Talk:History of North Korea

ethnocentric

why is this article listed as "north korea" instead of dprk. north korea is an american coined phrase and i dont think it should be used.

In my experience, South Koreans and Russians commonly call it North Korea (Korean Buk Han, Russian Severnaya Koreya). Can you support the claim that it's an "American-coined phrase?" -Reuben 18:43, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

actually, in korean it is "buk han" or "ebuk" in the south, but "buk choseon" is common in the north. as for calling it north korea instead of the DPRK, wikipedia is inconsistent on whether it calls a country by its official title or the commonly used english term. for example, china is one page, but the peoples republic of china has another page. russian federation is simply tossed under russia. Hongkyongnae 22:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I feel that it is substantial to have "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" redirect to "North Korea". Many English users are going to search for it as "North Korea" (at least in the US). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Camoen (talk • contribs) 19:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing "democratic" about Korean Buk Han....-> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.79.214.59 (talk) 13:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

LOL. Yeah. This article doesn't reflect the proper North Korean perspective on North Korea! lol75.201.177.191 (talk) 15:47, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

i guess for the same reason we don't consider russia to have democracy but putinism. there is no "d", nor "p" in dprk 195.91.12.66 (talk) 22:22, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Tree Chopping Incident

Is it listed anywhere about the 1970s tree chopping incident? Three americans were beheaded along the DMZ and it almost caused a war. -Husnock 20:38, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

See Operation Paul Bunyan.

International bailout

The Current situation section says:

An international bailout, which may be the best way to bring about a "managed transition" of the DPRK, would only be possible with the co-operation of the U.S.

I can see no reason why this is "only be possible with the co-operation of the U.S.". Why couldn't China or South Korea do that? This article] is relevant, saying:

"China’s investments jumped from about a million dollars in 2003 to $200 million last year ... For nearly a decade, the Chinese have counseled North Korea’s leaders to follow their example, gradually opening the economy to market forces.".

I don't see why it needs to be a "bailout", investment alone could bring a gradual transition if the DPRK had the political will.

I'll change this, unless someone can source a justification for the current version. -- Rwendland 20:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

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I feel that the paragraph about North Korea's "Early Years" is not based on factual information, being largely biased. Perhaps this needs to be raised in the interests of integrity.

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I am not sure what the exact criteria for placing a page in the "disputed" cateogry may be, but i doubt having someone "feel" that a paragraph maybe biased, and then providing absolutely no basis for this "feeling" qualifies. as far as the "paragraph" in question, if it verifiable if you refer to either bruce cumings' works or charles armstrong. perhaps the "feeling" in questions arises since so much of western representation of norht korea is negative that anything that does not attack north korea seems, in context, to be "biased." check virtually any standard of industial progess and urbanization and it is clear that in asia north korea was second only to japan until the 1970s. so, with that being said, i will remove the label to this section. Hongkyongnae 00:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Bruce Cumings is a problematic source, in particular as he seems to be the only source according to the citations. Although it is true that North Korea did quite well in terms of industrial output in comparison the South, industrial output is not the same as standard of living. In fact, if one looks at the standard of living North Korea was always behind the South, see for example Andrei Lankov. 76.117.1.40 (talk) 23:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

So I checked real GDP per capita at the Penn World Table, for South Korea the earliest data is for 1953, real GDP per capita is $250 in 1953 and steadily increasing since then. The earliest data for North Korea is for 1970, in this year real GDP per capita was $112, steadily increasing since then. This rather suggests that real GDP per capita for North Korea was always well below the South Korean real GDP per capita. 76.117.1.40 (talk) 01:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Bruce Cumings is a world-renowned scholar and the foremost US expert on Korean history. He might be wrong, but he is a suitable source. You are ignoring the fact that South Korea was receiving massive American aid, which is reflected in the GDP.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:32, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I have reinserted information about the North Korean economy with multiple sources. By the way, Cumings cites CIA reports, and Hunter is a CIA analyst.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:41, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Kim Il-Sung

The article doesn't really state what hole Kim Il-Sung pops out of, it just starts to mention him somewhere in the middle with no introduction. Someone should probably fix this?

--Heero Kirashami (talk) 17:24, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

NPOV: Neutrality dispute

I've tagged this article with a POV dispute because it is largely written like a personal essay, expressing subjective opinion throughout. Some examples are:

"Kim opted for continued ideological purity, inasmuch as he had no understanding at all of market economics."

"All parties and mass organizations were cajoled into the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, ostensibly a popular front but in reality dominated by the Communists."

"The latter were especially known for this, as they usually spoke and acted Russian far more than Korean."

"He had always had a personality cult from 1949 onward, and by the 1970s it would reach pseudo-religious dimensions."

"China was also comparatively backwards and could not provide the technical and military assistance Pyongyang sought."

"...relations with the ROK and the United States were bitterly hostile."

"...the personality cult of Kim had assumed grotesque proportions not seen anywhere else in the world."

See what I mean? It's one long personal essay. Some of the statements might be OK if they were attributed to an author or article of notability, which brings me to my next point; I also think the article is severely lacking in references, hence the addition of the ref tag. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.33.54.123 (talk) 02:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree, the article is horrible as it currently stands. I made some small edits to tone down the personal-opinion-style language and make it sound more encyclopedic, but what we really need is a complete rewrite by an expert on the subject. -- Amerul (talk) 07:26, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

This article needs more cites to say the least because the article about Pikachu has 58 cites, as of August 17, 2012, and I gotta catch them all. When I finish my most recent quest, I will return after reading more about the DPRK. I hope to work with User:Fred Bauder, Amerul, and 82.33.54.123 on this. Maybe, we could call in User:DBigXray or User:Homunculus to help. Geraldshields11 (talk) 16:20, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, ... or user:Dougweller, if that user is avaiable. Geraldshields11 (talk) 16:35, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately the article remains biased and unsourced.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Agree with all previous commenters. This article is a horrible, unencyclopedic mess. It probably needs redoing from scratch tbh. 86.30.168.72 (talk) 02:34, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

It's difficult to approach, I think, because it is so one-sided, but at the same time there is interesting information in there (often unsourced). Perhaps we can cut and paste from related articles, then modify as needed, and retain the interesting parts, but continue to eliminate the bias.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:26, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Having started to add information from books, I am inclining to think the unsourced text should go. It's highly opinionated. It frequently implies that the author has an insight into the thinking of Kim Il-sung and others (which again is an opinion). It seems to give undue weight to the relations between the DPRK and the PRC and the USSR. It contains a number of errors, such as stating the Rangoon bombing occurred on a plane. As this has been tagged for almost five years, it seems reasonable to remove unsourced material, but I will wait until I have finished using the sources that I have before doing anything drastic.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:07, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

WELL, THIS ARTICLE NOW HAS 100 CITATIONS. EAT YOUR HEART OUT PIKACHU!!!--Jack Upland (talk) 09:24, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I have taken off the NPOV/Refimprove tag as I believe that most of these issues have been resolved. I have tagged the remaining parts of the article that still require citations.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:47, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Degeneration

Since I worked on it over a year ago, the article is degenerating, with slabs of unreferenced and quite opinionated text being added. I have removed this:

Kim's eagerness to get rid of the lingering Chinese troop presence in North Korea was partially because he fretted over the influence of certain KPA officers who had served in the Chinese military and had strong pro-Beijing leanings, and he could not easily remove them as long as the Chinese remained in the country. For both countries, it also served a useful political purpose since the US troop presence in South Korea now seemed less justified with the Chinese gone from the North. However, Washington, while welcoming China's withdrawal from North Korea, made no effort whatsoever to remove US troops, stating that they were needed there to preserve the UN peacekeeping effort in Korea and that the eventual political fate of the peninsula should be decided under UN auspices.

It is purely speculative, and is uncited. I think it's reasonable, given that this is contentious topic, and given that there has been an effort to improve the references and neutrality of the article, that any text that's added to the article have references. Also, we shouldn't claim to have insights into the thinking of Kim Il Sung (or anyone else), which was a flaw in the article before. Another problem is the lopsided emphasis on Soviet and Chinese relations with North Korea, which again was a flaw previously. Of course, it's hard to get information about North Korea, but this is an article about North Korea, not about its foreign relations. But the fundamental problem is the lack of any sources for these additions.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:49, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I have removed all the text tagged "citation needed", some of which was tagged since 2016 or 2015. There is still some unreferenced text in the latter sections, but this should be easy to find citations for.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Article restructuring

The article has undergone needed restructuring and reformatting.

The previous structure was written from the perspective of an outsider looking in, with events from how one might view North Korea by only seeing it pop-up in the news. Due to the fact it was written in relation to world events, and not particularly major events within the country, greater emphasis seemed to be placed on elections in South Korea and small missle launches than leadership change, the famine or economic reform.

The majority of the content is good, however, further restructuring needs to be completed, with much new content and linking to extended "main article" Wikipedia articles and further addition of sources needed.

I don't really understand this restructuring. Having worked on the previous structure, I don't understand the comment about South Korean elections. I don't see the point of creating subsections with little or no content. Some of the headings you have created don't seem to make sense: "Juche and self-reliance era (1970s - 1994)". Why that era in particular? What is the heading "Developing the whole society on Kimilsungism" supposed to convey? And I don't see the point of having a heading about every party congress if there's nothing much to say.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I have amended many of these headings, and removed uncited text.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:50, 15 January 2022 (UTC)