the Group Pushing Americans to Support North Korea

Late last month, a coalition of pro–North Korean activists gathered in New York City. Ostensibly there to defend “Korean independence,” their real purpose was to spread anti-American propaganda and justify the crimes of Pyongyang and other totalitarian regimes.

Nodutdol, an effectively pro-North Korean group, co-hosted the People’s Summit for Korea from July 25 through 27. The event featured professional activists, academics, government officials, and longtime radicals with decades of involvement in left-wing politics. Also present were a stable of revolutionary leftist groups, including the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, the United National Antiwar Coalition, and more.

The conference offered several radical presentations. It included plenary sessions, such as “The Long Revolution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea“ and “Toward a United Front: U.S. Out of Everywhere“; workshops, such as “Surviving Sanctions: Resisting the Imperial Agenda” and “People to People: Reflections from Delegations to North Korea”; and a session for students, titled “Students: Planting the Seeds of the Student Movement.”

Current and former academics featured prominently. Betsy Yoon, an assistant professor of library and information studies at Baruch College and a member of Nodutdol, argued during the “The Long Revolution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea“ plenary that Americans should “internalize the lessons of North Korea’s ongoing revolution.” At the summit, Yoon spoke about no longer being able to travel to North Korea and advised activists in the “imperial core” to “creatively apply our Juche spirit.” Juche is North Korea’s official Communist ideology.

At another plenary entitled “Solidarity and Sovereignty: Anti-Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific,” Vijay Prashad, a former professor at Trinity College, suggested that, in fact, the Soviet Union and China had defeated the Axis Powers in the Second World War. While imperialists and capitalists “would like you to think it was a group of Iowa farm boys” who “landed in Normandy” and won the war, he argued, that is “not true at all.”

As the conference underscored, Nodutdol is making inroads in the academy. One of its members, Minju Bae, teaches at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Perhaps it’s no surprise that a student at an event at NYU praised North Korea for arming the Palestinian resistance.

The event also featured radical activists like Mick Kelly of Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Sara Flounders of the United National Antiwar Coalition. In 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the homes of Kelly and other Freedom Road Socialist Organization members as part of a years-long federal probe into alleged ties to terrorist groups, though no charges were filed. Flounders attended Samidoun’s 50th anniversary party for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization. Just last year, the U.S. designated Samidoun as a fundraising source for the PFLP.

Nodutdol is one of the most influential organizations working inside the United States to rehabilitate North Korea’s image. On its website, the group describes itself as an organization of “diasporic Koreans and comrades based in occupied Indigenous lands known as the United States and Canada.” Its name means “stepping stone,” fittingly, as the group serves as an entry point into a far-left worldview sympathetic to North Korea and hostile to the United States.

The group declares that it organizes “for a world free of imperialism, and for Korea’s re/unification and national liberation,” mirroring that of the North Korean regime. Its materials and presentations are filled with language about comrades, “the belly of the beast,” settler colonialism, occupation, and national liberation—hallmarks of hard-left activism.

Meantime, North Korea’s reach is expanding. In late July, an Arizona woman was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for helping North Korean IT workers secure jobs at more than 300 American companies. Her scheme reached Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 companies, and even the entertainment industry. The IT workers tried to penetrate the federal government but failed.

American popular culture often mocks North Korea, as in films like Team America: World Police and The Interview. But satire can breed complacency. The totalitarian regime in Pyongyang, which rules over an impoverished and oppressed people, is anything but a joke.

North Korea remains closed to the world, but its allies in the United States are not. Organizations like Nodutdol push a narrative that casts North Korea as the victim and America as the villain—and they are gaining traction, recruiting foot soldiers for their long war against the West.

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