I mean, there is no way those "Ten Principles" actually exist. I refuse to believe it. Apparently, and that is probably true, Kim il-Sung 1967 and Kim Jong-il in 1974 gave speeches where they talked about a "monolithic ideological system", after there was an internal power struggle within the party. But from how they present this, they claim that the "Ten Principles" exist with multiple clauses and over dozens subclauses (lol) that constantly get amended by the will of the leader and the party. They claim that they are present at every party meeting and basically function as law. Yet they are not anywhere to be found. I can easily look up the North Korean constitution, the North Korean criminal code, even their fucking street traffic code with no problem. The DPRK promotes the works of their leaders as much as they can too. This is the only pdf you can find:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170906180510/http://www.internationallawbureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Ten-Great-Principles-of-the-Establishment-of-the-Unitary-ideology.pdfIt's from the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), which is a Korean offshoot of Amnesty International. I didn't find anything remarkable about them, but all of those North Korean human right NGOs tend to be filled with connections to the American deep state. Their founder got some award by the NED apparently. Read more about the Committe for Human Rights in North Korea, and the connections of Robert Collins, one of the leading DPRK "experts" who always gets quotes with regards to this stuff:
https://rhizzone.net/articles/songbullshit/There aren't even Koreans on the board of the HRNK, it's all white Americans with careers in intelligence services, the State Department and financial trusts. Now, I am not saying the NKHR is exactly the same, but it gives you an impression of how the North Korean "human rights" industry works.
The document states:
>Translated by Joanna Hosaniak,Kyung Eun Ha, Markus Simpson Bell From where? I'm itching to know. Is it in Kim il-Sungs collected words? Is it a secret pamphlet that got leaked? Is it literally just oral tradition that gets repeated in speeches? Where is the source.
I googled the translators and apparently they write articles about North Korean prisons on HRW:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/10/19/worth-less-animal/abuses-and-due-process-violations-pretrial-detention-northOne of the translators, Joanna Hosniak, is actually deputy director of the NKHR. She from Poland and worked for the network of "Human Rights Houses" and was advisor to the South Korean embassy in Warsaw.
https://kr.linkedin.com/in/joanna-hosaniak-230b045I couldn't find the other two. Apparently Markus Simpson Bell also works for the NKHR, he has written articles for them. Every source about the the "Ten Principles" (if it is sourced at all) redirects back to their translation. So did the NKHR got their hands on a document that apparently nobody else has? This is all really strange and I would appreciate if someone should do a little more digging with this. Here is their e-mail:
[email protected]I'm going to write a request if they can redirect me to their source in the original Korean. I'm going to pretend that I am writing a paper on North Korea and my professor wants to me primarily use Korean sources. If I'm getting anything at all out of this that would confirm my scepticism, I will send it to Max Blumenthal.