news outlets around the world as a Swiss-educated, America-loving, basketball-adoring, sister-having reformer of the North Korean people, Kim has simply continued the tyrannical rule of his father and grandfather. Much attention is placed on his leather jacket, his weight, cigarettes, and hairstyle; this sadly ignores the tragedy of those who live with their thoughts controlled by a state that allows neither "Squid Game" or YouTube, "Spiderman" or Doga Cat.

President Moon Jae-in staked much of his presidency on rapprochement with North Korea. We've seen photo-ops on Baekdu Mountain and smiling dignitaries at PyeongChang 2018. The South Korean leader also made friends with then-U.S. President Donald Trump in the hope of achieving something lasting but, for now, it looks like he will end his term as his predecessors Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun did ― with the Koreas still bifurcated and families still divided. Of course it has not been for a want of trying on the part of the South Korean left, but at what cost did it come? Citizens here in Seoul have been treated to three inter-Korean summits which will place both glorious leaders in the annals of history while unemployment, housing and corruption bear down on the populace with relentless pressure.

Hitchens was certainly no fan of North Korea. Influenced by his trips to Pyongyang and a passionate reading of BR Myers' "The Cleanest Race," he was scathing of life there and the lack of freedoms suffered. Channeling Rousseauian imagery, he wrote in 2010: "All of us who scrutinize North Korean affairs are preoccupied with one question. Do these slaves really love their chains? The conundrum has several obscene corollaries. The people of that tiny and nightmarish state are not, of course, allowed to make comparisons with the lives of others, and if they complain or offend, they are shunted off to camps that ― to judge by the standard of care and nutrition in the 'wider' society ― must be a living hell excusable only by the brevity of its duration. But race arrogance and nationalist hysteria are powerful cements for the most odious systems, as Europeans and Americans have good reason to remember. Even in South Korea there are those who feel the Kim Jong-il regime, under which they themselves could not live for a single day, to be somehow more 'authentically' Korean."

Whatever he might have had to say about North Korea, I think Hitchens would have enjoyed South Korea today. Certainly he would have reveled in the free speech the country has worked so hard to wrestle from the grasp of military dictators. He would have taken some joy in seeing the various (albeit minor) political parties spread themselves across the political spectrum and create a cacophony of different voices and ideas, even if they are not always heard on mainstream television. He would have joined in with the analysis of "Parasite," shown unbridled excitement at the anti-religious fervor of "Hellbound," and I would pay good money to hear his take on certain K-pop tracks and artists.

It would be wrong to deify Hitchens, of course. And perhaps equally wrong to completely vilify North Korea. But at least we live in a society where we can do either if we so chose. We may not live in the best of all possible worlds, but we should keep the idea of it alive for our children and not retire to the garden just yet. We'll leave that to Christopher.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.