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So Christine Ahn Was Right After All: Kaesong Really Has Brought the Koreas Together!

Here is our latest edition of the Kaesong Death Watch:

Last week, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met with two former presidents, Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Young-sam, who reportedly suggested shutting down Kaesong in response to North Korea’s suspected role in the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship. [….]

In a statement released in early April through the official Korean Central News Agency, the North said it would “entirely re-evaluate” its involvement in the Kaesong Industrial Complex if relations continue along a confrontational path.

Last week, South Korean media reports — citing an unnamed South Korean Unification Ministry official — said North Korean military officials who inspected the complex expressed concerns the South could use high-rises there to spy on the North or sneak troops into the country through the complex’s water system. The inspection intensified speculation the North might end or suspend its participation in the complex.

Some background here.

“I’ll never forget the touching moment of seeing South Koreans and North Koreans working together, side by side “¦ when my factory first opened,” he said. “Cultivating and spreading the spirit of freedom to the Kaesong people is very inspiring.

… he said as he pressed an electric cattle prod into the back of an insolent North Korea’s worker’s neck. Please. I smell something spreading all right, but it isn’t freedom, or wages.

2 Responses

  1. I didn’t know where else to post this, but any entry quoting Christine Ahn is probably appropo:

    He says the shock of the currency reform jolted North Koreans out of their willingness to believe the government. So, they have taken it into their own hands to seek information they need for survival from outside sources. The belief that North Korea is a paradise, he says, is crumbling, and that will lead directly to collapse.

    Stop the presses!!! The DPRK is not a worker’s paradise????

    Actually some good quotes in this article including a hum dinger from Dr. Lankov:

    Among them are Andrei Lankov, a scholar at Seoul’s Kookmin University, who is quite blunt about the prospects of a North Korean collapse.

    “It’s a very likely probability,” said Andrei Lankov. “And personally, if you ask me, I don’t believe there is going to be a peaceful, gradual end of the North Korean regime. It will be dramatic, and probably violent.”

    Cha-ching.

  2. Oh, and one more nugget from the article:

    He says there are now two kinds of people within North Korea’s elite, those who benefit from the market, and those who benefit from restraining the market. The tension between those two groups, he says, may well lead to a North Korean “meltdown.”

    Capitalism and Christianity, the twin scourges of the religion and politik once known as Juche.