N. Korea Marks Terror De-Listing By Threatening to Turn Seoul into ‘Debris.’

Never mind North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  any government that delivers messages like these should be listed as a specially designated terrorist group:

“We clarify our stand that should the South Korean puppet authorities continue scattering leaflets and conducting a smear campaign with sheer fabrications, our army will take a resolute practical action as we have already warned,” the official KCNA news agency quoted the military spokesman as  saying.

At a rare round of military talks on Monday, North Korea complained about the leaflets while South Korean activists sent a new batch of 100,000, despite warnings from Seoul not to do  so.

“The puppet authorities had better bear in mind that the advanced pre-emptive strike of our own style will reduce everything opposed to the nation and reunification to debris, not just setting them on fire,” the spokesman  said.

South Korean groups have been sending the leaflets into the North for years. Analysts said the recent wave appeared to have touched a nerve because they mentioned a taboo subject in the North — the health of leader Kim  Jong-il.  [Reuters, Jack Kim]

This is how North Korea responds to mere words.  In the wake of America’s extorted de-listing of North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism, Let’s compare this, or any of those “sea of fire” threats the North regularly levies at Seoul or Tokyo, to how the laws of the United States define “international terrorism:”

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that … (B) appear to be intended – (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.  [United States Code, Title 18, Section 2331(1)]

Someone tell me how I’m off base here.  And if any doubt remains that terrorism works, ironically, it’s South Korean President Lee Myung Bak who’s helping to remove it, and he does so to adhere to a predecessor’s agreement to censor speech that “defames” the North.  South Korean officials now suggest that this agreement, which is reasonably interpreted to apply to actions by the respective states, will now be interpreted broadly enough to censor private expression:

The South Korean government announced today regarding the sending of anti-Kim Jong Il leaflets into North Korea by non-governmental organizations that it will take “measures according to the law and principles (of inter-Korean agreements). North Korea repeatedly brought up the issue during South-North military working-level talks yesterday.  [….]

In the Inter-Korean Basic Agreement of 1991, the South and the North agreed not to slander or defame each other, and during the summit talks of 2004 both the South and the North agreed to halt all propaganda activities such as anti-regime broadcasting, placing defamatory placards or dropping leaflets near the DMZ from the 15th June that year.

As spokesperson Kim put it, “According to the laws and principles of the agreements, necessary measures will be taken against these organizations in the private sector, after requesting that they cooperate”. The government has twice requested the private sector to control itself, but this is the first time the term “necessary measures” has been used.  [Daily NK]

But Lee is doing the “practical” thing, of course.  And in Lee’s case, practicality has never been restrained by any great love of free expression.  Just as I condemned Lee for censoring the expression of ideas I despised, I condemn his imminent censorship of ideas and methods I emphatically endorse.  A society where both cannot coexist isn’t really free.
But the “practical” argument always goes this way:  why must mature adults tease the armed whooping loonies with the [circle one:  leaflets, cartoons of their prophet, uncensored newspapers]?  There’s no denying the practicality of an argument that defers the threat of violence, and so the practical argument is that we should accede to the violent threats of thugs to censor what we say today — or to enforce the unnatural containment of free expression within our own borders — until the next terrorist threat comes tomorrow.

It’s not hard to see how a society that listens to such “practical” advice eventually enslaves itself.  I doubt that it’s mere coincidence that in Canada, the state had no visible interest in the preemptive censorship of some of its most prominent publications and writers before international terrorists began operating inside Canada.  If this is not Canada’s surrender to terrorism in a direct sense, there certainly is a strong temporal correlation between 9/11 and Canada’s new-found sensitivity to words and ideas that offend radical Muslims.

We have also seen that the North’s proxies — often assisted by a leftist government that mixed easily with them — are willing to censor ideas within South Korea itself; to list a few examples, the selective taxation and governmental agitation used against opposition media, the threats against Radio Free North Korea, the blocking of a U.S. Ambassador from attending a media interview, attacks on non-violent human rights activists and publishers, and the alleged attempt to shut down “Yoduk Story.

In some of these cases, it wasn’t clear what, if any, connection the thugs had to the South Korean government.  The identity of the actors is ancillary to the point.  The point here is that North Korea respects no borders but its own, and that there is no political or military boundary at which North Korea will cease to demand the enforcement of its own rules of censorship except the limits of what it thinks it can get away with.  But what else should we expect of a regime that calls the very idea of free expression “nonsense?“