Kim Jong Il Glimpses His ‘Pleasure Squad’ in the Afterlife
The Korea Economic Institute was kind enough to send me what turned out to be one of the most interesting and readable papers I’ve ever read on North Korea — a psychological study of Kim Jong Il. The bad news is that KEI has not released the full text yet, but the good news is that if you follow the previous link, the author will participate in a public discussion of his paper at the National War College on December 12th.
This is an interesting subject to me. My previous belief that Kim Jong Il was a rational actor, at least as we understand that term, was severely shaken last summer, and I’ve speculated about just what demons are doing cartwheels inside that bulbous cranium of his. The study notes several traumatic events that may have scarred Kim Jong Il in his early life and deprived him of human empathy, including the death of his mother and the drowning of his little brother right in front of him, possibly because Kim Jong Il pushed him under. Those things are terrible enough, but I nominate this as the single most hideous, shocking, and traumatizing event of Kim Jong Il’s life:
The same official reported that Kim and other North Korean officials also characterized Madeleine Albright’s Pyongyang visit in oddly emotional terms. “Throughout the reception,” one North Korean official insisted, “she kept holding [Kim Jongil’s] hand,” and before the reception she had “changed the brooch on her dress–put on a miniature heart instead of the American flag.Â
The author, Michael Mazarr, lets me down by failing to diagnose Ms. Albright’s delusions about just what her post-feminine wiles bring to the diplomatic table. Later, Mazarr gets in over his head when he attempts to turn a very plausible diagnosis of Kim Jong Il into a prescription for policies that have proven less plausible when tried. I do agree with Mazarr that Kim Jong Il is a survivor to a much greater degree than he is an ideologue, and that Kim’s allegiances are flexible. As for the potential to transform Kim Jong Il from a threat to a cozy pal with benefits, I’d suggest you ask a true expert to recite his list of successes.