Too much of the coverage of death of Kim Jong Il focused on what it meant geopolitically, or specifically for the United States. Good news for Mitt Romney! Etc. Etc.
Reader E sends along a few articles that focus on the plight of the North Korean people, one about the outbursts of crying that North Korean media reported, and some surprisingly wise words from my least favorite editorial board:
Mr. Kim’s sole accomplishment — his survival in power — owes more to the self-interested calculations of surrounding powers than to his supposed wisdom. South Korea, a prosperous, capitalist democracy, feared the financial burden of a sudden merger with its impoverished northern half. China, with the most influence over the North Korean regime, feared a powerful, pro-Western, possibly nuclear-armed Korea extending to the Yalu River. The United States, in dealing with China, always had higher priorities on its negotiating card than the welfare of North Koreans.
o no one wanted a “collapse” of the regime, though nothing would have been more in the interest of North Koreans themselves. For in the percentage of his population that starved or went to the gulag, or both, under his command, Mr. Kim ranks with Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.
What’s important about the transition of power in North Korea is what it means for the North Korean people, who have been treated terribly by their government for far too long.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the United States should try or should have tried to topple the North Korean government, but the country should be seen as something other than a geopolitical chess piece.
Cat Lady
Which would make it the first country to be seen that way in the history of the US, if not the world. Also.
Mnemosyne
It would be nice if, say, China and the US could work in concert to help the two countries work towards unification, but it would be a hell of a lot harder than German unification was since North Korea is in such terrible shape.
And for the “But the US shouldn’t be the world’s policeman!” crowd, remember that we’re already on the scene. We’ve been there for over 60 years. It would be completely irresponsible for us to up and say, “Okay, see ya!” just when real peacekeeping and rebuilding help is needed most.
Zifnab
North Korea wasn’t a chess piece, it was an orphan in the hands of an abusive parent. China didn’t want to take care of the North Koreans. South Korea didn’t want to take care of the North Koreans. The US didn’t want to care for them either. That left Kim Jong Il, and his only job was to make sure none of the North Koreans tried to leave. North Korea was nothing more than a prison for the poor.
If the US really wanted to assist the citizens of North Korea, it would enable them to leave.
Brandon
All true, except your “do no harm” mantra. Those people need food and fuel oil for the winter, not empty slogans. But what comes when spring arrives? Looks like another case where finding an answer is more difficult than pointing out the problem. But that’s the essence of blogging in a nutshell.
Scribe9
“Foreign policy is not missionary work.” – Henry Kissinger
Redshift
Hmm. I wonder how the financial burden of supporting post-unification North Korea compares with the cost of our military presence there. I understand that it still would be difficult to achieve, and that NK is not the only reason we maintain forces there, but it does seem worth thinking about whether at least one leg of that three-legged support for maintaining the regime might be possible to weaken..
jibeaux
It’s hard for me to figure out what the hell we would have done with N. Korea even if they were highly important to us, though. Could we have worked harder with dissidents, such that they are, or tried to leverage the Chinese to leverage them, or tried to get in more humanitarian aid? I’m not saying the answer isn’t “yes”, it could very well be, it just seems that North Korea is sui generis, and if there’s an effective way of dealing with them, it doesn’t seem that anyone’s found it yet.
Mnemosyne
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if there are a bunch of under-the-radar negotiations going on right now between the US, China and both Koreas. If the country is really in such terrible shape, I can’t imagine the people who are next in line to take over seeing it as anything but a liability. It’s possible they would rather walk away and let someone else try to clean up Kim Jong-Il’s mess.
Say what you will about Fidel Castro, but at least his ego is (was?) tied up in making Cuba a “model country” with a high literacy rate, good healthcare, etc. in addition to being a murderous tyrant. Kim Jong-Il didn’t seem to be interested in anything but being the modern Caligula.
Roger Moore
@Zifnab:
Maybe the neighbors were most interested in keeping waves of poor, ignorant North Koreans from spilling across their borders, but that still ignores the issue of why they were poor and ignorant in the first place. If the North Korean government cared more about the welfare of its citizens and less about the ability of its leadership to lead lives of debauchery, the country would be in a hell of a lot better shape.
cmorenc
The most terrifying aspect of N. Korea to me isn’t even the grievous impoverishment of many of its citizens, bad though that is. Rather, it’s how enormously successful the regime has been at not just imposing a near-perfect example of an Orwellian nightmare all-pervasive totalitarian state upon its people, but of also succeeding in getting such a huge portion of its citizenry to actually buy into the whole thing wholeheartedly (e.g. all the people sobbing over Kim’s death). True, in this case the “wholeheartedness” is mostly the product of ruthless Pavlovian conditioning and near-complete isolation of the population from any outside or dissonant information, with part of this conditioning being trained paranoid xenophobia of anyone or any influence from outside North Korea. If you want to see a laboratory example of the destructive effects of the absence of free speech and thought, or of a free, independent press, or of free association, or of freedom to travel, it is North Korea.
Waldo
Axis of Evil? Check
Dictatorial regime? Check
WMDs? Check
Abundance of fossil fuels? Nope.
So close.
Brachiator
What a bunch of horse crap. Ignores the thinking of North Korea leaders and falsely assumes that China has more influence than it might actually have. The stuff about the US is just stupid.
I’m not sure of your point here. Are you suggesting that North Korea just should be ignored, as in Ron Paul style neutrality?
@Zifnab:
How? And go where?
jibeaux
@cmorenc: I think this is absolutely right. Of all the repressive, authoritarian, isolated dictatorships in the world, there’s just no competition. There is also a twist, though, in that it seems impossible to tell what sentiment is genuine and what is manufactured. Are people sobbing because they are sad or because in North Korea you had better do it, and make a damned good show of it too, when dear leader dies? How on earth can one tell?
Raven
@jibeaux: When I was in Korea I saw the local funerals where mourners are hired while the family walks in the procession in quiet dignity. I’m not sure that it relates to the outpouring of grief but it might.
Roger Moore
@jibeaux:
Or maybe they’re genuinely terrified that they’re going to be facing a civil war on top of all their other miseries. It’s well to remember that no matter how bad things are, there are always ways they could get worse, and the end of an era like this is one of the times that’s most likely to happen.
Amanda in the South Bay
I can’t quite see the point of having American forces stationed in a reunited Korea-presumably there’d be strong nationalistic sentiment against that, as well as (I’d hope) a desire amongst Americans to withdraw from the Peninsula if that were to happen.
Do people really want to see the 2nd ID stationed along the Amnok (ooh, see I know Korean!) and Tuman rivers to defend against a possible Chinese invasion (excluding Republicans and really asking you all).
No One of Consequence
@Waldo: I see what you did there. Well played.
People’s reaction is calculated over-reaction, more likely than not. Last time the Dear Leader passed in that country, people were severely punished for being insufficiently grief-stricken…
– NOoC
jibeaux
@Roger Moore:
Sure, that too. I guess to take cmorenc’s example, it’s like looking at a laboratory experiment of the purest form of lack of freedom, but many of the results are highly subjective and subject to interpretation. Of course, the interpretation is all going to be “is it terrible in X way or terrible in Y way?”
Raven
@Amanda in the South Bay: Ah-ya-ha-sayo.
eta We were never on the Imjin to “prevent” an invasion as much as we were to justify nukin the shit out of them if they over ran our sorry asses.
Brachiator
@jibeaux:
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar may come pretty close.
I never presume authenticity when a gun is pointed to someone’s head, or when their families can be thrown in a dungeon.
About as authentic as a Gitmo confession after water boarding.
THE
Christopher Hitchens on his visit to North Korea.
Raven
@Brachiator: Hell, they would be lucky to live in a dungeon.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Raven:
Well, yes, the nuclear armed tripwire for the North Koreans. My Korean is rusty (though my DLI degree is actually professionally framed and hanging up in my bedroom) which is bad, because I live in Santa Clara County, and there’s no shortage of Koreans here.
Maude
GW Bush used to talk about Pakistan as if were a toy.
jibeaux
@Brachiator: Right. But cmore’s point was basically that in an environment that extreme, people can be brainwashed for lack of a better term. So love of dear leader, or grief at his death, may be terrifyingly obtained but still in some sense “authentic.” And I guess my point is that we have no idea why they’re sobbing, and no way to find out.
jibeaux
@Brachiator: From the journalism I’ve read, Myanmar is pretty bad but N. Korea is in a class all its own. If nothing else, Myanmar has a very famous dissident. And people love her, and we know that they love her.
Villago Delenda Est
The ROK shouldn’t be afraid of having to absorb the North. True, it will not be easy, but the Germans have demonstrated that it can be done, even though it will take a decade or two to work itself out. Might be longer for the ROK, given how much more fucked up the North is relative to the South than the East was relative to the West, in Germany’s case.
The bright young entrepreneur in the South should see opportunity. The catch is, that’s not the culture of ROK capitalism, which is a lot more like the Japanese Zaibatsu model (they’re called Chaebols in the ROK).
Still, the suffering of the North Korean people certainly takes a back seat to everyone else’s concerns looking in. An afterthought.
Raven
@Amanda in the South Bay: I can still cuss like a mofo and sing our old song:
yobaseo
yobaseo
yobaseo idiwah
money upso
cuttachogi
to “Oh My Darlin. . .”
THE
North Korean Hell March — nice editing.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: The DMZ would make on incredible tourist destination now that it appears to have recovered from the Agent Orange we dumped on it.
Martin
@Amanda in the South Bay: No, I think there’d be strong sentiment to back a withdrawal from the area.
The only argument I can think of to keep troops there is the US as global cop. The reason we are often first into any conflict is that we’re almost always closest to the scene, simply by virtue that we have huge military deployments all over the world, and where we don’t have physical bases, we have airstations like Diego Garcia with very long reaches, and where we don’t have those, we have floating airstations off of every continent.
That’s not a desirable argument, IMO, but it’s not a completely invalid one. The cost of keeping 30,000 troops in Korea is not substantially higher than keeping 30,000 troops in Texas. If the cost of maintaining a presence of that size is the issue, then it’s not enough to simply redeploy them – it needs to be a reduction in size to get the cost savings. If that’s not going to happen, then we might as well keep them as close to as many things as our hosts will permit – and Korea is more useful than Texas.
There’s no force we could deploy to Korea to hold off a Chinese land invasion. Sea or air, no problem, but China’s military is nothing but boots on the ground. Pretending that can be stopped, or even slowed down, is folly. The only way to stop such an invasion is via airpower (and probably WMDs) and that can be done from all sorts of places. A bit like arguing that we need to keep that picket fence to protect the house from flooding. A picket fence is useful, but not for that.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Martin:
My cynical side says there’d be plenty of centrist-mushy left wing/pundit support for a continued presence in a united Korea.
Social outcast
So we had 8 years of Bush talking about axis of evil rhetoric and dying to pull the trigger on North Korea, but what he wanted all the time was to keep the North Korean government in power? This is all very much horseshit.
Raven
@Social outcast: I’m not sure that was “all” he wanted.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Social outcast:
Well, no one wants North Korea collapsing into anarchy with WMD lying around the country. Everyone wants the smoothest possible transition into a reunified Korea that doesn’t involve (at worst) DPRK nukes being used and the PLA risking a face off with the ROK/USFK.
Basically the plan is to do what we should’ve done with Iraq-use back door diplomacy and arm twisting to hopefully reunite Korea with the minimum amount of cost (but its going to dwarf German reunification) and bloodshed.
Suffern ACE
@Redshift: At some point the trading permanent peace on the Korean Penninsula for Taiwan became a bit ridiculous to ask. China doesn’t want them. It wants the U.S. to leave and it wants something else as well. It really is odd how relatively short lived the Japanese Empire was and how long it has taken to rearrange it’s colonies in a manner acceptable to everyone.
Raven
@Amanda in the South Bay: Our local Korea expert, Dr Han Park, is of the mind that the real power resides with the party and military and not much will change unless we dick around and light a fire.
Raven
@Suffern ACE: Everything is relatively short when compared with Asia.
moderateindy
@cmorenc:
Yes It is truly amazing. I saw a documentary on North Korea a couple years ago, and it was fairly stunning just how isolated their population was from actual reality. I don’t know if there was something akin to VOA being broadcast, though it seemed like the country was so poor that few even had radios to hear it.
What I found stunning in the documentary was how many North Koreans swore that they had relatives that were killed by Americans in the most heinous of methods. The most popular one being women that were killed and subsequently had their unborn fetuses cut from the pregnant woman’s belly. Now, I have no illusions about just how ugly soldiers act during wartime, but this particular story seemed truly pervasive in their culture. So pervasive that it seemed not only implausible, but that direct action had been taken to propagate the story. I sure am glad that such a thing would never happen here. (and equally sad that it is so hard to express obvious sarcasm when writing online)
El Cid
I’d be pretty careful to throw around phrases about how a “collapse” might be good for the North Korean people. A regime “collapse” in which there’s some nice but imperfect transition to something else might be what someone has in mind — but a chaotic collapse is very likely to make things worse. And I mean “worse” from the point of view of a million or so people likely having died from famine under these bastards. Yes, it really is possible for horrible situations to get worse.
ericblair
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I think cost is going to be an afterthought, compared to integrating a population that are pretty literally insane. What are these people going to do when one day their hated enemies are now their government, and they’re being told and shown that everything they believed was bullshit? I dunno, but I don’t want to be around when it happens and I don’t remember any historical parallel.
Amanda in the South Bay
@ericblair:
Well, it depends on just how brainwashed the mass of North Koreans are.
Mike in NC
@Raven:
Years ago I attended the dedication of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in DC. One of the vehicles in the parade carried the banner “Survivors of Task Force Smith”, the poor SOBs on Occupation duty in Japan who were hurried over to Korea and thrown in the path of the advancing NK army in 1950. They were nicknamed “The Speed Bump”.
Raven
@Mike in NC: Yea and they were seriously fucked.
Raven
@ericblair: 3 hots and a cot can make a big impression on a person who is starving.
tavella
@Raven:
3 hots and a cot can make a big impression on a person who is starving.
I wouldn’t count on it. The North Koreans who have defected to the South often don’t do very well, and a surprising number of them are nostalgic for the North. Sometimes to the point of returning! And these are the people who were knowledgeable and motivated enough to leave. Sometimes even the successful ones are nostalgic — I can remember a defector quoted in the New Yorker, who defected with her mother. Her mother had actually done pretty well,starting a business, but *still* talked about how pure and noble North Korea was in comparison to the South.
It’s an incomparably broken country and destroyed people — as someone pointed, it’s not just brainwashing, in a lot of cases it’s actual brain damage from generations of malnutrition.
Ruckus
@ericblair:
I don’t want to be around when it happens and I don’t remember any historical parallel.
Wouldn’t be historical but what happens if our conservatives wake up one day and find that faux news and all it’s supported politicians are the same bullshit?
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Raven: Han Shik Park! Man, what a WONDERFUL professor he was! And if there ever was someone who knew what he was talking about with regard to North Korea, it is him.
Chuck Butcher
Why should it be seen as something other than what it is determined to be? NK exists because it is exactly that and it has no reason why it would want to do something different.
It is damned sad that it is what it is, but that doesn’t change the fact that the people running it want exactly that and will have exactly that and damn the consequences.
Ruckus
@tavella:
Back in the early to mid 80’s I knew 2 Russians living in LA. One owned his own business and enjoyed his life. The other was working as a well paid truck mechanic and wanted to go back to Russia. The business owner asked him if he was mentally deficient. He stated that where else could an immigrant do as well as he was. He owned a home and cars and a thriving business. In Russia he would have had to be a corrupt politician (but I repeat myself) to come close to what he had. And the mechanic would, if he was lucky have a small 1 bedroom flat to share with 2 or 3 generations, never own a car nor much of anything else.
The nostalgia is homesickness. Better the devil you know.
Not Sure
No no no NO! It’s not Mitt Romney!. It’s Mitt Romney?.
nalbar
http://agonist.org/numerian/20111220/look_carefully_at_those_north_koreans_mourning_the_death_of_kim_jong_il_we_could_be_them_someday
Long, but says it all.
.
Raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): I know and I listen to people who know NOTHING go on and on and on about it.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@Raven: The man has walked the walk. There aren’t half a dozen people in the country who understand North Korea better than Dr. Park, and I don’t think there’s anyone who approaches the subject with more genuine heart and empathy/sympathy. To think that clueless fucks like Bill Kristol are listened to on the subject and Han Park isn’t …
Han Park, Martin Hillenbrand, Chuck Bullock … I came THIS CLOSE to majoring in political science because of those three men. I still regret it sometimes, though I still don’t know what I’d have done with such a degree.
toujoursdan
@Villago Delenda Est:
I was in North Korea in August, and may go back next September.
My photos here
My video here
…and would have to disagree with this. There are a few key differences between the Germanys and the Koreas.
East Germany always had access to western radio and a significant percentage of them tuned into the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, RIAS in Berlin, etc. and heard a different perspective. Most of East Germany even had access to western TV which which influenced music, fashion and thinking throughout the country. West Germans were almost always allowed to visit relatives in the east and there was always an exchange of information. East Germans understood how the west worked and knew exactly what was going on across the Iron Curtain.
North Korea is completely cut off from the rest of the world. Any radio or TV sold in the country is hard-wired so that it can only be tuned to the government stations. Almost everyone is hooked up to “wired radio”, which is a system of loudspeakers piped into each residence which channels state-approved news and commentary (which can be turned down, but never off.) Except for diplomats and the elite, North Koreans have no access to any other alternative viewpoint. There is very little exchange of relatives and citizens across the DMZ. There is some illicit trade in goods (and DVDs) from China, but that is very small. There is an intranet in North Korea, but no internet. People can go to cybercafés but can only bring up approved webpages from inside the country. The information vacuum is far greater in North Korea than it ever was in East Germany.
They have also been taught from birth that Koreans are the most noble and purist race on earth, therefore must be guarded from the evil corrupt world by the Kim dynasty, which is all encompassing in doctrine and worship. Even if the dynasty collapsed, there will still be about 23 million cult members that will have to go through a deprogramming every bit as comprehensive as a Jim Jones’ follower. East Germany was never a theocracy. North Korea is.
They’ve also had a non-functioning economy since the end of the 1980s when the Soviet Union fell and cut off their supply of cheap oil. There is a tiny high-tech sector in the DPRK, but most North Koreans are going to be unskilled, unproductive and unable to compete on a world stage. East Germany’s economy was always functioning, even if it was inefficient.
Unification with South Korea would cripple the South Korean economy for decades. North Korea’s population is 1/2 that of South Korea and their GDP per capita is 1/200 of the South. East Germany’s population was 1/4th that of West Germany and their GDP per capita was 1/4th of the west at unification there. It took Germany 10 years (?) of transfer payments to bring East Germany to an economic level compatible to the west (with much resentment from westerners). The economic gap is so much wider in the Koreas and South Korea as a smaller economy and is somewhat poorer with fewer resources to draw on than West Germany.
Add to that the social integration of a population that has been brainwashed for 60 years. After German reunification, the East Germans had to cope with stereotyping and discrimination from the west – yet again, at least had an awareness of what the west was like, and there was nothing like the North Korean personality cult.
The North Koreans will be stigmatized to a far worse degree than the Ossies. They are going to have no understanding of capitalist culture and after 60 years of totalitarianism and Kim Il-Sung worship, their social norms are unique. Sometimes I felt like I was having a conversation with an alien from another planet when I was there.
I can’t imagine how alienated Northern citizens are going to be in a reunified Korea. and how they would express themselves in the polling station (or on the streets), if sidelined in the political process (which would be completely foreign to them) and subject to angry Southern voters whose taxes would be used to support Northern “freeloaders”.
My hope for the DPRK was a Chinese-style evolution rather than a collapse and merger. It’s going to take decades to repair the damage that has been done there. I can’t think of any other scenario that wouldn’t create even more damage.
toujoursdan
Please take my post out of moderation. TY.
Chris
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Well, before I answered that, I’d want to see what the Koreans had to say about it. It’s possible that they’d want us to keep troops there out of fear of China, yes. And in principle I don’t mind doing what we did in Europe after World War Two and leaving troops behind to help deter a heavyweight, but if the locals want us gone – like, say, France in the 1960s – then we’re gone.
Course, if Korea decides to keep the nukes the North developed, they could probably deter any potential enemies all by themselves. That would piss off the neighbors, though, especially Japan.
Chris
@tavella:
@Ruckus:
Similar phenomenon in Germany, called “Ostalgie” over there, with people who grew up in now-defunct East Germany missing the days of the past.
Raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy): I was a language requirement away from and undergrad in poli-sci after I broke my back and went back to school at Illinois in the 70’s. My DVR counselor convinced me it was worthless so I bailed. We had Roger Kanet at Illinois. He spent the summers “behind the Iron Curtain” before many others could. His “Comparative Communist Systems in Europe” was an amazing course and taught me I didn’t know shit.
PeakVT
@toujoursdan: Thanks for the comment and images.
Chris
@toujoursdan:
Hell of a post, TJ, thanks for it! You win the thread.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
And if I had $200k lying around, I could buy a Ferrari.
As long as North Korea has the ability to take Seoul off the map in five minutes, our and the South Koreans’ top priority is going to be nuclear deterrence. Everything else is secondary. I don’t have to like it, and neither do you, but it is what it is, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.
Raven
@burnspbesq: And that’s the name of that tune. . .
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
It would be nice. But, I’m guessing China is not going to be at the vanguard of redrawing the map to share a common border with the US-friendly government in Seoul.
eemom
Thanks to DougJ for posting this, and thanks to everyone else for the discussion.
North Korea has been a focus of horror for me since a WaPo article about a defector whose family was left behind prompted me to start reading about the concentration camps. Nazi Germany is alive and well in that hellhole — and the people outside the camps don’t fare much better.
Thus I was really appalled yesterday to see Kim Jong-Il — um, brutal, ruthless dictator? — eulogized everywhere in the so-called free world with adjectives like “enigmatic” and “mercurial” — and typical starfucker chatter about the “succession” of his son. Did y’all know he was educated in SWITZERLAND?
Sick fucks.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Chris:
1. That would involve height of the Cold War levels of spending on an Army to be able to go toe to toe with the Chinese. Can’t see that as being popular. The elements of the 2ID that are there now aren’t nearly enough.
2. The ROK would be stupid to pursue a nuclear weapons program via the North. Better to develop a weapon using their much more advanced tech base. Anyways, it’d piss off China needlessly and antagonize the US, possibly. Afterall, we stopped Taiwan from going nuclear, didn’t we?
toujoursdan
A very comprehensive and highly readable book is Andrei Lankov’s book North of the DMZ: Essays in Daily Life in North Korea
It discusses everything from the whys of the Kim Il Sung badges everyone must wear, to the forced ranking of every member of North Korean society based on class background (there are 30 ranks – those who starved in the famine were in the lowest ranks), to how love and marriage work in the DPRK.
Lankov was a former Soviet exchange professor to the DPRK in the 1980s and is very familiar with the nuances of communism, so he had good insight into how their society works.
Raven
It’s worth revisiting Charles “Robert” Jenkins,
Chris
@Amanda in the South Bay:
From what I’ve heard, the 2ID isn’t even enough to handle the NorKors, let alone what’s to their north. They’re there as a “tripwire,” I think the popular term is, people who’re there so that if the Reds (either ones) invade South Korea, they’ll have to risk shooting at American troops and provoking an American reaction.
The physical embodiment of a defense guarantee, IOW.
Sophist
@Social Outcast:
No, actually, we didn’t. Putting North Korea in the Axis of Evil was never anything but a figleaf so they could pretend it wasn’t all about oil/showing up daddy. The DPRK was an important part of the Axis like Poland was a major ally in the invasion of Iraq.
toujoursdan
@Raven:
There is another American soldier who defected there in the 1960s, still lives there and is a convert and apologist for the regime. He often plays the ugly American in North Korean movies and is considered a moviestar there.
Joe Dresnok: An American In North Korea
His story is documented in the BBC documentary (available on Netflix): “Crossing the Line”
Raven
@Chris: @Chris: Uh, “handle” the North Koreans?
No shit, one American Division can’t handle a million person force?
carpeduum
Seen an interesting documentary on N. Korea from one of the few journalists allowed to go in there.
The entire population is brainwashed. N. Korea is an example of what the US would be like if the only channel anyone got was Faux Noise.
Raven
@toujoursdan: Jenkins was in the films as well. He’s one dumb fuck.
toujoursdan
@Raven:
Probably not one division, but the North Korean Army is mostly an unpaid labour force. Most are kids who have never touched a gun (because there aren’t enough) and do grunt work harvesting crops and fixing infrastructure. The ones I saw in Pyongyang were often construction workers putting up high rise apartments.
I wouldn’t start a war with them because Seoul is only 60km from the DMZ and the whole area has a very high population density, but suspect that whatever discipline that existed in the Korean People’s Army has broken down somewhat and that their equipment is in very poor shape.
Amanda in the South Bay
@toujoursdan:
Even the soldiers who are always pictured guarding the JSA (who you’d think are the cream of the crop) look pretty malnourished.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Raven:
I remember people saying that having to live in North Korea was punishment enough for his deserting.
toujoursdan
@Raven:
Well, he’s treated like a king and given prime accommodations and rations in exchange for acting in a few movie jobs and teaching a few English language classes to university kids, which is probably better than a vet with no skills would be treated once back in the States (where too many end up on the streets.)
It certainly is a faustian bargain though.
Murakami
From the accounts I’ve read, the population aren’t brainwashed. They didn’t like dear leader, they weren’t happy in their stifling society. Due to a lack of outside information, they aren’t exactly sure how to fix things, but they knew something is terribly wrong. Due to swift and unrelenting punishment involving entire families, citizens will act the part in public but most of them know it’s all bullshit.
All the propaganda in the world doesn’t hide the famines, the children in the streets dead of hunger, the fact that your job still issues ration coupons which never ever get you anything. And all the turgid speeches and military parades in the world can’t hide the gross incompetence and injustice created by the currency reevaluation which wiped out what little savings the average citizen had.
They’re not stupid people. They are, currently, a cowed population. Kim Jong-il used to dream of his own people rising up to stone him. I think, one day, this will prove to be a prophetic dream.
As a reference, try NK People Speak, a series of interviews from 2011 with North Koreans newly arrived in China.
Raven
@toujoursdan: It’s not unheard of for the Chinese and NK’s to assault a position with a massive force where only the first wave has weapons.
Raven
@toujoursdan: Jenkins has been stateside since 2005.
toujoursdan
@Raven: I’m talking about James Dresnok, not Charles “Robert” Jenkins.
Raven
@toujoursdan: Well, since your response was to a post where I had “Jenkins” I was sort of thinking that’s who you meant.
When were you in NK?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Raven: Actually, I believe he lives in Japan, with his wife, who was kidnapped by the North Koreans.
Raven
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Aha, I see that now.
toujoursdan
@Raven: The Chinese have no interest in starting a war with South Korea. The South has significant investment in China (and vice versa) for years and diplomatic relations since the 1990s.
And I’ll have to go back and look for the citation but one of the Wikileaks documents shows that China is resigned to a unified Korea under a Southern government, but they will insist that it be demilitarized. The government there cares far more about peace and order than ideology.
Raven
@toujoursdan: I don’t doubt that at all.
toujoursdan
@Raven: Yours was in response to my remark about Dresnok, so I assumed you really meant him. Looks like a miscommunication. No biggie.
Anyway, I was in North Korea in late August 2011. I went on a tour with Koryo Tours which is a Beijing based tour company started by British expats that specialize in taking westerners to the DPRK.
I may return in September for the National Day Long Tour. Once you go, there is something about the place that gets under your skin and you want to see more. Maybe they beamed thoughts into our heads or something. Most of the people who went with me want to return as well. It’s a very very strange place.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@toujoursdan: Did you visit the famous fifth floor of the Yanggakdo Hotel?
Raven
@toujoursdan: I spent 13 months in South Korea in 67-68. We were about 2 miles south of the Imjin. It was a lot more like the North then in the sense that it was still pretty primitive north of the Han.
toujoursdan
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Yeah, turned out to be a maintenance floor. (*disappointed*)
carpeduum
The only people dumb enough to start a war with a military dictatorship is a Republican led US Gov’t.
LosGatosCA
What could the US do about North Korea? Using the Fidel Castro model doesn’t seem to have been a workable option. Because it didn’t even work in Cuba.
I blame the North Korean people themselves. Some societies progress despite adversity (South Korea), some fail despite every advantage (Argentina), and some just never seem to try (North Korea, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan large swaths of Africa).
agorabum
@moderateindy: The North Koreans are, unfortunately, a rather nasty bunch, and not just the leaders. They are that way because of more than a half a century of propaganda and indoctrination, but it means we wouldn’t be “greeted as liberators.” For the most part, they do think the US is evil, and they are rather racist to boot and see Americans as a mongrel people. They even disparage South Koreans for being more accepting of foreigners and occasionally marrying GIs. Most defectors to the South still are highly dismissive of Americans.
As for the US doing anything to topple the regime, if anyone tried Seoul would be leveled (it’s within artillery range of the border).
The prophet Nostradumbass
@LosGatosCA:
You are, in short, a monster. I’m sure Henry Kissinger would nod in approval.
@agorabum: as are you.
agorabum
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I have no idea why you think the North Korean people are clamoring for American liberation. They are a people scarred by 60+ years in a totalitarian, highly nationalist society. I think South Korea and China can help them with a transition, but the US can’t do much to help, at least not at first. You should be realistic about these huge problems: culture and history matter.
Not a lot of Vaclev Havels waiting in the wings in NK. His kind have been killed in the mines a long time ago.
Ian
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Well, yes, I want to see the U.S. in alliance with Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and the Phillipines against China. Not for war, but for trade and diplomacy reasons.