Why Is Everyone in America So Down on Kim Jong-Il?

That question requires the unique combination of self-delusion and chutzpah unique to Oh My News. It’s a long, rambling, illogical piece, full of shallow pretensions at understanding America (and for that matter, North Korea). In the process, it touches on everything from Survivor to South Park, without really ever addressing the perfectly good reasons that have united the most polarized American electorate ever in universal contempt for the Dear Leader.

By the end of Mr. Kang’s piece, you will be irrebuttably convinced that South Korea is an alternative universe.

Here is my response:

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If you believe evil exists, then surely North Korea epitomizes it by gassing entire families as a dry run for annihilating Seoul. Don’t take it from me. Watch this video by that (cue irony here) notorious U.S. puppet and neocon mouthpiece known as the BBC. Or perhaps it’s best embodied by using food as a weapon against starving people, forcing them to resort to cannibalism, and starving millions of them while the Dear Leader sips imported cognac, drives a Benz, and blows the national budget on MiGs and nukes. Or by smothering every atom of individual thought under an interlocking blanket of mutual suspicion, snitching, and terror–all enforcing the state’s necessary fictions. Evil? I’d say that pretty much encapsulates it.

Ah, but such direct language isn’t appropriate in the polite company of diplomats. We must avoid giving offence at all costs: “Excuse me, Mr. Ribbentrop, would you kindly ask Reichsfuhrer Himmler remove the Death’s Head Division from the boulevards of our capital city?” Of course, South Korea’s position is much less daring than even that. It would be too brazen to ask the Dear Leader to pretty please, stop the murder, or let a few inspectors have the run of Camp 22 or Camp 51 long enough to debunk those horrible rumors.

Mr. Kang argues (meekly) that he just isn’t sure if all the reports about the atrocities in North Korea are true–which is a substitute, of sorts, for dealing with the reports’ moral implications, while taking cover behind North Korea’s own refusal to allow the Red Cross or anyone else to inspect the camps. Would any of those who share his views be willing to watch that video and judge the evidence for themselves before dismissing it? I didn’t think so.

How very “progressive” of you.

Finally, I can’t let Mr. Kang’s utter misunderstanding of America’s concern about North Korea pass without comment. Perhaps he has woven himself into a cocoon of sorts by hanging out at too many of those progressive gatherings. Mr. Kang, you really ought to get out more. Fact is, plenty of ex-allies, including South Korea, have done far more to offend American sensibilities than the “sea of fire” and “human scum” blather we hear from the Rodong Sinmun. In the post-9/11 world, you have to do better than that. We’ve been Iran’s “Great Satan” for a quarter century now. The abuse and vituperation hit harder when they come from our “friends.” That’s probably why we are increasingly saying “you betcha” to those chants of “yankee go home.” Fine with us, and please move away from the doorway, Mr. Roh and Chancellor Schroeder. So much for the myth of America’s masses lusting for a Christian empire. Last one out of Yongsan, turn out the lights.

And what’s this whole Christian empire thing, by the way? I was on the receiving end of more entreaties of Christian salvation in the Seoul subway alone than in twenty-odd years as (damn near) the only Jewish kid in South Dakota. Sure, the persecution of North Korean Christians offends me, but this isn’t about making North Korea safe for Christianity. It’s about making North Korea safe for all forms of freedom of conscience.

Fury? Our fury is all currently occupied by the people who are beheading our reconstruction workers and journalists, flying our airplanes into our buildings, shooting Russian kids in the back, etc. What the “Team America” reference really proves is (1) for better or worse, we can’t take Kim Jong-Il and his ageing-drag-queen hairdo seriously enough to hate him, and (2) Mr. Kang has no sense of humor whatsoever, because the “Team America” treatment of the Dear Leader actually sounds pretty funny, no matter how serious the underlying issues.

In my two years of pestering various members of Congress to pass the NK Human Rights, none of my fellow travellers–young Korean-Americans, progressives, neocons, evangelical Christians, or Jews like myself with a lingering distaste for concentration camps–ever uttered one lone syllable of fury toward the people of North Korea. I hardly think fury or religious fanaticsm is motivating moderates like Senator Richard Lugar, needless to say non-Christians like Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Museum of Tolerance or Rep. Tom Lantos. What we all share is compassion for the suffering of the North Korean people, and an earnest desire to take up the moral responsibility that South Korea has shirked. That’s saying a lot for a country that’s probably never been so ideologically divided.

I will restate what ought to be obvious to all but the clinically paranoid: hardly anyone across America’s political spectrum has the slightest desire to invade North Korea with anything but the same information that you and I consider it our God-given right to exchange. If that informs the North Korean people of the extent to which they have been been used and lied to, so much the better. If the North Korean people then opt to withdraw from Kim Jong Il what Thomas Jefferson called “the consent of the governed,” I’d be happy for them. I’d even offer to help light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks. I’m all for regime change, in fact, if it’s done by North Koreans (and I’m willing to predict here that it will be). As for the effect on the KOSPI or KOSDAQ, I’m not having nightmares about it.

My nightmares are about this and this (from those other neocon mouthpieces, the Guardian and the International Herald Tribune).

Giving the North Koreans back the freedom to think, listen, speak, and eat seems a damn sight more compassionate than the Uri vision for North Korea, which seems to consist of sewing Samsung logos onto the prison garb in the North Korean gulags. Do I hear another bid from LG on the contents of Camp 51? North Koreans deserve better than being sentenced to lives of corporate slavery in places like the Kaesong Industrial Park. Never have capitalism, globalism, or nationalism stooped lower. Is this how brothers treat each other–by conspiring to keep them ignorant, suffering, and exploited?

May God and the North Korean people forgive you, Mr. Kang.