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Sunday, September 07, 2003
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NOTES ON THE HERMIT KINGDOM
If you can find a copy of last week's New Yorker, I highly recommed you pick it up for Phillip Gourevitch's article on North Korea (You'll note that this link is only an interview with the author. The New Yorker doesn't post its articles on the website. The bastards).
North Korea always has a way of making me feel nostalgic. Massive starvation, nuclear weapons, psychotic personality cults and a diminutive madman with an ill-advised haircut running it all. Does this remind anybody else of the Cold War? Well, the Cold War with a special twist.
We were all very lucky during the Cold War that the declared nuclear powers were all headed by strategic conservatives (as opposed to political conservatives, very big difference). Neither side would do anything that could provoke the other into a potentially nuclear escalation. The only exception was the Cuban Missile Crisis in which both sides over reacted in ways that very nearly smoked us all. Well, okay, not me, I was eight years away from being born. And since most of my readers are younger than I am, I guess not you either. Anyway, events balanced out. Shortly after the missile crisis, Nikita Kruschev was deposed by his own Politburo and we all know what happened to Jack Kennedy. These were the only two truly reckless leaders in the nearly fifty years of the Cold War.
Those were the good old days when only sane people had ballistic missiles.
Kim Jong Il is anything but sane.This man has starved some three million of his own people since his assumption of power in 1994. Technically, he's not in power though, his father still is. Kim Il Sung still holds the title "Leader For All Eternity". To place any strategic comfort in this political structure forces one to overlook the fact that Kim Il Sung has been dead for almost nine years. Did I mention that Kim Jong Il is nuts? Oh, I did. Good.
The mass starvation that consumes North Korea whole is happening for no other reason than ideological purity. International food aid is not being allowed into the country because the government will not allow inspectors in to verify that the food is going to the people as opposed to the military or the party elites. Inspectors would very quickly discover, and report, just how fucked up North Korea really is and Kim will never admit to the failure of his and his father's Stalinist ideology.
So, North Korea has no food but its gotta have something, right? Right! They've got weapons. A fuckload of weapons. You name the type of weapon, North Korea has 'em. Chemical weapons? Yup. Biological weapons? You betcha! Nuclear weapons
? Every wardrobe is incomplete without those. But how about a delivery system? Yeah, they've got that, too.
And they've also got nothing to lose either. These psychopaths having this kind of firepower is scary in the extreme. Should North Korea begin nuclear testing, you can bet your ass that South Korea and Japan will begin testing, too. Everybody remember how popular the Japanese were in Asia the last time they had any kind of military power? Yeah, so do they. This situation would leave everyone in Asia with nuclear weapons except Taiwan. But don't worry, Taiwan could develop a program in less than a year. This will of course, thrill China. Oh, and it's still an open question as to whether the United States is bound by a mutual defence treaty they signed with Taiwan in the 1950's. It'll be fun to find out though.
Maybe, I'm nuts but I figure that if your country is fucking broke but has stuff that people want to buy, you sell it. It's easier than a paper route. Paper routes demand that you get up really early in the morning. Besides, North Korea doesn't have any media worth reading. Now, if you have a shitload of nuclear devices in your country just gathering dust maybe you consider finding a buyer. I can think of an overly-tall zillonaire with "interesting" religious beliefs from Saudi Arabia who'd like one. Just one will do, really.
Starting to get an idea where I'm going with this?
I thought you did.
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