North Korea’s state media has not ceased its barrage of antagonistic propaganda against the free world, publishing a column Tuesday declaring that all capitalist societies are “doomed to come to an end” a week before a scheduled summit between dictator Kim Jong-un and the leader of the capitalist world, President Donald Trump.
“Capitalist society is the most unpopular and corrupt one completely contrary to the intrinsic requirements of human beings as it mercilessly infringes upon the freedom and democratic rights of overwhelming majority of the working masses and causes social evils and ideological and moral poverty of every description,” the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun railed in a column published Tuesday.
“The reality of capitalist system itself clearly shows how reactionary and unpopular it is,” the publication declared, calling life in capitalist countries “intolerable” and lamenting that “such poor mental and cultural life can never be prevented in capitalist society based on rabid selfishness and under the reign of mammonism and the jungle law.”
“Such capitalism is doomed to come to an end,” the newspaper proclaims.
North Korea is home to arguably the world’s most repressive communist system. According to the State Department Report on International Religious Freedom published last week, Kim Jong-un employs “arbitrary executions, political prison camps, and torture amounting to crimes against humanity” against anyone suspected of harboring religious beliefs and anyone related to the suspects. The Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) in South Korea published a report last month finding that internment in political concentration camps for “crimes” like trying to contact defectors abroad continues to be common in the country and human rights abuses worsened in the past year.
North Korean state media has declared the Kim regime a “good example” on the human rights front while branding the United States the world’s “kingpin of human rights abuses.”
All media in North Korean is run through the government’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, believed to be run by Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister.
While state media has ceased its regular threats of nuclear annihilation of the U.S. mainland since Kim agreed to meet Trump next week, it has nonetheless increased its vitriol toward American “imperialist” culture, warning North Koreans not to express curiosity or learn about foreign cultures.
“If one falls captive to the imperialist ideology and culture, one would be powerless though one has powerful military strength. This is a bitter lesson taught by history,” Rodong Sinmun warned in April. “The reactionary ideological and cultural poisoning paved a way for aggression by the imperialists in the past, and it is now playing the leading role in aggression.”
The state newspaper has also warned the United States to “behave properly” if it hopes for the June 12 summit to occur and disparaged key Trump administration officials, claiming National Security Advisor John Bolton believes in “racism” and carrying a North Korean official’s remarks that Vice President Mike Pence was a “political dummy.”
President Trump canceled the June 12 summit following that remark but confirmed last week that both sides were “totally over that” and planned for the summit to go on as planned.
South Korean news service Yonhap reported Tuesday that plans for the summit are ongoing in Singapore, according to South Korean officials. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has reportedly expressed interest in also attending the summit, though there has been no confirmation from either the United States or North Korea that Seoul would have a presence at the event.