Many overenthusiastic tankies claim that LGBT people are accepted in the DPRK, while your average lib will tell you that Kim Jong-Un will shoot you out of a cannon if you hold hands with the same gender. The reality is neither of these.
First of all, homosexuality is socially looked down upon by the DPRK. A simple search on KCNA will show homophobic comments about Michael Kirby. However, any such article from KCNA should be taken with a grain of salt since it has crazy articles once in a while that don’t accurately depict the official position of the state. Rodong Sinmun is party-run while KCNA is more independent as a state-managed enterprise, so it’s a better way to judge the government’s position on a topic. Rodong Sinmun seems to be absent from any articles discussing this. However, this analysis from Kim Il-Sung university shows that being homosexual is frowned upon in academia; given the importance that social science academia plays in the governance of the DPRK we can understand this is likely reflected some degree in the policies of the government.
Another claim I hear is that while homosexuality is frowned upon in the DPRK, it is not legally punished. Indeed, the DPRK criminal code does not explicitly mention any punishment for homosexuality at all. However, the criminal code does have this rather vague article:
Article 194 (Conduct of Decadent Acts)
A person who watches or listens to music, dance, drawings, photos, books, video recordings or electronic media that reflects decadent, carnal or foul contents or who performs such acts himself or herself shall be punished by short-term labour for less than two years. In cases where the person commits a grave offence, he or she shall be punished by reform through labour for less than five years.
If being gay is considered a decadent act by the government, which it likely is, it is possible that one could face 2-5 years of jail time for this.
I am a big fan of the DPRK and consider it the best example and execution of socialism on Earth. But critical support is still critical, and we must be knowledgable about the DPRK’s shortcomings.
Good points. My mind has been on this exact subject recently and I’ve been trying to work out what it is I’m trying to say, though I think you said some of it. Regardless, I will attempt to put into words some of what’s on my mind about it.
Namely that there is this moralizing view (that in my case, I see most coming from catholic upbringing, but it may be from western media as well) where the focus is on this idea that everyone is sort of at risk of becoming morally corrupt. And so there is this undue focus on the morality of an action in isolation and whether it moves the needle on driving you toward corruption, sometimes leading to a pathology associated with what we call “harm OCD”, but more often probably just causing people to be a bit warped in their thinking and attention paid.
The moralizing view, rather than looking at what is effective toward the goal and the benefit and harm contained in it, it tends to look for purity very much so. The action that contains both benefit and harm is considered corrupted (which doesn’t make sense, as it’s virtually impossible for any action to contain only one or the other, purely) and must be faced with guilt and reassurance that it has no broader implications of the person becoming a corrupted being.
Ironically, the moralizing view is more apt to cause you to have a mismatch in intent and result. Because you are viewing people as good or bad. So you are both unfairly accommodating and forgiving of the people in the “good” group and you are unfairly combative and unforgiving of the people in the “bad” group.
As communists, this kind of thinking is impossible to work with and at odds with dialectics. We have to be able to do principled criticism of our own and we have to be understanding of the masses who are not communist, just as we work against the colonizer/imperialist and look out for those in need (which often go hand in hand). What is most effective is the order of the day and the moralizing view would tend to think this is somehow unfeeling and corruptive, that by focusing on what is effective over what is “the right thing to do,” you are losing sight of your moral center and becoming one of the “bad” ones. I think the mistake here, though this I admit is a component of it I’m less clear on because of the internalized strength of that moralizing thought process, is in thinking that being effectiveness focused means lacking compassion. Compassion is a critical element for us as communists and we have to figure out how to reduce harm with compassion at the helm, which leads us to scientific socialism theory and practice. The moralizing view, by contrast, is all about fear of the “animalistic nature” (a bizarre view of humans and animals as something only a few steps removed from brutality at all times); and it is focused on running from a negative rather than evaluating how to reach a positive.
Curious to know if that makes sense. This is so long cause I’m thinking some of this through as I type.
This is very well put comrade, and i fully agree! Compassion is what must always fundamentally drive us, but moralistic black and white thinking is antithetical to Marxist dialectics.