In the name of God
Well, congratulations are in order. Praise be to God, thanks to the wisdom of the Leader and his government, Iran has set foot on precisely the path that North Korea took. Now that sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council are a done deal, we lack nothing that North Korea has. Praise be to God, in other respects too, as the old saying goes, we are watching how Mama does it and sifting just like Mama. We are confiscating satellite dishes. We are restricting high-speed internet. We are shutting down newspapers. No doubt the government simply lacks the muscle; otherwise, like North Korea, we would soon have made even owning a multi-band radio a crime and put the people in uniforms. (Of course, last year the Leader made some pronouncements on this matter too, the Majlis stirred a bit, and recently it has passed a few things. Who knows, perhaps soon the people will be put in uniforms as well.) Comrade Kim Il-sung the Second talks of the inevitable victory of socialism, and Mr. Khamenei boasts of the inevitable victory of revolutionary Islam (or, to be more precise, his ideological reading of religion, and the fascist variety at that).
. In my view, if it were not for this pittance of oil revenue, the people of Iran, like North Korea's, would also be dying of poverty, famine and hunger. Even now a large part of the population is struggling with poverty, hunger and high prices, but whatever the case, thanks to oil revenue, which has of course also lined the pockets of many nouveaux riches, even the most good-for-nothing governments can provide the people with bread and water.
For a year now, the regime's round-the-clock propaganda has been drumming into people's ears that "nuclear energy is our inalienable right," without ever explaining to the people what on earth an obsolete, fourth-hand technology of Chinese origin, imported via Pakistan and Libya, for enriching uranium has to do with nuclear energy and the development of this science in Iran. For several years, hollow spectacles such as the heavy water reactor in Arak, which lacks a reactor core and looks more like a swimming pool, have made experts around the world laugh and wasted the time of the nation and the country. For more than a year, this has driven every pillar of the economy into stagnation. And all this damage for what? So that, in the words of some of the country's senior officials, we can pursue the policy of turning Iran into North Korea. That is, so that in the end we can have a nuclear weapon, and then the country's officials can rest assured that the world, and above all the Americans, cannot topple them, and they can sit on the throne of power for a few more days. In reality, they ultimately want it against the people, oblivious to the fact that the principal enemy of despotic and incompetent regimes is the people. If the atomic bomb could protect countries from this principal enemy of unpopular regimes, it would have come to the rescue of the former Soviet Union, which had the world's second-largest arsenal and had stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over. And now, interestingly, the bear's inheritance has passed to the hyena. That is, the heavyweights, the ones who really mattered, laid it down and conceded they had been wrong, but now His Excellency Comrade Kim Il-sung has just picked up the banner and holds 23 million wretched, pale-faced people captive, insisting that, yes indeed, communism is victorious. And funnier still are the statesmen of our own country, who have fallen in behind this bankrupt man and whose ideal is to turn Iran into North Korea. And of course, more ridiculous than both of these are some of the supposedly anti-regime leftists who are still looking for Comrade Stalin. With this introduction, I want to pose a real question. That is, instead of the insipid, pointless question of whether uranium enrichment, or as our radio and television (God spare us!) put it, nuclear energy, is our inalienable right or not, I want to pose this serious question: should we take the path of North Korea, or the path of South Korea?
It is clear that in today's world, with Iran's current regime, which every day rattles its sabre at Israel, America, the Arab countries and the whole world, officially talks of creating turmoil in the region or starting wars like the one in Lebanon, and frightens the world with the weapon of terrorism and terrorist organizations, it is only natural that they would restrict Iran's use not just of uranium enrichment but even of potassium chlorate and sulfur. (Believe me, I am not joking.) So what is there to ask? In fact, such a naive question starts the story from the middle. It is better to go to the source and put the Iranian nation before a fundamental, basic choice. That is, to see whether the Iranian nation still wants, as in those early years of the revolution, to create a new order for the world, overturn the current relations and, even at the cost of its own destruction, throw a spanner in the works of the world as it turns today. I think it is the inalienable right of the Iranian nation to decide for itself on a matter of such importance. Truly, if the country's senior officials, especially the Leader, have nothing to hide, let them freely ask the people this one simple question: does the nation want to take the path of North Korea or the path of South Korea?
Allow me to shed a little more light on the dimensions of these two Koreas. After World War II and the outbreak of crisis and war on the Korean peninsula, a single country called Korea, with one nation and one history, was divided into two parts. North Korea has an area of 120,540 square kilometers and a population of about 23 million, and South Korea has an area of 98,480 square kilometers and a population of about 49 million. (That is, South Korea, with a smaller area, accommodates more than twice the population of North Korea.) North Korea came under the domination of the Communist Party and the leadership of Comrade Kim Il-sung senior, with a socialist, state-run economy, doors closed to the world, and a security apparatus of arrests and crackdowns, right up to today when, praise be to God, Comrade Kim Il-sung the Second has taken his father's seat and is following the same path. South Korea, however, has been governed under a free economy and a democratic system, with an open-door policy and friendship with the whole world, especially the Americans. The result, 50 years after the end of the Korean War, is as follows in these two countries:
South Korea North Korea
Gross domestic product $965.3 billion $20.9 billion, or by some accounts $40 billion
Per capita GDP $20,402 $900
(per capita income)
Exports $288.2 billion $19.3 billion
In technology, South Korea has become one of the world's giants and exports billions of dollars of goods to the whole world, including that same America, while North Korea, hungry and living hand to mouth, was begging just two years ago for the whole world, especially that same America, to send it food. In comparing these two countries, one could cite hundreds of other figures from various angles. In the political arena, too, South Koreans travel easily with their passports to most countries of the world, are respected everywhere with their full pockets, and recently their former foreign minister even became head of the United Nations. The Northerners, on the other hand, are not even permitted by their government to leave the country; those who are allowed to travel, such as government agents, cannot go anywhere, not even to the middle of nowhere, are treated like lepers wherever they go in the world, and theirs is one of the two or three most isolated countries in the world (much like ourselves). As for culture, science, education, universities and human resource development in general, comparing these two countries would, in my view, fill volumes. Surely many in Iran will immediately say: but North Korea is independent, while South Korea is dependent on America; and eating bread and cheese in freedom is better than eating chicken and rice in servitude, and so on. Is that really so? Is South Korea dependent on and subservient to America? And does North Korea act independently of everyone? In this very story of the sanctions on North Korea, we saw how, when China merely frowned at North Korea and grumbled a little, those gentlemen fell over themselves begging forgiveness. Whereas I cannot recall South Korea ever behaving so abjectly toward America anywhere. (Unfortunately, this same abjectness applies to the relations between Iran and Russia. That is, when Russia swallows up Iran's share of the Caspian Sea and washes it down with a glass of water, not a sound comes from anyone, especially the Leader, and all the agencies are ordered to keep their mouths shut.) Let me raise one point briefly here and leave the details for a separate article. If a country correctly understands the relations of today's network society (in Castells's phrase), understands how multinational companies form the backbone of the world in the age of "globalization," and adapts itself to these relations, there is essentially no room left for obedience and submission to other governments in the old style. This is something South Korea has understood well and pursues. Dozens of multinational companies have been born in South Korea; they are now present in the global network of capital, operate all over the world, and pull governments along behind them.
You can bring this same question closer to home and nearer at hand. That is, ask whether the path Iran has taken since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, and is still taking, has been more beneficial to the Iranian nation, or the path Turkey has taken and is still taking. I leave the answer to this question, and the gathering of the necessary information and statistics on these two neighboring countries, to university and high school students. It is a good and simple mental exercise, and I recommend it to the young generation. I hold out no hope for my own generation and those older. Rulers and opponents alike, we are unfortunately so entangled in the spider's webs of the ideas of our 1340s (the 1960s) that I think we will not break free until we die. So, as our homework, we had better keep copying out those same lessons from 40 years ago.
Peace be upon you
Mohsen Sazegara