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World

N. Korea able host for youth festival

PYONGYANG — Something extraor-
dinary and unprecedented is set to happen
here.

From July 1 - 8, the 13th World Festival
of Youth and Students (WFYS) is in this
town, and Pyongyang will never be the
same again. Not only is this the first such
festival ever held on the Asian continent,
but for the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea — the “other” Korea — it repres-
ents a baptism of sorts.

North Korea, long one of the world’s
most insular and mysterious societies — for
Westerners at least — is rapidly emerging
from its isolation and making a concerted
bid for both understanding and influence in
the international arena.

World Youth Festivals are a postwar
tradition, held on average every five or six
years, under the sponsorship of the World
Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY)
and the International Union of Students
(1US). Routinely dismissed by the Western
media as “communist” events, they actually
attract a fairly wide spectrum of both politi-
cal and non-political young people from
virtually all countries of the world.

While festival politics are definitely ‘“‘anti-
imperialist” — this can accommodate an
astonishingly broad array of viewpoints and
interests — most of the festival activities
are concerned with cross-cultural commun-
ications, sports, artistic and musical events,
and people-to-people meetings of both
structured and informal types.

North Korea lobbied hard to have the

festival held in Pyongyang, though many of
the organizations which affiliate to WFDY
and IUS had serious reservations over what
they saw as material unpreparedness as well
as insufficient openness in North Korean
society to support the successful staging of
such an event.

Since winning their campaign to host the
WFYS a few years back, the North Koreans
have been working energetically to convince
the doubters. Journalists are proudly shown
around Pyongyang, a modern and graceful
city which contains some’ 260 buildings
either constructed or renovated specially for
the festival. These include an entire micro-
region, “Kwangbok Street,’ with more
than a dozen apartment blocks, and several
auditoriums, theatres, clubs and restau-
rants, now completed and awaiting the fes-
tival participants.

There’s also May Day Stadium — which,
with 150,000 seats, must be one of the
world’s largest — where the opening and
closing ceremonies will take place. There is
a huge new six-halled cinema house, where
the international film competition asso-
ciated with the WFYS will run continuously
during festival week. Two floors of the
Moranbong Secondary School in down-
town Pyongyang will be turned over to the
Canadian and US. delegations to serve as
their “clubhouse.” The facilities include a
600-seat auditorium, a large gymnasium
and a swimming pool.

On the political side, things may be a bit
more complicated. “It is true,” concedes

RUNG-NADU STADIUM...

impressive new structure site of opening festivities of

13th World Festival of Youth and Students.

Kim Tak Yong, vice-director of the Korean
Festival Committee, “that some of our
people had the idea of using the WFYS to
propagate our political positions and views.
But there has been a very firm decision on
the part of our government and the Korean
Workers Party that we will not try to do
that.

“The festival will be made by its partici-
pants alone, and we are simply providing
the venue. This is not a meeting for ideolog-
ical education, it is a gathering of contacts,
friendship and celebration for the youth of
the world”.

Behind ‘the walls of western blockade,
intensified by its own historic insularity,
North Korean society has been changing
and developing in remarkable ways. Des-
cribed simply, it is a developing country,

By J. PAPARIGAS

Suitcases containing large brown bags
stuffed with CIA-marked $1,000 bills are
said to have been urgently airlifted to
Greece recently in wake of the national
election which saw the conservative oppo-
sition New Democracy Party win most
seats but fail to secure a majority.

Delivered to shady characters, the bribe
money is potentially destined for several
socialist PASOK MPs. This means that if
the latter are wooed by their aspiring
“godfathers,” they may ultimately defect
to the conservatives, thus providing them
with enough support to form the next
government. The conservatives are shy
just six seats.

A final tally of the June 18 election, in
which 7.2 million people voted, showed
the right-wing NDP gaining slightly more
than 44 per cent and 145 seats in the 300-
member parliament. The governing social-
ists of PASOK, who initially came to
power in 1981 and whose mandate was
renewed by a comfortable majority in
1985, won 39 per cent of the vote and 125
seats.

The Communist Party (CPG), which
won close to 10 per cent of the vote and 12
MPs in 1985, picked up 13 per cent (close
to 850,000 votes) and more than doubled
the number of its seats to 29. This was
largely due to the ability of the CPG to.
bring together the broad forces of the left
under a joint slate and with a minimum
program of short-term demands just
months before the June vote.

It was a loose alliance of the left called

Alliance holds key to Greece’s future

the Coalition of the Left and Progress,
encompassing several small parties, inclu-
ding a major fraction of a CPG splinter
group, formerly known as the “Euro-
communists” or the Communist Party of
the Interior. Thus, for the first time in 15

= years, the Communist and broad left for-
ces were able to unite at the polls under a

joint electoral platform.

Most important, however, is the fact
that the Coalition emerged on June 19 asa
key player. By holding the balance of
power, it can now play a decisive role in
shaping future development. Having
already ruled out any form of support for
the NDP, the Coalition may be in a posi-
tion to form a coalition government with
PASOK.

This is a likely development that is only
minimized by the continuing presence of
former prime. minister Andreas Papan-
dreou who, aside from his _highly-
publicized affairs of the heart, has been
indirectly implicated in an embezzlement
ring that led to the resignation of his dep-
uty prime minister and several cabinet col-
leagues.

On June 20, the Coalition ruled out any
form of parliamentary support for
PASOK for as long as Papandreou
remains at the helm of his party. This was
despite the fact that he emerged concilia-
tory on election night saying that “a new
democratic progressive coalition of forces
has emerged in parliament.” This was the
first time Papandreou recognized the left
and Communist Party as being part of a
“democratic and progressive” front, des-

- agree to stay at the helm for about a year,

pite the fact that both parties, taken
together, controlled almost two-thirds of
the Greek parliament for the past eight
years.

There is parallel pressure from among
the ranks of Coalition allies, some of
whom were PASOK MPs who later joined
in the Coalition, to stay out of the game
altogether until the president of the repub-
lic calls another election. This in fact may
prove disastrous for the Coalition which,
potentially faced with an increased polari-
zation of the electorate, may lose substan-
tial support if the people are called to cast
a new ballot within the next 40 days.

By stepping down, or taking his old job
back at Toronto’s York University where
he taught economics while in exile
between 1969 and 1974, Papandreou may
in fact serve his country best. In fact,
Papandreou, now 70, is under increasing
pressure by colleagues to do just that.

Another possible scenario, which may
be in fact “an honest compromise,” is the
formation of a PASOK-CPG-and-allies
coalition headed by Papandreou who will

or as soon as he paves the way for a
PASOK leadership convention. Underly-
ing this is the popular demand for cathar-
sis (clean up) that PASOK has to conduct
in order to rid itself of all those implicated
in the scandal. Most important is the
reaching of a joint agreement around a
minimum program of reforms with the
Coalition which may pave the way for
major changes in the socio-economic map
of Greece.

6 « Pacific Tribune, July 3, 1989

passionately non-aligned in its international
posture, and socialist in its socio-political
formation — with several peculiarities.

Western understanding of North Korea
remains deplorably limited, reduced to lit-
tle more than a few polemical cliches that
portray a xenophobic, regimented society
and a raging personality cult. None of this
will help to prepare festival participants
from Canada for the experience of an origi
nal close encounter with a society whose
deép and complex traditions, single-minded
politics coupled with diverse forms of cultu-
ral expression, economic dynamism, social —
energy and yes, even spontaneity will simply
astound them.

After travelling around a great deal of the
North Korean countryside, through several
cities, and inspecting innumerable factories,
department stores, schools, and so on, of
two separate visits, it has become simply
undeniable to me that this is a country
which is rapidly outgrowing its undeve-
loped status. And — perhaps unique in the
third world — it has built a modern,
vertically-integrated economy without any
extremes of wealth or poverty, and without
any significant foreign debt, dependence of
capital domination.

Young North Koreans are clearly a gen-
eration poised on the brink of big changes. _
Though they may still know little of the —
outside world, they are in many other
respects extremely well-educated, highly
curious, and ready to meet others on equal
terms.

Li Ig Gu, 60, may symbolize North
Korea’s four-decade transition better than
any other person. A veteran who lost his
parents in the Korean war, he was an early
graduate of Pyongyang University who has
put in 35 years as a construction engineer.
He recalls working by hand on roads, hous-
ing blocks and factories, the projects gradu-
ally becoming more mechanized and larger
in scope.

Today he is chief engineer on Korea’s
most ambitious construction project: the
vast, pyramid-shaped 105-storey hotel
which dominates the skyline of downtown
Pyongyang. With 6,000 guest suites, it will
be one of the world’s largest buildings when
it opens its doors next year.

So the 13th WFYS will be, among other
things, an extraordinary introduction for
many to North Korea, and for North Korea
to the world.

_ One particular thing we’ll soon know is
whether South Korean students — who
have asked to participate and have been
invited to come to Pyongyang and be part
of the host-country’s delegation — will be
permitted by their own authorities to do so.
That may be the most significant and telling
point ofall. —