The Korean Peninsula as a natural experiment
Joseph Stalin figures in The Bob Zadek Show only in the course of a discussion of the Korean Peninsula, in an episode devoted to socialism. The guest, Ben Powell, described the view from the Yalu River, where one side of the river shows poverty, dilapidated buildings and old machinery struggling to till a field, while a hundred yards in the other direction there are new skyscrapers going up, a thriving economy, and multi-lane roads with tractor-trailers. That contrast, he said, is China, which he described as far from unfettered capitalism but no longer socialist — a form of crony capitalism that nonetheless looks far better than what he called the socialist hell of North Korea. Socialism… Still Not Cool (2019)
Bob Zadek took up the comparison and called North and South Korea a perfect petri dish for examining the two systems. He likened the two countries to identical twins separated at birth, noting that North and South Korea were at one time one people. In his account, the DMZ, the 38th parallel, was simply a line on a map, an artificial line where the Western powers after World War II gave North Korea in effect to Joseph Stalin. Zadek characterized that as a distinction without a difference: two people, a line drawn on a map with a ruler, and two countries created out of one. Socialism… Still Not Cool (2019)
From that premise Zadek drew the episode’s central contrast. The two countries, he said, share the same cultural background, the same people and the same history, and then one was given an opportunity under capitalism and the other under socialism. Because of that, he argued, there is no need to theorize about how the systems differ. He told Powell that if one needed to look at the globe and ask how to learn the difference between capitalism and socialism, one only has to point to the Korean Peninsula as the perfect answer. Socialism… Still Not Cool (2019)
Across episodes
Only one episode in the excerpts, the 2019-07-28 discussion of socialism with Ben Powell, touches on Joseph Stalin; the excerpts show no development in the treatment of the topic across episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe Stalin’s role in the Soviet Union, his policies, his tenure, or any event apart from the postwar disposition of Korea as Zadek recounts it. They do not give a date for the division of Korea, name the Western powers involved, or identify any agreement or conference at which the arrangement was made. They do not state Stalin’s title, his nationality, or the years of his life, and they offer no assessment of him beyond the single attribution Zadek makes. Nothing in the excerpts indicates that any other episode of the program discussed him.