Great. Now Even the North Koreans Are Doing the Jihad Thing.

I had meant to blog about North Korea’s simultaneous acceptance of South Korean food aid just as it declared a “holy war” against South Korea, but a nasty intestinal virus had other plans for the entire family for the last few days (and how was your weekend?). Still, I can’t less this pass without comment.

For those of you who hadn’t heard, North Korea’s latest fit was over South Korean contingency planning for regime collapse in the North. Planning was suspended for several years under Roh Moo Hyun’s administration, which prioritized appeasing the unappeasable North Koreans over planning for the inevitable. To me, the South’s refusal to update contingency planning was just one more reason to ask whether there was any basis for the alliance at all. President Lee, for now, seems to have restored the contingency planning and with it, some of that basis. My preference would still be to withdraw the ground component of USFK, but at some point, we’ll need the logistical infrastructure to move a lot of equipment and manpower — preferably 99% of it South Korean — into North Korea in a hurry.

This isn’t the first time since Lee’s inauguration that South Korea’s updating of its regime collapse contingency plans have hit the South Korean press, but this time, the North Koreans decided to freak. I can’t help thinking that this reflects their own perception of the self-inflicted fragility of their system.

Oh, and all of this comes on the same day the North accepted $3.5 million worth of corn from the taxpayers of South Korea. Normally, the North pretends that it’s doing the South a favor to accept food aid, so it’s just possible that they really, really need the food. The gift of this food is mixed. On one hand, despite an official’s talk of assuring “transparency of distribution,” there are no specifics on how the South will address the diversion problem. Without such long-term controls as nutritional surveys, we can expect much of the aid to be diverted to the military or sold by corrupt officials on whatever remains of the black market. There is also another, more favorable shift here. For years, human rights and aid groups had called on the South to deliver corn to the North instead of rice. In North Korea, rice is the food of the elite; corn is the food of the poor. Corn also costs less, so the same money spent on corn feeds more people.

Did they really say “holy war?” That depends on whose translation you go by. The Joongang Ilbo used those words, but this is one of those exceptional cases in which I’ll call KCNA the authoritative source:

Once the reckless provocative plan of the south Korean authorities to bring down the supreme headquarters of our revolution and the dignified socialist system is completed and put into practice, there will start a sacred nationwide retaliatory battle to blow up the stronghold of the south Korean authorities including “Chongwadae” that have led the drafting of the plan and backed it.

This battle will be a nationwide and all-out just struggle with all the fellow countrymen in the north and the south and abroad including our revolutionary armed forces. [KCNA]

President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss.

Oh, and the North Koreans also demanded that South Korea abolish the National Intelligence Service and the Unification Ministry, which just goes to show that even those of us who call for the violent overthrow of the North Korean government can still find common ground with it.