N. Korea: “enemies [will] pay a dear price whenever an opportunity presents itself.”

I’m slightly ashamed to admit this, but when I awoke yesterday morning, the first thing I looked forward to was KCNA’s reaction to the mild Tourette’s episode of a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman the other day, in which he questioned the stability and legitimacy of the illegitimate and possibly unstable regime in Pyongyang.

Pyongyang, May 13 (KCNA) — The National Defence Commission (NDC) of the DPRK Tuesday released a crucial report in which it declared it would finally settle accounts with the vicious Park Geun Hye group of hooligans. [KCNA]

North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.

This was followed by attacks on the said “idiot-like spokesman,” a denial of the “far fetched assertion” that North Korea flew UAVs into South Korean airspace, a reminder that North Korea “has never recognized south Korea as a normal sovereign state,” and this odd comment:

The puppet forces of south Korea, a colony where they have the prerogative over the army, a basic criteria of a sovereign state, usurped by the U.S. and find themselves in such a poor position in which they have to eat without complaint beef infected with mad cow disease offered by the U.S. and suffer from high fever being caught by a cold if the U.S. makes a cough.

Really? South Koreans eat beef? Does anyone out there know whether ordinary people in North Korea even have access to KCNA? Next, more obligatory insults of President Park:

Park Geun Hye, who claims to be “president”, has to stammer out American English when she is in the U.S. to play the coquette with her American master. Only then can she be regarded as a faithful dog and servant. This is the wretched plight of south Korea.

I was there when she addressed a Joint Session of Congress a year ago, and I wouldn’t say she stammered, although her diction and pronunciation weren’t as good as they were when she was a much younger woman.

You could call it progress of a sort that the North Koreans didn’t say anything more sexist than “country woman” this time. You can only say “whore” and “prostitute” so many times before those words (a) backfire, and (b) it start to lose their power. (Although “dog” is a greater insult in Korean than it is in English.) Perhaps their stockpile of insults is being depleted.

Stressing that the DPRK can never overlook the fact that such guys dared point an accusing finger at the DPRK, the most dignified country in the world, the crucial report continued:

The official voice of the most dignified country in the world, recently famous for suggesting that the President of the United States sprang from a monkey’s womb, went on to say —

The DPRK doesn’t hide that it possesses strike means more powerful than all the latest war hardware noisily advertised by the U.S. It is a resolution already made by the DPRK to force the enemies to pay a dear price whenever an opportunity presents itself.

We cannot but take a serious note of such reckless remarks made by Kim as he termed the DPRK “a country which should disappear as early as possible”, unaware of such a reality.

Such reckless remarks have never been made in the distress-torn history of national division. What the Park group uttered this time cannot be construed otherwise than a total denial of compatriots in the north, an undisguised revelation of its wild ambition to achieve the “unification by absorption” and a declaration of all-out confrontation of the social systems.

The baneful consequences to be entailed by these reckless outbursts can be neither retrieved nor put under control. All the service personnel and people of the DPRK and the mindset of all other Koreans are strongly calling for wiping the Park group out of this land as it didn’t hesitate to perpetrate thrice-cursed treason. 

The Park group will have to keenly feel what miserable consequences it will face for its vitriol. -0- 

Separately, the North’s counterpart to the Unification Ministry, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, said this:

Thrown into extreme fear and uneasiness, Park and her yes-men are desperately pulling up the DPRK like a rabid dog in a bid to get rid of their pretty fix. They seem to ignite even a war. However, this is as foolish an act as jumping into fire with faggot on their back.

Nope, not going there.

The U.S. styling itself the world’s only superpower though it is acting boss of hooligans dares not provoke the DPRK while regarding the latter as a thorn in its flesh. But the hordes of bumpkins led by country woman Park dares point an accusing finger at the DPRK. This has become a big laughing stock of the world.

Your word of the day is “projection.”

Kim Min Sok talked such rubbish that the “country should no longer exist” but people are comparing the DPRK which is dashing by leaps and bounds toward an ideal country where all people lead luxury under socialism thanks to the great politics of loving care for the people and the rising generations with south Korea which has turned into a mourner’s house after being reduced to a hell cursed by the people. They are quite clear which “country” should exist and which regime should disappear.

Now, I suppose the way this game has worked traditionally is that North Korea tests nukes, attacks South Korea, proliferates WMDs, threatens foreign capitals, and spews racist, sexist, and homophobic taunts of world leaders with blithe abandon, and we all just take it calmly.

Although it’s refreshing on an emotional and ethical level to hear a government spokesman tell the truth about North Korea for the first time in recent memory, I concede that there are probably smarter ways to react to North Korea’s adolescent asshattery than losing one’s temper while speaking for one’s government.

The first one that comes to mind is cutting off Kaesong, which pours hundreds of millions of dollars into Kim Jong Un’s coffers every year, no questions asked. You see the problem here?

Member States shall … prevent the provision of financial services or the transfer to, through, or from their territory, or to or by their nationals or entities organized under their laws (including branches abroad), or persons or financial institutions in their territory, of any financial or other assets or resources, including bulk cash, that could contribute to the DPRK’s nuclear or ballistic missile programmes, or other activities prohibited by [relevant Security Council resolutions.]

Obviously, Kaesong hasn’t caused an enduring improvement in North-South relations, or improved prospects for reform or disarmament.

Or, South Korea could do something that actually would improve prospects for reform and political change, without which disarmament isn’t going to happen. For example, it could put more pressure on China to enforce U.N. sanctions and stop repatriating refugees.

It could let North Korean exiles to broadcast back to their homeland on the medium wave spectrum, or build tall antenna masts that would broadcast cellular signals to North Korea.

If it wants to drive economic reform and a transition to a market economy, it could set up a hawala-like system that would allow North Korean exiles to send money back to their families (instead of the regime) and shift North Korea’s internal economic balance of power. Instead, stupidly, it’s prosecuting money transmitters, thus squeezing the one form of financial interaction with North Korea that actually has the potential to drive change.

Finally, it could help refugees organize a shadow government-in-exile to help restore order in a post-collapse North Korea.