Posted on 10/09/2006 3:52:07 PM PDT by MadIvan
AT TIMES of hunger — when the rice has gone and all the dogs and cats have been eaten — North Korean children scavenge the fields for crows, dragonflies and rats. The countryside is littered with abandoned factories: not only is there no fuel for the machinery, but all the metal from the power cables has been stripped and sold.
Diplomats in the capital, Pyongyang, worry about sending their cooks out to shop for dinner parties because the few hundred pounds they carry with them is the equivalent of several decades’ wages for the average worker.
Economically North Korea is a husk of a country, poor by the standards of sub-Saharan Africa, let alone those of booming East Asia. But yesterday, despite ideological bankruptcy, growing diplomatic isolation and a famine in the 1990s that killed as many as three million people, it became the ninth member of the nuclear club. Whatever else is true about North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il — and there is no doubt that he is a tyrant and a killer on a historic scale — it is impossible to deny his genius in playing the weakest hand of cards with shrewdness and skill.
Mr Kim is often spoken of as a madman and, in many ways, North Korea is a ludicrous place. There is the quaintly ferocious Cold War rhetoric with its denunciations of the “imperialist aggressors”. There is the quasi-religious personality cult of the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il and his late father, “President” Kim Il Sung, the only head of state technically to remain in power after his death. But the Government knows what it is doing: from its position of isolation and siege, its actions during the past few years have been cool, rational and remarkably effective.
Mr Kim has one goal: the survival of himself and his regime. This he has achieved against all predictions. The country he inherited in 1994 was a product of the Cold War and the division of the Korean Peninsula into the communist North and the US-backed South. Under Russian and Chinese sponsorship the North had survived, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union it began a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral.
Without handouts of oil, food and cash from Moscow, many of its industries lurched to a halt. Floods washed away its fields and precipitated the deadly famine. By the late 1990s it seemed only a matter of time before Kim Jong Il went the same way as other Stalinist despots.
But he was protected by his most loathsome attribute — his brutal suppression of dissent. As far as one can tell from a country from which little information except propaganda es- capes, Mr Kim does not now have to stifle dissent, for there is no evidence that there is any. The cult of the Kims is the only version of reality to which ordinary North Koreans have access. The regime’s cruelty, including the vast network of labour camps containing tens of thousands of prisoners and their extended families, is not crazed sadism but a rational instrument of control.
In the absence of a functioning economy, Mr Kim has turned to crime. According to US government assessments many of the amphetamines sold in Japan and South Korea have been made in North Korean laboratories. Mr Kim is accused of counterfeiting high-quality dollar bills, all the time receiving foreign humanitarian aid.
The nuclear programme can be seen in the same way: not as an end in itself, but as a means of heading off the fate of every other Stalinist dictator. Repeatedly, North Korea has stepped back from its nuclear programme. In 1994 it did so after a deal with the Clinton Administration by which it froze its nuclear reactor in return for fuel oil and the promise of safe reactors incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. The
US never thought that Mr Kim would survive to see the reactors put in place, and fell behind on its commitments.
Then came President Bush with his “Axis of Evil”, of which North Korea was the third member, and his doctrine of pre-emptive attack. Mr Bush spoke of his personal “loathing” for Kim Jong Il, and the fate of Saddam Hussein offered an example of what would happen to those who had no way of deterring a US attack. North Korea’s conventional forces have been deteriorating for years. What other means did Mr Kim have of protecting himself but nuclear weapons? The Bush Administration accused the North Koreans of working on a separate uranium enrichment programme, and cut off the promised fuel oil. Mr Kim promptly walked out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reopened his plutonium reactor. The US, China, Russia, Japan, South and North Korea sat down repeatedly for inconclusive talks. At the fifth and last round, North Korea offered to abandon its nuclear programme in stages in return for security guarantees; the
US insisted full disarmament come first — a display of will that many today will regret.
Since then North Korea has escalated the situation faster than ever. In July it test-fired ballistic missiles despite a chorus of warnings not to do so. But the concrete consequences were few, and Mr Kim probably calculates that there is little that the world can do this time either, barring an unthinkably devastating war.
The rest of the world calls him a madman and tells him that he is making things worse for himself with every step. But he is alive, he is still in power, and that in itself is an astonishing success.
Caption: "Herro, world - Hold this!"
Exactly, several talking head today including Rush and Boortz both claimed that they are now eating bark in N Korea and trying their best to migrate into china and russia for work, beyond desperate!! The last generation of N Koreans have actually "shrunk" two inches from malnutrition! It is worse that Africa if you can believe that. LIL Kim needs to be taken out and soon.
***Repeatedly, North Korea has stepped back from its nuclear programme. In 1994 it did so after a deal with the Clinton Administration by which it froze its nuclear reactor in return for fuel oil and the promise of safe reactors incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium***
Where does this so-called journalist POS get his information from.
Does he really believe that Kim stopped his nuclear program and only took it up after Bush was elected?????
If he does he is the most stupid POS ever to hold a pen.
Just another Bush bashing emefer.
He has no people.
He has only slaves. Those with uniforms are fed. Those without starve.
As usual.
http://images.google.com/images?q=starving+north+koreans&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images Pics of starving norks.
I'm not sure the Peoples Republic would cotton to the Japanese and the Manchu-kwo stomping around on the Peninsula. That harkens back to some ugly days not so long ago, days that Mao and the Glorious Revolution exploited to their considerable advantage.
But I would certainly think the Russians and the South Koreans, as well as the "co-prosperity sphere" you mentioned, could bring some pressure to bear, possibly even with China's surreptitious support. It could be a good imperial move for China to annex North Korea, depose Kim, and bring a Khan-like peace to the region.
I don't know that Japan or Taiwan would care; North Korea in the hands of a raving lunatic like Kim is more dangerous than another province of China.
The Los Angeles Times did a long series of articles a few months ago about daily life in North Korea, based on reports from North Koreans who had escaped to China. It is one scary place.
Ghost Highways
North Korea is a land of vast motorways, some with as many as 10 lanes. But they are always empty. Very few people own cars. Pedestrians and cyclists zig-zag across them as they are so unused to traffic.
Digging for victory
On a frosty day, peasants cluster on a remote country lane to dig at the ice caking roads and streams so they can access the mud underneath. Mud is valuable as a fertiliser. Throughout the seasons, piles of mud and even human manure will be applied onto fields in order to make the crops grow better.
Red flags and banners bearing government propaganda slogans dot these fields. Their motto is: 'Dig for victory'. In this case they seem to be digging for sheer survival.
How long could the North Koreans last in a war in the economic shape they are in?
If the US, S. Korea, Japan and most other major powers just cut North Korea off completely it would just wither away and die.
China won't be able to send NK enough to save it.
We should pretty much just ignore North Korea. Monitoring their shipping to make sure they don't sell WMD and missiles, but other than that we should just cut em' off completely and ignore them. That means NO MORE humanitarian aid of any kind. No more heating oil, no more food aid, no more fertilizer. Just cut em' off and let em' rot away.
Oh, that makes sense. So if we insisted that they only be half-disarmed instead, this would have slowed things down how?
Be nice.
If it were up to me, I'd have a bunch of brainiacs researching a nice way to kill him (Deniability not an issue). Give me something with a 90% chance and relatively low collateral damage, and I'd go for it. If somebody gave me any cr@p I'd point out that, technically, we're still at war and that this was my notice that the ceasefire was over.
Dunno if that would save Seoul from the artillery parks just north of the parallel, though. Have to wonder who'll follow in his tracks and what they'll do be come the next (fill in the blank) Leader.
But government sponsored assinations are frowned upon. So Kim Jung Il is going to die in a nice palace of old age.
Hehehe, ya, I read about the North Koreans keeping the food aid trains. I wonder if that is really true?
China fears a unified Korea, but if everyone else cut North Korea off, China just wouldn't be able to prop them up on their own.
North Korea just has to be allowed to wither away and die. It is sad that the North Korean people will die in their millions, but at the end of the day, people are responsible for their own government. It is not my problem that, regardless of how brainwashed they may be, the North Korean people never rose against their Juche masters.
We should have marched to the Yalu in 1951.
After he dies, that is when his real punishment will begin.
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