Kim Dae Jung: Neocons Made Up N. Korean Nuke Crisis

[Updated for your pleasure, and here’s one back at the Marmot, who has much more.]

It’s a ruthless totalitarian regime with a history of selling WMD’s to terrorist backers, and its state ideology revels in violence against America. And if the fact that they have a few nukes worries you, it’s obviously all in your head, says ex-South Korean Prez and Nobel prize winner Kim Dae Jung:

“How North Korea will do with its missiles and nuclear weapons… Those will be just children’s toys in front of the U.S.,” Kim was quoted as saying in the interview.

Hel-lo??????

Kim, whose landmark 2000 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il led to greater inter-Korean reconciliation,…

Stop this instant! Now here is a true whopper of journalistic malpractice. Reconciliation? Does that mean our troops can all come home, then? Is there less artillery pointed at South Korea? Have the two Koreas discussed reducing their conventional forces? Has North Korea ceased its cross-border provocations? Can people in the two Koreas freely visit, call, or write to each other? And what of conditions for the people of North Korea, whose “abuse” by their own rulers Kim does not see fit to mention? Is life for them less horrid? And finally, note the absence of any mention about how D.J. procured that prize, or what the money bought.

… also blamed Japan’s right-wing politicians, including Shinjo Abe, for exploiting North Korean issues to boost their popularity. “Shinjo Abe, certain to become Japan’s new prime minister, eventually garnered more popularity by attacking North Korea,” Kim said.

Imagine that … a politician exploiting conflicts with the neighbors to win a political advantage. But just for a moment, consider the idea that voters do expect certain things from their leaders, and those include making it safe for their little girls to walk home from badminton practice and fending off the missiles being flung toward their cities. No, I suppose I’m being unduly alarmist. It’s not as if we’re speaking of preserving the nation’s sacred territory from a foreign invasion, and even in such a case, it will be interesting to measure how maturely nations handle such matters when the political motives are different.

Now for the really predictable part:

Kim said America’s military industry has enjoyed windfall gains by selling their weapons to Japan and others throughout North Korea’s nuclear standoff.

Just for the record, this is the man whose life we saved three times: first — thanks to the Incheon landings — from a North Korean firing squad in Mokpo in 1950 (something his Nobel bio leaves out), once — thanks to the CIA and two prescient U.S. diplomats — from South Korean assassins, and once — thanks to a shadowy Carter-Reagan cabal — from a South Korean death sentence. It’s proof-positive that no good deed ever goes unpunished, because Kim would eventually buy himself a Nobel Prize with money his North Korean interlocutor would use to buy more weapons (instead of, say, more food). Those weapons are now pointed at the United States and South Korea, and Korea is no closer to reunification and less secure than in 1997.

The folks at Le Monde surely enjoyed baiting Kim into its fever swamp of neocon-hate, but as so often, this is a thin veneer to cover conspiratorial loathing of America itself. Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright also saw North Korean nukes as a problem that someone (else) had to deal with. Heck, Selig F’ing Harrison thinks North Korean nukes are a threat. Neocons all, then? Anything is possible, I suppose. When the near-bright pick up stubby words and stab them around ham-handedly for derisive impact, those words lose what little precision they had in the first place. If neoconsis americanus has such a broad taxonomy, Kim owes us more honesty about who he really hates here. It would make it easier for us to know who are friends are.