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Celebrating Seven Years of Obscure Futility

On this day, way back in 2004, I published the first OFK post. Had you asked me then what I’d be blogging about now, I’d have have said that I wouldn’t be. Then, I might have suggested reconstruction efforts, or possibly a low-intensity conflict between Chinese “advisors” and North Korean insurgents. Seven billion dollars in South Korean aid, Chinese money, and unsteady American policies have prolonged the inevitable, but it still looks inevitable, if different.

Then, I imagined that a broad-based popular uprising would eventually bring this horrible episode to an end. Today, I see little possibility of this anytime soon. Time has changed my idea of regime collapse to a more gradual concept in which regions, markets, constituencies, and units slowly drift away from central control, in which chaos arises from totalitarian order, and in which the regime will be forced to choose between extorting its neighbors and controlling its subjects. It could take years for that process to play out, depending on how long Kim Jong Il lives, and there will be much more needless misery and more crises before it does. But at least it can’t go on forever.

30 Responses

  1. happy bday OFK.

    thank you for truly enlightening me about the situation in NK throughout the years.

    most importantly, thanks for adhering to the ‘no a@@hole rule’ as a blog owner.

  3. My next order of daunting business is to go back and read some of your insights from times before I began reading your blog, which was only about a year and a half ago. Thanks for keeping me up to date. I’m guessing you don’t make any money from this blog, so I hope you’re kept economically happy through other channels man!

  4. Josh, Congratulations on your longevity and, more importantly, your insight. I am continually amazed at how you are able to remember and then dredge up tidbits from the past which add necessary context to today’s events.

  7. also I’m trying to solidify my view of the new revelations concerning their nuclear program and am trying to find the post and subsequent discussion on here about their being able to clandestinely build up nuclear reactor sites in places where inspectors couldn’t reasonably expect to reach, due to I think the technology behind light water reactor plants not needing visible vapor stacks or something. Would someone please help me find this and maybe help clarify this position?

  10. Futility? No way. Obscurity? Mr. Stanton, I heard you in a recorded audio interview once, and you sounded pretty good. I hope you are telegenic, because when even our pal Selig Harrison finally admits that the KFR has started to collapse, you will need a press agent.

  11. Props! We have had our disagreements, but I applaud your commitment and introspection. Fir the record, although I would rather see a stabler region than revolution at any speed, I prefer your new and improved hopes to the previous version.

    Keep blogging!

    BTW, would you be interested in a podcasting debate with me sometime in the future?

  14. Congratulations!

    It’s a bittersweet moment. I would say, “and here’s to many more years of OFK” but at the same time—and as much as I thoroughly enjoy your writing and analysis—I think we’d all like to see this blog become irrelevant…the sooner the better.

    (That’s not intended to be mean. I just hope that we won’t need a blog to advocate for one free Korea because there will actually be one free Korea.)

    Congrats again for all the fantastic work and for keeping me entertained at work.
    .

  15. clazy8,
    Thanks, I actually tried that method already and to my surprise didn’t find anything. I was also on my android though so I didn’t have the patience to just click back through the pages on the home page here. I know it was fairly recently, end of November IIRC. I’ll check now. Seriously though, isn’t that an important fact that needs to be noted more often? Nuclear negotiations are entirely futile and North Korea will always, ALWAYS operate in bad faith. Ugh. Negotiations for negotiations’ sake.

  17. Wow, so much to celebrate in the winter, Christmas, Hannakuh, New Years and b-days for OFK, NKEW, KJI and KJU. Keep up the hard work… 2011-2012 may yet prove to be full of significance for this regime. Hope one day we can all hang out in a free Pyongyang. The first round of Pyongyang soju is on me.

  18. Congratulations! And thank you, as ever, for your brilliant analyses and commitment to promoting One Free Korea. Even when that day comes, the demand for your exceptional insights will not wane. If anything, it’s bound to increase in the wake of big changes and the exigencies of reconstruction, reconciliation, and reorientation.

  19. Congrats on the seven years, Mr. Stanton. The Norks have a way of drawing things out and making them seem uninevitable, but I agree, the collapse is inevitable if not imminent. I am still on the side of an unforecasted Ceaucescu moment surprising us all, but they are wearing me down, too.

  20. Your blog is one of my favorites and I’m glad you’ve stuck with it.

    Perhaps we should make predictions for what things will be like in 2018, another seven years from now.

  21. Hey kushibo, thats my role here when it comes to making outlandish idiotic predictions,. Speaking of which I spy with my eye that 2018 will be four years after the Regime will have fitfully died. 2014 is when the Ministry of Truth will no longer be able to support a population without faith in it.

  22. Luckily the population of North Korea two and a half years from now will have the backing to do so. Even Switzerland will not allow China to continue to back King Jong Il by then.

  24. Joshua, I’ve been reading your blog for about a quarter of its existence, that is, since I became curious about North Korea. Your’e very informative, and you attract good commenters. I’m just glad you can find the time.

  25. Congratulations on seven years. Don’t get the seven-year itch; don’t give up; this is the least “futile” blog that I’ve ever had the pleasure to follow. I think it actually accomplishes a great deal. The DPRK could, like Turkey the “Sick Man of Europe,’ go on for many years more — but with blogs like this explaining why it shouldn’t, the likelihood of its survival as an independent despotism is always lessened. I don’t look forward to another seven years, because we all hope, each year, that the DPRK will go away, but please keep the good work going.

  28. I rarely post, but I read OFK almost every day. I find it a tremendous source of insight into a catastrophe the world should know more about. Keep up the great work.

  29. Omedeto Gozaimasu Josh! I read your site now pretty much everyday. While I hope things come to the inevitable conclusion sooner rather than later, let’s your blog doesn’t get too interesting while I’m stationed out here 😉