Western historians absolutely do not have a complete monopoly on the truth, and I hope there are no Western historians that are under the illusion that they do. That being said, it would be just as wrong to draw a false equivalency between North Korean propaganda and academic history and throw up one's hands at the inaccessibility of a single objective truth.

All historians have an obligation to understand how their position in society and the position of the authors of their sources color the interpretations that are available to them. That's not to say that it'll ever be possible to step totally outside of the time and place we (or they) live, or that we'll ever be able to write a true total history -- taking into account every possible angle and interpretation of past events. But we can try to think through our evidence with a critical eye, and argue over the most effective way to construct our narratives.

That's really the best any of us can do, and it may not always lead us to the Truth (with a capital t). But history is important, and we do have an obligation to do our best with the tools we have. I work in indigenous studies, and while I understand why Derrida claims academics have to displace their own authority in constructing meta-narratives (or avoid constructing them entirely), I'm not prepared to tell an indigenous community that they may or may not have been colonized because truth is fluid. The stakes are too high, and as long as we remain open to other evidence-based interpretations, we can't let the reality or possibility of alternate readings keep us from doing history ourselves.