I’m Kim Jong Il, and I Approve This Message!
“South Koreans are well aware that if the GNP takes power, it will destroy North-South relations and leave them only with the calamity of nuclear war,” wrote the Rodong Shinmun, the North Korean Workers’ Party daily. “The GNP and their puppets stand to be destroyed.” The daily again denied the GNP’s charge that the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, in similar remarks on Jan. 4, was meddling in South Korea’s internal affairs.
Subtle stuff, this. If there’s a better example of nuclear blackmail out there, I don’t know what it is. Even the leftist ruling Party knows enough to question the value of this endorsement, particularly on the day it has made its decision to disband official. What better epitaph for its legacy of appeasement: they gave Kim Jong Il $7 billion in South Korean aid, which Kim used to build the bombs to threaten them with. No, in hindsight, it doesn’t seem to have done much to reduce tensions.