"This is the popular conception of what witches do, and how they practise their craft. How true is it of modern day witches? Are they, as is popularly supposed, anti-Christ; locked in perpetual conflict with the established church? We asked Europe's leading witchcraft authority what he thought of this widespread image."
Western Academia’s War Against Korea, Part 4: DePauw University’s Derek R. Ford
Introduction
“The day after Tillerson announced the #NorthKorea travel ban, I travelled to the country on a fact-finding delegation. I just got back. As soon as I arrived, the US govnt/media narrative about the [DPRK] began crumbling. I felt safe and welcomed the entire time.”
- DePauw University Professor Derek R. Ford
Upon reading the above tweets, one might be tempted to see Derek R. Ford as an ally of the DPRK. However, Ford is, at best, a poser who is using his feigned interest in Korean anti-imperialist struggles in order to promote himself outside the academic circles that professors usually run in. Considering the extent of Ford’s inaccurate portrayals of Korea in general, which will be documented in this article, it may be more likely that Ford is using his trip to DPRK as a shield of authenticity from behind which he can issue Korea-focused disinformation.
Contradicting Kim Il Sung: Ford’s Plagiarized Account of the Minsaengdan Incident
The most egregious example of disinformation from Derek R. Ford is his retelling of the Minsaengdan incident, which is also recounted by Kim Il Sung in volume 4 of With the Century. Kim says the incident can give "a lesson about the establishment of Juche of the Korean revolution and about the national spirit of independence." However, Ford’s account of the incident is a plagiarized apologia for the Japanese Empire in Korea, in which Ford directly contradicts Kim Il Sung.
Ford issued his account of the Misaengdan incident via a podcast called “Groundings.” The description for the episode featuring Ford promises the following content:
Organizer and educator Derek Ford gives a historical context for the current imperialist aggression surrounding the DPRK, explains the 'Juche' ideology, and recounts some firsthand propaganda-shattering experiences from his travels inside the country.
In the first place, it’s inexplicable why anyone would invite Ford — who speaks no Korean and has no specific training or education related to Korea — to give a history of Juche, when DPRK’s own English-language texts chronicle the history of Juche in great detail. Furthermore, although Kim Il Sung himself presents a highly detailed account of the Minsaengdan incident in With the Century, Ford ignores Kim's account and relies solely on a revisionist text: Han Hongkoo's chapter from Suh Jae-jung's Origins of North Korea’s Juche. Proof of Ford's reliance on Han becomes evident when one examines five specific examples from Ford’s presentation in the podcast, in which Ford's retelling of the Minsaengdan incident diverges from Kim Il Sung's account and Ford's word choices are too similar to Han's to be coincidental.
Example 1: Kim Il Sung blames Japan for creating the Minsaengdan, while Derek Ford blames Koreans for creating the Minsaengdan.
Kim Il Sung squarely blames Japan for creating the Minsaengdan, which he calls "a spy organization ... manufactured by the Japanese imperialists to paralyse the anti-Japanese spirit of the Korean people." Kim cites US-trained Governor-General Saito Makoto as personally responsible.
However, Ford contradicts Kim Il Sung, using Han's account to blame only Koreans.
Ford: "In Feb of 1932 ... there were these pro-Japanese Koreans which organized a group called the Minsaengdan" (at 16:30 in the podcast)
Han: "Minsaengdan was formed by pro-Japanese Korean migrants to Manchuria in Feb 1932"
Example 2: Kim Il Sung’s indictment of Japan versus Derek Ford’s acquittal of Japan
Kim Il Sung writes that Japan intended the Minsaengdan to "isolat[e] Korean communists by harming them through trickery and disrupting the revolutionary ranks from within by driving a wedge between the Korean and Chinese peoples."
In Kim Il Sung's "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" speech from 1955, he says the Minsaengdan was Japan's "vile trick of alienating the Koreans from the Chinese and inciting strife among the Koreans."
Ford mentions Kim Il Sung's 1955 speech in the podcast, but he ignores Kim's assertion that Japan intended to divide Koreans from Chinese. Instead, he chooses Han's benign view of the Japanese empire. Channeling Han, Ford absolves Japan of any intent to exploit racial divisions between Koreans and Chinese.
Ford: "Japan didn't endorse [Minsaengdan and] didn't want ethnic strife or national divisions."
Han: "Japanese authorities ... hoped to lessen inter-ethnic hostilities."
(The Han/Ford portrayal of Japan as an honest broker between races not only contradicts Kim Il Sung, but it also makes the absurd assumption that the Japanese empire would reject the material gains it could accrue from exploiting the racialization of its subjects.)
Example 3: Kim Il Sung and Derek Ford’s differing assessments of the Minsaengdan’s effectiveness
Kim Il Sung writes: "The Japanese imperialists had hardly managed to implant anything [from the Minsaengdan] into our ranks. ... There is a record in an enemy document stating there were only seven or eight 'Minsaengdan' members."
Again, Ford contradicts Kim: "It's generally agreed that there were sort of infiltrators [from Minsaengdan into the CCP]." In this regard, Ford actually goes farther than Han, who doesn't seem to say that there is a general consensus that the Minsaengdan successfully infiltrated the CCP.
Example 4: Derek Ford blames Koreans for initiating the Minsaengdan purges
Although Kim Il Sung unwaveringly blames Japan as the creator of the Minsaengdan, he doesn't actually single out any entity for initiating the violence of the anti-Minsaengdan purges. However, Ford blames Koreans for this.
Ford: "The Korean communists were enthusiastic initiators" of the Minsaengdan-related purges.
This contradicts Kim Il Sung and goes even farther than Han's assertion, "At first ... Koreans ... welcomed the Minsaengdan purge and actively participated."
Example 5: Other similarities between Ford’s and Han’s language
Ford: The Minsaengdan purge "quickly degenerated into an anti-Korean purge."
Han: "the Minsaengdan purge, which started out as a counterespionage struggle, degenerated into an anti-Korean persecution."
Ford’s inability to speak extemporaneously on DPRK
In addition to the similarities between Ford’s and Han’s accounts of the Minsaengdan incident and the similarities between Ford’s and Han's language, another factor makes it seem likely that Ford’s podcast presentation is based on plagiarized notes: When Ford is asked to speak extemporaneously about DPRK, he just can't do it.
In response to a question about the experiential learning he might have undergone from visiting DPRK and "seeing the Juche ideology firsthand," Ford seems completely maladroit at discussing DPRK without a prepared script. This is Ford’s answer to the question:
It's almost like a, this might seem strange, you know when you have an experience with a really, you know, unique experience with someone that you can't quite, like, articulate 100%, but you'll, like, look at each other and you know exactly what you're thinking? Okay, um, well, it's kind of like that, like, you'll ask a question, in the DPRK, and then you'll just be like, 'Oh, Juche.' Right? And it's like, that kind of, like, explains it all.
Ford’s False Claims about Koreans in the Chinese Communist Party
In case one needed more evidence that Derek R. Ford is a totally unreliable source on Korea (and other topics): He has falsely claimed, multiple times, that Koreans at one point composed the majority of the Chinese Communist Party, and he refuses to retract that claim.
At no point in history did Koreans compose 90% of the entire CCP. That statistic is laughable on its face, but it can also be disproven with evidence.
Koreans did compose 90% or more of the CCP in some parts of Manchuria in the early 1930s. "Between spring 1932 and spring 1934 ... in E. Manchuria, S. Manchuria, N. Manchuria, and Jidong ... Koreans constituted the majority, both in the Party and in the CCP armed forces."
However, considering that CCP membership was 40,000+ in 1928, and Koreans didn't join the CCP en masse until 1930, if 90% of the CCP were Korean, that would mean that there were at least 360,000 Koreans versus 40,000 Chinese in the CCP.
Presumably, the number of Koreans in the CCP would peak before the Minsaengdan purges of the mid-1930s. Given that most Koreans in China lived in Manchuria, Ford's statistic would mean that approximately 50% of Koreans in China were CCP members. Demographically, that's highly unlikely.
This error has been pointed out to Ford, but he refuses to acknowledge it. That's probably because he put the error in one of his books (which costs $141.98), and he wants to save face for his editor/publisher/etc.
Using Koreans as Props
Ford has a tendency to use Korean people and Korean aesthetics as brand-building accessories. For example, the below-pictured tweet contains no information about Ford’s "comrade" or her situation — not even her name!
Because Ford can’t read the below-pictured publication, he can only post a picture of its graphic for his followers to admire.
The tweets pictured below are really something. Ford claims that he has gone to the airport with RoK organizers who try to check in to their flights and discover that they can’t leave the country. Certainly, RoK does prohibit some of its citizens from leaving the country; for example, the kidnapped restaurant workers from DPRK have been unable to obtain passports. However, it’s completely implausible that US citizen Derek Ford would be in RoK, leaving that country while accompanied by RoK organizers who are left behind as Ford departs. The implausibility of this scenario is exemplified by Ford’s inability to share any details of the situation at all, other than, “I was there.”
Contrary to Ford’s assertion, the man in the below-pictured tweet (Seo Ok-ryeol) has been out of RoK prison for years. It seems that Ford wanted to use Seo’s plight as an excuse to write the word “Juche” on his timeline.
Conclusion: De-Emphasizing the Importance of DPRK Travel Narratives
It’s actually not difficult for USians to travel to DPRK. I haven’t been there myself, but it sounds much more convenient than many other travel destinations. In spite of the currently existing travel ban for US citizens, DPRK is still accepting visitors from the USA, although those visitors may need to exercise caution about publicizing their travels.
On the basis of how easily USians have been able to travel to DPRK, it is imperative that DPRK travel not be confused with DPRK solidarity. Note how Derek Ford refers to his DPRK travel entourage: “a fact-finding delegation.”
The implication in calling it a “fact-finding delegation” is that Ford may have actually believed imperialist myths about DPRK before he traveled there to “find” the “facts.” Now that he has obtained the facts, he presents himself as an arbiter of those facts based upon his own lived experience. Yet, Ford has repeatedly proven himself unable to present even the most basic facts about the DPRK and Korea at large. Ford’s voice should thus be excluded from any conversation regarding Korea.
Related
Western Academia’s War Against Korea, Part 1: Introduction, Stanford University, Gi-wook Shin
Western Academia’s War Against Korea, Part 2: Stanford University Attempts to Erase the Revolution from DPRK
Western Academia’s War Against Korea, Part 3: Stanford University Celebrates Washington Post Reporter Anna Fifield
This, That and the Other (original title A Promise of Bed) is one of those British sex comedies which isn't particularly sexy or funny.
It's a portmanteau movie of three stories. In the first an actress decides the best way to convince a producer she's the right person to play an older woman who seduces a younger man is by seducing his son, the second concerns a lonely man whose plans for a nice quiet evening of suicide are derailed by a home invasion of would be partygoers, and the final story follows a taxi driver through a surreal dream sequence in pursuit of his fare.
Like many films of this type while it's not actually "good" it is kind of interesting for it's oddness and for it's cast which features a bunch of familiar Brit film and TV faces of the era, Dennis Waterman, Victor Spinetti, Vanessa Howard, John Bird, Yutte Stensgaard, Alexandra Bastedo, Valerie Leon, etc.
