Letter from an East German Citizen to the DPRK Embassy in the GDR

Köthen

10/23/87

Dear Korean Comrades!

My name is [NAME REDACTED].  Since March this year I have been reading your foreign magazines “KOREA” and “Korea Today,” which are really well made.  Unfortunately I will no longer receive them through the mail, because government entities here in Köthen are against it (by the way, I also wanted to receive foreign magazines from the embassies of China, Albania, and Libya, but this was impossible from the get-go via our post office, because the mail ends up in dark channels).  My number is [REDACTED]!!!  I have two friends in Karl-Marx-Stadt—a Korean and a Vietnamese—who are conducting their studies in the same cohort.  Please send the magazines there!  Their address:

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

Karl-Marx-Stadt

9022

I am in treatment at a neurologist in Leipzig, who is very good at English and showed a lot of interest in the Korean magazines.  His address is:

Doctor [REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

Leipzig

7030

Additionally, I know a Russian woman there, who does not speak any English and would be interested in the Korean magazines in Russian.  Her address:

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

Leipzig

7010

I hope you will be pleased that I made great advertisement on your behalf and that you now have two further interested people, including a Soviet citizen.  By the way, I have received KIM IL SUNG WORKS no. 28 and no. 30 and read them thoroughly and in earnest, which I could reproduce [from memory] at any time.

I am going to pay a visit to your embassy on a Friday or Saturday during the months of November and December of this year, once my health is back to normal, because I am still on sick leave.  There are certain problems with the Juche Idea: I mean its recognition!  There are party members here who simply reject it without even knowing it!  In contrast, for example, the Albanian comrades recognize it, even though in Albania the ideas of Enver Hoxha play the same role!  In addition, the Korean and Albanian comrades also recognize “THE GREEN BOOK” of Muammar al-Gaddafi from Libya, which the German and Soviet comrades resolutely don’t do.  I could not help but notice this and other things.

My problem is that after Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Georgi Plekhanov – Rosa Luxemburg – Lenin I do not recognize today’s modern Soviet ideology as a further development but in the broadest sense consider the following names [as representative of a further development]:

Stalin – Mao Zedong – Zhou Enlai

Kim Il Sung – Kim Jong Il

Enver Hoxha – Muammar al-Gaddafi

One can indisputably regard them as small or great theoreticians who made some small or great contribution to Marxism-Leninism, even if their theories, too, were in part incomplete or only half-right/half-wrong.  Even great theoreticians can commit great errors in theory and practice, but one should recognize even the smallest contribution to a true and truthful social science, even if it should come from a Muslim.  That is my opinion.  I hereby send my best wishes to all Korean comrades.

Friendship

always!