Posted on 07/16/2005 3:29:03 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
...Many conservatives in and out of the Bush administration assume that North Korea's population must be seething and that the regime must be on its last legs. Indeed, the Bush administration's policy on North Korea, to the extent that it has one, seems to be to wait for it to collapse.
I'm afraid that could be a long, long wait. The central paradox of North Korea is this: No government in the world today is more brutal or has failed its people more abjectly, yet it appears to be in solid control and may even have substantial popular support.
From a brief visit like mine, it's hard to gauge the mood, because anyone who criticizes the government risks immediate arrest. But Chinese and other foreigners I've spoken to who live in North Korea or visit regularly say they believe that most North Koreans buy into the system, just as ordinary Chinese did during the Maoist period.
...I've interviewed dozens of North Koreans who have fled to China or South Korea, and they overwhelmingly say that while they personally dislike the regime - that's why they fled - their relatives believe in the Kim dynasty with a quasi-religious faith. They say that when everyone is raised to worship the Dear Leader, when there are no contrary voices, people genuinely revere the leader.
Most say the faith is not as strong as it was a dozen years ago, mostly because so many people have heard whispers of Chinese prosperity. But they still laugh at the idea that the Dear Leader is about to be toppled.
"I think we'll have regime change in America before we have regime change in North Korea," says Han Park, a Korea specialist at the University of Georgia. He estimates that 30 percent of North Koreans...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So let's attack.
It's called brainwashing, something the NYT attempts on a daily basis.
How utterly pathetic.
He admitted in his article that his visit was so short, and the people so afraid to speak up, that he couldn't clearly gauge how they feel...
yet he writes an article saying that President Bush is reading them wrong?
Duh!!!
The North Korean commies probably would have collapsed years ago, but BJ Klintoon and Madeline Notsobright decided to prop them up.
We need an actor to use his skills to infiltrate into the North Korean government. A brilliant actor. Someone like Gary Johnston.
Lisa: Promise me you'll never die.
Gary Johnston: You know I can't promise that.
Lisa: If you did that, I would make love to you right now.
Gary Johnston: I promise I'll never die.
Lucky for the world.
You have a better chance of seeing Helen Thomas nekkid.
The key is to remember that if you're a NYT columnist, then Bush is always wrong.
From a brief visit like mine, it's hard to gauge the mood, because anyone who criticizes the government risks immediate arrest. But Chinese and other foreigners I've spoken to who live in North Korea or visit regularly say they believe that most North Koreans buy into the system, just as ordinary Chinese did during the Maoist period."
What a MORON.
Idiot leftists said the same thing in the 1930s of the USSR during Stalin's regime. That didn't make it right, nor truly popular. You can't even *ask* that question intelligently in a country that operates by totalitarian control. (That's including mind control - remember '1984').
It's a lot easier to 'buy into' a terrible regime when not doing so will get you killed and when you are pumped with daily propoganda to go a certain way.
Ignorant snot. - We don't have "regimes" in America, we elect leaders. Period.
And just what does Mr. America think that a different leadership can do to change North Korea, except attack them?
I seem to remember commentators says saying the same thing about the longevity of the Soviet Union in the years 1987 and 1988.
Lefties are always telling us that the happy masses love their socialist dictator just before they kill him.
EWWWWWWWWWW
Helen Thomas nekkid--
I am eating dinner, and you just made me gag! LOL
To the contrary, Bush is proping up the regime.
The United States to give North Korea 50,000 tonnes of food aid
See post 15, Bush is a traitor too.
It would be interesting to find out if the typical North Korean has any concept of the meaning of freedom. It would seem that it is a universal concept, but without experiencing it does it mean anything other than a fine sounding word?
If you hermetically seal of a country, you can brainwash people.
Many North Koreans are probably brainwashed.
The NYT author concludes from this that we should therefore appease the regime.
Appeasement and/or surrender is the answer to every problem the U.S. faces in the world, in the minds of those who work at the NYT. They are idiots.
"...I've interviewed dozens of North Koreans who have fled to China or South Korea, and they overwhelmingly say that while they personally dislike the regime - that's why they fled - their relatives believe in the Kim dynasty with a quasi-religious faith."
Another point: IF you give away your true feelings, EVEN TO YOUR CLOSEST RELATIVES, it could lead to a trip to a concentration camp. In North Korea today, there are 200,000 in concentration camps.
For Mr Kristof not to note this point makes his entire column an exercise in futile and probably incorrect speculation.
Boy the New York slimes says the North Koreans are happy.
They love eatting grass
They love having their lives controlled 100% of the time
They love having zero contact with the rest of the world ( heck they think everyone eats grass to stay alive).
They love gulags and slave labor camps, just ask the people lucky enough to have lived to escape.
Just another workers paradise according to the slimes. How could anyone print this totally pile of steaming excrement and call it journalism?
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