- Apart from being home to the
"reclusive" Kim Jong-il, a "rogue" country
that the United States says it must build a missile shield to
protect itself from, it's also an inexhaustible source of
inspiration for journalists given to painting dark and
foreboding pictures of this "last outpost of the Cold
War."
-
- But are the warming winds of reform
descending upon Pyongyang, bringing with them the promise of a
thaw, and after, the blossoming of "reforms"
throughout North Korea?
You would think so if you read about Canada's
new diplomatic mission to one of the few remaining Communist
countries, one that Ottawa hopes will persuade Pyongyang's
"reclusive" leaders to "change" their ways. By
which is meant it is hoped North Korea will "reform" its
command economy, reform being a word that runs through the media's
accounts of Canada's new-found diplomatic interest in North Korea as
surely as hockey scores run through the sports pages of Canadian
newspapers.
Reform means to change from worse to better,
though someone forgot to tell that to the governments of Russia, its
former Soviet satellites, or the new reformist government of
Yugoslavia, which have also reformed, or are in the process of
reforming, command economies.
Come to think of it, someone forgot to tell
journalists, too.
Reforms in Russia led to a shrinking economy,
the collapse of real incomes, soaring unemployment, wages that go
unpaid, the recrudescence of diseases associated with poverty, a
falling life expectancy and a shrinking population. In a land that
once prided itself on its educational accomplishments, ten million
children don't attend school. These days, the country's sole
accomplishment is to do in one generation what it took many
generations to do in reverse -- go from being a Second World country
to a Third World country.
Newly instituted reforms of Yugoslavia's
economy -- which have led to spiralling prices and wages that are
worth less every month -- promise to do the same. Skyrocketing fuel
prices, and the lifting of subsidies on staple food items like bread
and cooking oil, mean that many ordinary Yugoslav citizens struggle
now with cold and hunger, where they hadn't before -- hardly an
instance of change from worse to better.
"Reform," as it's used these days,
has an decidedly Orwellian character -- it means the opposite of
what it's supposed to mean. War is peace, freedom is slavery,
ignorance is strength, as Orwell wrote in his novel 1984...and
losing your job, seeing your wages shrink and scrambling to survive,
is reform. In other words, for the great majority of people
subjected to reforms, reform means a change from not so good, to
catastrophic.
Of course, for some -- Western investors and
the cowboy capitalists of Russia who have profited immensely from
reforms and stand to profit from Kim Jong-il's reforms, if they're
implemented -- reform does mean a change for the better, and that
must be acknowledged. But calling something that benefits a minority
at the expense of the majority a reform, is like calling a
devastating hurricane that causes tens of millions of dollars of
damage an economic boon because the innkeepers to whose inland
hotels millions fled during the storm saw their profits soar.
