North Korea F.A.Q.
Why blog about North Korea?
North Korea’s nuclear program and the diplomacy that has attempted to end it for decades are widely covered in the media, but the media has done a poor job reporting the wider North Korea story: its people and their suffering, the society in which they live, and what these things say about the failure of the international community to respond to a grave humanitarian crisis. Those missing pieces of the story are the pieces that put the nuclear issue and every other part of the North Korean tragedy in context. They explain why Kim Jong Il’s possession of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons is such a grave threat to the peace of other nations. In other ways, those other parts of the story are even more newsworthy than the nuclear diplomacy.
Why is the North Korean regime so dangerous?
Because of its extreme disregard for human life. If you read only one link at this site, read about its concentration camps, look down into them, and hear the survivors describe them. We know what history has taught us about governments that commit mass murder: eventually, they turn outward for new victims. An estimated 400,000 men, women, and children have died in those camps.
And this is still not the worst of it. The deaths of approximately 2.5 million North Koreans in the Great Famine of the mid-1990’s were completely preventable. Although the regime knew that thousands were dying, especially in the far northeast, it continued to prioritize weapons purchases over food and directed shipments of international aid to more politically favored areas along its west coast.
Experts offer a wide range of estimates for how many North Koreans died in the Great Famine. Although I’m most persuaded by the estimate of former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios — 2.5 million — the economist Marcus Noland and the political scientist Stephan Haggard estimate the toll at between 600,000 and 1 million. Noland and Haggard are scrupulously honest and rigorous scholars. They’re not trying to minimize this tragedy; I just happen to disagree with their use of a model based on 1950’s China, a society much less urbanized than 1990’s North Korea. Others, including Fiona Terry of Medicins San Frontieres, have provided estimates as high as 3.5 million, although those estimates are not as well explained.
Regardless of the actual toll, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands certainly died prolonged, painful, and needless deaths. There is growing acceptance that these deaths could have been prevented if North Korea had bought fewer weapons and more food during the famine’s peak. Recently, a report commissioned by Vaclav Havel, Kjell Magne Bondevik, and Elie Wiesel called the famine “a crime against humanity.” They have called for U.N. intervention, but the U.N. won’t intervene.
Further Reading:
Why Is North Korea so Repressive?
To a greater degree than any regime that has ever existed, the North Korean regime requires absolute obedience, crushes all hints of dissent, and requires frequent participation in propaganda and “criticism” sessions. North Korean security forces routinely conduct “home inspections” at night to check for visitors without travel permits or radios that can be tuned to receive foreign broadcasts. Neighbors are expected to spy on neighbors, co-workers on co-workers, and North Koreans are even expected to spy on members of their own families. The regime practices collective punishment; a transgression by one family member could doom the entire family to a term in a labor camp.
Though often described as a Stalinist regime, North Korea’s ideology is not traditionally Marxist. It is strongly nationalist and on occasion, venemously racist. North Korean ideology places a high premium on racial purity. Escapees from North Korea report that the regime kills the babies of refugee women to prevent the birth of half-Chinese babies.
The state ideology is also a religion ruled by the most jealous of gods. All other religious belief is severely punished, with the exception of a few churches that are suspected shams for external consumption.
To me, the most persuasive evidence of North Korea’s deification are the leaflets you see here. While I was serving as a soldier in South Korea in 1999, a fellow soldier found these near the fence of the Yongsan Garrison in Seoul and gave them to me. The North Korean agents put them there to show their presence, and souvenir-hunting soldiers widely ingored the rule requiring us to put these leaflets in collection boxes. Translation here. North Korea even has its own nativity story in which Kim Jong Il was born on the sacred Mount Paektu under a mystical star.
To understand either of the Koreas, it is important to remember that Korea was occupied by imperial Japan for 35 years prior to World War II. North Korea has derived its own form of state religion in which its supreme leader is reinvented with mystical powers and worshipped as a deity, as Japan’s emperor was worshipped. The scholar B.R. Myers sees infantilization in the deification of the Kims. North Korean propaganda frequently depicts the people as lost children who are only saved by the divine intervention and guidance of the “motherly” father and son.
The author Jasper Becker quotes high-level defector Hwang Jang Yop as claiming that Kim Jong Il openly admired Hitler and that North Korea’s ideology was influenced by Nazi ideology. Hwang may have motives to fabricate such a claim, but there are striking similaries between juche and fuhrerprinzip. When Stalin’s army occupied northern Korea in 1945, it imposed a Stalinist template and installed Kim Il Sung as leader. But many who would become North Korea’s new ruling class had grown up in a confucianist society under the heel of Japanese fascism. North Korea is also a highly stratified society, organized into 51 hereditary social groups determined by the occupation or misdeeds of an individual’s ancestors. North Korea attracts its share of leftist admirers in the West who are attracted by the “purity” of its socialism.
Yet a society in which the privileged enjoy considerable luxury and the poor starve is far from egalitarian. Closer to the mark is the Russian North Korea expert Andrei Lankov, who recently declared “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism.”
Although no one knows which personalities hold the real power in the North Korean court, the current consensus is that Kim Jong Il is firmly in charge. Here the palace in which he lives. Near that palace lies what the North Korean regime claims to the be the tomb of the ancient King Tangun. It was discovered in 1993, coincidentally just after Kim Il Sung ordered his archeologists to locate it. The North Korean regime highly values history and makes aggressive — and often fraudulent — claims on it. As time passes, the Kim dynasty bears an ever-stronger resemblance to one of the medieval dynasties whose legacies it claims.
Further Reading:
Is Kim Jong Il crazy?
It’s hard to be certain, but the best guess is that he’s merely a malignant narcissist. He’s a capable of rational judgment, but prone to acting on impulse and may miscalculate risk. A very unusual upbringing — which includes seeing his brother drown in a childhood swimming accident — probably contributed to that condition.
This tendency to take extreme risks was again demonstrated by his ordering of the sinking of a South Korean warship in March 2010. At least one purpose for this risky provocation seems to have been for domestic propaganda, most likely to distract North Koreans from their deepening economic misery and bolster the martial credentials of his son.
How is Kim Jong Il’s health these days?
For years, there have been rumors of Kim Jong Il’s ill health due to liver or kidney disease, but the reports are not consistent. In 2007, a German medical team is said to have recently flown into North Korea to perform a medical procedure on his heart. Unfortunately, Kim Jong Il appears to have recovered from the surgery in much improved health.
The following year, Kim Jong Il appears to have had a stroke, which had a visible impact on his health. There were coincident rumors that he had pancratic cancer.
Who would succeed Kim Jong Il if he dies?
North Korea is the world’s only heredetary dynasty to officially describe itself as Marxist, and one of Kim Jong Il’s three sons by two different women are the natural candidates. Power devolved from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il with the elder Kim’s death in 1994.
Today, there is much speculation that one of Kim Jong Il’s sons will succeed him. The problem is that each of the sons is unfit to rule for one reason or another. The oldest, Kim Jong Nam, was recently caught entering Japan on his way to Tokyo Disneyland on a fake Dominican passport. He was deported, was reportedly sidelined in the succession contest, and disowned by his father. More recently, he was spotted living in Macau, where it was rumored that he was involved in some of North Korea’s criminal enterprises. In the summer of 2007, it was reported that he had returned to Pyongyang. Jong Chol’s greatest problem may be his morbid obesity. It’s difficult to imagine that a starving population would accept him as a leader.
Second son Kim Jong Chol was educated in Switzerland and was recently spotted at an Eric Clapton concert in Europe. Jong Chol’s extremely effinate mannerisms are officially explained as being the result of a “hormonal imbalance,” and even Kim Jong Il is said to have disapproved his succession for that reason.
By January 2010, it was evident that third son Kim Jong Eun had been chosen to succeed Kim Jong Il, though it still seemed most likely Jong Eun would be a figurehead, with the real power held by the generals and senior party officials from behind the scenes. Less is known about Jong Eun than his siblings. His succession would violate a strong Confucian tradition of primogeniture. Like his siblings, he lacks the gravitas, charisma, or experience to rule. The very fact of his succession, which seems premature, suggests that Kim Jong Il’s health is deteriorating quickly. Because Kim Jong Eun is unready to wield absolute power, Kim Jong Il’s sudden death could set off a ferocious contest among generals and apparatchiks to grab the strings of power.
What is the U.N. doing about North Korea?
On human rights, as little as possible. The U.N. has done almost nothing about North Korea’s humanitarian crises — the mass starvation, repression, murder, and refugee flows. The High Commission for Human Rights and the High Commission for Refugees deserve particular recognition for being almost completely ineffective. The membership of the new U.N. Human Rights Council includes some of the world’s most repressive regimes, including China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba. This isn’t promising for anyone expecting the U.N. to articulate a high standard.
The U.N. Development Program operated for years in North Korea without knowing how the cash it freely handed out to North Korean government employees was spent. The exposure of the program’s lack of accountability recently caused a minor scandal. The U.N. promised a full investigation. Instead, it fired the whistleblower who reported it.
U.N. food aid may have saved thousands of lives, but the aid program’s timid approach to North Korean restrictions and manipulations has meant that far fewer lives were saved than could have been. By 2005, the World Food Program claimed to be providing the marginal subsistence to 6.5 million North Koreans, a third of the total population. But diversion of food aid was high, estimated at between 30 to 50%, and clandestine video showed some of the aid for sale in markets. Under pressure from donors to gain access to more “closed” areas and insure a fairer and more equal distribution of aid, the World Food Program tried to negotiate a more transparent program. Instead, North Korea ordered the World Food Program to be out of North Korea by the end of 2005. The following spring, it partially reversed itself. The much-reduced program was supposed to feed just 1.9 million pregnant woman and children, but weary donors have not fully funded the program. Serious floods in 2006 and even more severe floods in 2007 now threaten a dramatic deterioration in North Korea’s already critical food supply. North Korea has again appealed for aid, but it’s too early to tell if it will allow more transparent distribution this time.
Can we be hopeful that things will be better under the leadership of Ban Ki-Moon? Not likely. Ban was one of the few career diplomats in South Korea’s Foreign Ministry to survive a purge that followed the election of the leftist Roh Moo Hyun in 2002. Ban reinvented himself as a leading advocate of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy. Some of the defining acts of his tenure as Foreign Minister were a series of South Korean absentions on U.N. General Assembly votes to condemn North Korea’s human rights record. Insiders view Ban as a timid consensus-builder who shies from controversy and defers to China.
What have other nations done or said about North Korea?
Recently, other nations have taken a greater interest in the North Korean human rights issue. Despite high initial hopes, the U.S. State Department quietly blocked implementation of most key provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. The Bush Administration’s high rhetoric has not been matched by its actions.
The European Parliament has recently been more vocal in criticizing North Korea, but European businesses continue trading with North Korea under morally dubious circumstances. For example, a British company sells gold that may well come from mines in two North Korean concentration camps — Camp 15 and Camp 77. Recently, Europe recoiled at the revelation that North Korean women working in conditions tantamount to slavery were sewing BMW headrests in the Czech Republic. Although North Korea is reputed to earn much of its foreign exchange from the sale of counterfeit cigarettes, a leader of Britain’s Conservative Party was embarrassed by the revelation that British-American Tobacco, on whose executive board he sat, was producing cigarettes in North Korea. It seems difficult to explain why a nation that can’t feed itself uses its scarce land to grow tobacco.
The nation that has turned the coldest shoulder to Kim Jong Il is Japan. At one time, remittances from Korean-Japanese were a major source of income for North Korea. Since the launching of a Rodong missile over Japan in 1998 and the revelation that North Korea had kidnapped dozens of Japanese — including children — from Japan, the political climate in Japan has become intensely hostile toward North Korea. Japan has since virtually ended trade with North Korea and moved to dismantle the North Korean fifth column organization in Japan known as Chosen Soren or Chongryon.
Most of the Southeast Asian countries have been hostile to treacherous as havens for North Koreans. The least hospitable are Burma and Laos. Vietnam has repatriated North Koreas at times; at others, it has allowed them to leave for South Korea. Thailand had briefly allowed itself to become a haven, but after the Thai military took power, it announced plans to start cooperating with the Chinese police to intercept and round up North Korean refugees.
What role does South Korea play?
Recently, South Korea has done as much as possible to keep Kim Jong Il in power. South Korea’s political climate has recently turned anti-American and relatively sympathetic to the North Korean regime. A succession of elected leftist governments have begun a massive program of direct aid and transfer payments to Kim Jong Il’s regime, amounting to an estimated $7 billion since 1997. Most of this aid is unmonitored, and according to the highly respected economist and Korea expert Marcus Noland, some of it may have been diverted into North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Despite having the protection of 29,500 U.S. military personnel on its soil, South Korea has effectively declared itself a neutral nation in checking China’s regional ambitions. It claims to want to disarm North Korea of nuclear weapons, but has done little to pressure North Korea into making that choice. South Korea is actually cutting its own military, leaving American taxpayers to take up the slack. There doesn’t seem to be much South Korean gratitude for this expensive commitment, either, judging by displays like these, or polls that consistently show South Korea to be one of the most anti-American countries in Asia.
Why can’t China solve this problem?
China doesn’t want to. It prefers to keep Kim Jong Il in place to frustrate America and Japan and keep Korea divided. China has provided considerable support to North Korea’s regime, although there are no publicly available estimates of the amount. China hunts down and arrests any North Korean refugees it finds on its soil and sends them back to North Korea. This is in direct violation of the U.N. Convention on Refugees, which China signed. Chinese police use brutal methods against the refugees, including electric cattle prods, the offering of bounties, and stringing cables through the refugees’ wrists or noses. One group of refugees in a Chinese detention camp went on a hunger strike, but the Chinese sent them back anyway. Those returned to North Korea may be sent to concentration camps, shot, or given relatively brief terms of austere detention, depending the reason they fled and who they are suspected of contacting on the outside. Most North Korean women hiding in China are sexually exploited and sold into involuntary marriages or to brothels. The conditions they endure have drawn comparisons to the “comfort women” of World War II.
Why would North Korea attack us? Surely they know that this would be the end of them.
It’s unlikely that North Korea would attack the United States directly. Instead, North Korea is a promiscuous proliferator of weapons of mass destruction:
- Exhibit A, North Korean technical assistance to the Iranian nuclear program since the 1990s.
- Exhibit B, a report that Iran recently sold Russian-made cruise missiles to North Korea.
- Exhibit C, North Korean missiles intercepted on the way to Yemen in 2002.
- Exhibit D, a New York Times report that North Korea and Pakistan jointly tested a nuclear weapon in Pakistan in 1998.
- Exhibit E, consensus that North Korea was the source of Syria’s SCUD-C missiles and a report that North Korea has traded dual-use equipment with Syria that could be used for biological weapons.
- Exhibit F, Saddam’s plan to buy North Korean SCUDs with a range exceeding U.N. limits, stopped only when the invasion was imminent and North Korea opted to keep Saddam’s down payment.
- Exhibit G, a complete North Korean missile factory intercepted on the way to Libya.
- Exhibit H, uranium hexafluoride made in North Korea, found in Libya. Ad nauseum.
- Exhibit I, North Korea caught smuggling weapons, including man-portable surface-to-air missiles and ballistic missile components, to Iran.
- Most distressing of all, however, was the September 2007 revelation that North Korea was building a nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert. Later, Der Spiegel reported that the reactor was financed by Iran.
All of these states have been or are sponsors of terrorism. It’s not fanciful to worry that North Korean nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons will eventually be transferred to terrorists. It’s unlikely that we’d ever know for certain who supplied those weapons even after they’re used, and North Korea knows that.
Further Reading:
Isn’t the current diplomatic process showing progress?
Not really. The North Koreans shut down their reactor at Yongbyon, which was probably near the end of its useful life anyway. Still, Kim Jong Il could restart the reactor at any time. They did not dismantle it or irreversibly give up any nuclear capabilities, and they probably never will. There’s a much larger, half-finished reactor near Yongbyon. Kim Jong Il will play for time until the political paralysis of an election year and a new administration. Then, they’ll kick out the inspectors and restart any facilities that are still of use to them.
North Korea almost certainly has a uranium enrichment program, although the location and scale aren’t known publicly. They North Koreans admitted this in 2002, but now they’re back to denying it again. No matter. We have evidence of the purchase from the Pakistani laboratories that sold the centrifuges to Kim Jong Il.
Finally, North Korea has given mixed signals about when and whether it will give up its existing weapons. And given North Korea’s track record, how would we know they’ve disclosed everything? The Bush Administration seems very interested in racking up a record of diplomatic accomplishment before it leaves office; thus, the administration may well be willing to overlook gaps in inspection, verification, and North Korean credibility to claim success.
In exchange for these limited concessions, North Korea has gained some very significant benefits. It managed to blunt the effects of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718, which followed its missile and nuclear tests in 2006.
More importantly, North Korea talked its way out of a U.S. Treasury enforcement action against North Korea’s laundering of criminal proceeds, chiefly from drug dealing and counterfeiting, as well as from arms sales that would now be in violation of UNSCR 1718. Treasury’s action was devastating to the part of the North Korean economy Kim Jong Il cares about — the one that sustains his lifestyle, his military, and the patronage system of his ruling elite class. In a move that shocked many observers, the Federal Reserve quite literally laundered $25 million — much or most of it criminal proceeds — for North Korea. This move will weaken future enforcement efforts by opening them to charges of inconsistency and political motivation.
So what do you propose we do?
An approach that combines economic, political, military, and diplomatic pressure aimed at accelerating what is probably inevitable anyway: the end of the Kim Jong Il regime.
Although North Korea frequently engages in overheated rhetoric and undiplomatic behavior and often overplays its hand, it has proven very skillful at getting its way diplomatically, always to the eventual disadvantage of everyone who deals with it. North Korea has signed deal after deal with the United States, South Korea, and the U.N. It has broken every one of them eventually. The countries that deal with North Korea diplomatically all have very different interests and mutual antagonisms and are incapable of forming a united front against North Korea’s behavior. North Korea has divided its neighbors with exceptional skill and taken advantage of all of them — especially South Korea — through separate dealings. In fact, the inherent disunity of democracies means they can seldom compete with dictatorships at the negotiating table. So a purely diplomatic approach only pits our weaknesses against North Korea’s strengths.
Purely military options also pit our political weakness against North Korea’s greatest strengths. I don’t know of any serious suggestion that we should invade North Korea. Doing so would be incalculably bloody. Some Republicans and Democrats have recently suggested air strikes against North Korea. Such a course could easily escalate into a disastrous war that would kill millions.
Instead, we should focus our efforts where Kim Jong Il’s rule is weak: his economy and the disillusioned and weary North Korean people.
First, we should set a firm deadline for a full disclosure of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and programs, and for the allowance of complete and open access by inspectors from the five nations negotiating with North Korea, including the United States. North Korea will miss that deadline, but it’s politically important that North Korea be allowed to miss it.
Second, the Treasury Department must be allowed to go after North Korea’s mostly illicit sources of income and freeze them. Those measure were devastating to the regime’s palace economy during the brief period — just 16 months — when it was tried. We have other financial weapons we have never even tried, but should:
- We should declare the entire North Korean government — not just one of its favored shady banks — to be an entity of concern for money laundering under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act. This alone would virtually destroy North Korea’s economy overnight.
- We should invoke Executive Order 13,382 more broadly to shut off sources of income for North Korea’s WMD programs. Two of the largest sources of that income may be South Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park and the Kumgang Tourist Project. The loss of the income from those two projects would be a severe and possibly fatal shock to North Korea’s palace economy. We should also let China’s leaders know that their banks and businesses are not immune from those measures.
- We should inform the South Korean government that our military commitment to the defense of South Korea is not unconditional, and we will sharply reduce that commitment if it continues to provide billions in aid to prop up Kim Jong Il’s regime.
- We should explore other creative options, including the use RICO statutes, “private attorney general” provisions, and civil litigation by slave labor victims to pursue North Korean industries that use slave labor. Two targets are particularly attractive. One is North Korea’s sale of gold, much of it mined in concentration camps, on the international market. Another is its bulk rental of labor abroad or at the Kaesong Industrial Park, on terms in which the government receives the workers’ “wages” while the workers receive some unknown — but probably much smaller — amount. The proceeds should be put aside to bear interest until they can be used to compensate the victims and reconstruct North Korea.
Third, we should actively support the continuation of food aid to North Korea, because North Korea’s people did not elect Kim Jong Il are not responsible for his behavior. They are his victims. Because of widespread diversion of that aid, however, we should discontinue our support for any aid program that distributes food through North Korea’s own corrupt and inefficient distribution system. Instead, we should insist on the establishment of independent distribution networks. Ordinary North Koreans should see compassionate foreign faces providing the food that sustains them. Then, the falsity of North Korean “self reliance” will be exposed.
Fourth, we should seek to accelerate popular discontent with the regime. Although it’s not possible to poll North Koreans about their political beliefs, the regime can’t be popular if as many as 300,000 of them have fled their homeland. There are some survey data to support the idea that discontent is widespread, and videos smuggled out of North Korea, reports of mass defections by border guards, and numerous acts of anti-government resistance provide further support.
Our role can be to give that discontent a host, a voice, unity, and direction. For years, we have talked of increasing the smuggling of radios, cell phones, videocassettes, books, and pamphlets into North Korea. We know that North Koreans who are exposed to the reality of how their neighbors live realize that the propaganda they have been fed is false. We could also help to plant a network of clandestine journalists inside North Korea to give the North Korean people and people everywhere an authentic source of news about what is happening there. This network could be the first step toward transforming scattered acts of discontent into a nationwide, clandestine resistance movement.
Further reading:
- Ten Effective, Non-Military Options We Can Use Against Kim Jong Il.
- North Korea’s Great Confiscation, and The Ajumma Rebellion that followed.
- Overthrowing Kim – A Capitalist Manifesto. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
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Hi again on this second thread~~I am so grateful for the work you have done to gather and link a body of info on North Korea. One of the blessings of the internet is that, as individuals, we can “hunt down” things ourselves that are perhaps “miniscule” in terms of the whole body of documentation available in the world!…but nevertheless incredibly important to our world view. It has been a conscious frustration for me that so little hard information was available about North Korea. Your research and links is going to be continually valuable to me and I will recommend the site to others. Thanks. Ann
Hello Mr. Stanton,
I am a representative for Vertical Inc. We are a publishing company who publishes work by Japanese authors. One of our upcoming books is a memoir by Sakie Yokota entitled North Korea Kidnapped My daughter. The book tells the true story of an unresolved international case involving Japan and North Korea. Vertical Inc would like to send you an advance proof copy. If interested please email a shipping address to Jessica@Vertical-inc.com
Thank you.
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I noticed some of your articles are only open to invited readers. How can I get invited?
I don’t think so. Can you give an example?
I’m a journalist from Japan.
Your blog is very impressive and comprehensive.
It would be grateful to give me a chance to meet with you.
I’m in Washington DC now.
Keep up the good work – it’s especially inspirational to see that international entities depend your blog – I was impressed by the information under what other countries are doing and agree
that “the media has done a poor job on reporting the wider North Korea story: its people and their suffering, the society in which they live, and what these things say about the failure of the international community to respond to a grave humanitarian crisis.”
your plan is very undiplomatic
and the support of the necessory countries cannot be guarenteed
and after doing all this to north korea do u really think they would allow us to distribute food aid on our own terms?
though i do agree we should be more firm with north korea
I know the complaints about North Korea, so I scanned through to see what plan you have. It is comprehensive, but I wonder if you’ve considered what ways Pyongyang (and Beijing) would react? Wouldn’t they have means through which to undermine or work around these measures?
I’m not asking as a form of criticism; I’m genuinely curious. I would like to see something workable about dealing with North Korea, but most “solutions” I read seem not to take into account the reaction to these solutions.
The last time we applied effective financial pressure, North Korea reacted by agreeing to concessions in negotiation, which they of course intended to renege on the moment the pressure was lifted. They made the lifting of the Banco Delta sanctions their top-priority demand, and true to form, they reneged on all their obligations after the pressure was off. The North Koreans are a lot more rational that a lot of us credit them with being. They don’t fear the humanitarian consequences of war, but they fear it for other, more selfish reasons. Consistent pressure would most likely force the regime to make concessions. It would try to cheat, of course, but if we have leverage we could extract a degree of real compliance and gradually force North Korea to accept enough transparency to fundamentally change its character.
China’s reaction to the BDA sanctions was to do its best to undermine them financially and to lean on its assets in our own State Department. The first tactic was sufficient to keep the regime alive briefly, and the second tactic may have been the reason the Kim Dynasty survives today. China’s ability to undermine sanctions is significant, but not insurmountable. Chinese corporations want and need to do business with the United States. It was a bank on Chinese soil – Banco Delta – that we sanctioned to create such pressure on the NK regime. Now, I wrote my “Plan B” before the economic crisis, and I’d have a great deal more pause about going after Chinese banks directly in these times. But we can exert significant pressure by going after Chinese companies that invest in NK, by applying narrower sanctions to select Chinese and third-country banks, and by linking North Korea to other issues of interest to China, including Taiwan and Tibet. The problem isn’t that we lack potential influence. The problem is that we lack the will to apply it.
Thanks for your response. Giving it a proper reply might take more time than I have today, so I just wanted to leave a note saying thanks. But don’t worry about leaving this here message up. Your FAQ comments, perhaps, should be neat and tidy, and not full of “hey, mahalo for that” comments.
I’ll give a meatier reply later, something that in a more expanded version might be worthy of a post on my own blog pointing whomever lands on my blog in your direction.
Let’s make this a two-way street: on what basis do you believe that unforced “engagement,” aid, and concessions can alter the behavior or character of North Korea? What do you propose? What history suggests that it might work?
Joshua wrote:
Let’s make this a two-way street: on what basis do you believe that unforced “engagement,†aid, and concessions can alter the behavior or character of North Korea?
Actually, I’m not so sure that I do. Or rather, I don’t believe that that alone is enough.
What do you propose? What history suggests that it might work?
I honestly don’t know. Frankly, if everybody could believe in what you’re saying and get on board with it (everybody meaning Russia and China, and the UN), then I really do think that could work.
To me what to do about North Korea is an extremely perplexing issue, and I see hypocrisy and indifference on all sides — not just in each country involved, but among the various political blocs in each country. Democrats should be all over the human rights abuses and Republicans should be taking advantage of the refugee resettlement laws that Bush-43 pushed to cause an East German-style drain of people on the DPRK. But neither side really wants to touch this.
And in South Korea you have the left trying to engage (carrot) without any sanctions (stick) if there is no reciprocity or if the DPRK does something bad. In Japan you have a left that maybe thinks the DPRK isn’t really bad as it’s being propagandized as being, and the right is using the DPRK as an excuse to frighten the public into allowing them to boost up their military. And of course, the far left in Korea (and maybe Japan?) includes a lot of individuals who are on the DPRK payroll or who have swallowed the Kool-Aid of those on the DPRK payroll.
I don’t think then-President Kim Daejung was wrong to engage the North. I think where it went awry is that President Roh gave up any pretense of using stick and Chung Dong-young and others became virtual mouthpieces for the North.
If there are to be things like KÅmgangsan Resort and KaesÅng Industrial Complex, you have to be prepared at a moment’s notice to pull the plug on them. Otherwise you’re held hostage to the North. I think such ventures do have their place, but they can’t allow the South’s policy to be held hostage.
So, yeah, I don’t know what the answer is. It’s easy for me to say engage but be ready with that stick, but it’s an entirely different thing to apply it to the actual situation. The North doesn’t lend itself well to being rewarded for good and being punished for bad.
I do believe, though, that engagement is important for showing a human face of the enemy. No matter how much the North tries to demonize the South or the Americans, the food aid and now the daily presence of South Koreans in North Korea — even a hermetically sealed part — erodes that demonization. It may seem laughable today, but prior to democratization in South Korea, kids in the ROK learned that the North Koreans had horns and would kill them just as soon as look at them. The North had learned as bad or worse, but that type of propaganda no longer is capable of packing the same punch. It’s a joke now, even in the North.
I don’t know if engagement will have a desired effect. I think it’s possible that if there were a sufficient shake-up in the ruling apparatus (sudden death of the Dear Leader) that certain factions might now be more confident than before that they can work with the South and the US. And when/if the South ever does take administrative control over a collapsed North, the reduced level of demonization will make it easier.
I don’t know if there is a model where this has worked before, but Eastern Europeans were exposed to Western media and ended up wanting that, and the Russians were willing to give it up. Certainly there is much less media influence in North Korea than there was in Eastern Europe, but it may still be valid.
But the truth is, I don’t know. For me the model is kill with kindness, don’t be a doormat, and be ready to smack ’em down if they get out of line. How’s that for a North Korean policy? 🙂
I apologize if this seems like a somewhat unfocused and incoherent answer. It’s late here and I’ve got a lot of other work to do. BTW, Joshua, I couldn’t find your email, but could you email me (my username at gmail)? I’d like to ask some specific things about groups in Hawaii that might be working on these issues.
Hi Joshua,
I’ve been reading your site for a year now. I have always been fascinated by how insightful your blog is. I don’t know if you have seen this yet, but it is an interesting trip into the North by some Americans. It could be old and does suffer from the occasional “American tourist” moments (kind of funny really). But I just wanted to pass it on.
Thanks for all the Google Earth picks.
http://www.vbs.tv/en/search?key=north=korea&commit=search
or just search North Korea at vbs.com
Keep up the good fight
Brian
A great site. Are you able to link with “The Strategy Page.” Your readers would enjoy it. It’s a good one. Thanks again.
This is a very well written book: “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” by Barbara Demick.
Thank you for your site, it’s the best I’ve seen yet and I intend to follow it. I can only hope…
IOP, I’ve previously reviewed that book and given it rave reviews. I’m a fan of Demick’s book and of her reporting for the L.A. Times. She should be coming out with another story from the Tumen River area soon.
Sorry about that Joshua. I should have searched better to see if you reviewed the book. I’m glad you read it. Gives you even more credibility. I am still reading a lot from your site. Awhile back I wanted to read my kids about a good guy and a bad guy. So I picked Lincoln and then Stalin. I couldn’t read them Stalin, it was just too bad. However, it was then that I realized how terribly North Korea suffers. I’m glad you are helping and we pray for that country frequently. Thanks again.
Hey mate,
Just a quicky: can’t you see the role that the US’s (historically appalling) foreign policy has played in creating states like North Korea and the Khmer Rouge (or Democratic Kampuchea as it was known)?
While you decry the proportion of the population interred in NK (less than 1%), you seem to be unaware that the US actually has the highest proportion of its population jailed (a little over 1%); this is the highest level of incarceration (to the best of my knowledge) in the history of the world.
I am certain that a look on Google Earth around some of the forced labour camps and chain gangs operating in Arizona may make a great subject for a human rights activist such as yourself.
Can you not see the fertile grounds for propaganda that the leadership of NK has found in your country’s past and present behaviour in the world?
It seems that, like many US citizens, you are also showing the hallmarks of having been brainwashed into thinking: that the US has the greatest standard of living in the world (it doesn’t); whose people are the wealthiest (they aren’t); whose model of government is the greatest and a model for the rest of the world (the rest of the world would laugh bitterly whilst shaking their heads in disbelief at this); that the US has “saved” many countries (no); that the US is the land of the free and the home of the brave (the land with the highest rate of incarceration in the world whose military now assassinate people with unarmed drones).
Perhaps you should look into your own backyard before peering over the fence of the Kims’?
Just some food for thought.
Peter Atkins, it’s nice to see that the despite the problems in the Gulf, the red herring industry is still open for business.
The moral equivalence you suggest just simply is not there. For starters, the US prison population, large as it is, go there by a transparent legal process that is rather open and is subject to change by a voting population. By contrast, the DPRK gulag system is filled with people who are there for arbitrary reasons, especially things that threatened someone in the ruling elite.
Furthermore, the families of these people are not locked up for the crimes of their relatives, nor do any of them have a realistic expectation of dying from starvation, disease, or some other issue of deliberate neglect while incarceration.
There are indeed problems with the US penal system, though, and these are discussed and addressed. California, for example, has worked on ways to reduce the prison population by employing drug treatment for non-violent offenders, and marijuana might be legalized outright in order to reduce the prison population even more. Furthermore, there are groups that work to prevent recidivism and some of the more atrocious byproducts of imprisonment — which should not be acceptable to anyone — like sexual violence and gang activity.
But I am speaking as a Seoul homeowner, where 0.1% of the population is behind bars. I hope that makes me eligible to speak on the matter, oh master of who can speak on what matters.
Kushibo,
Please allow me to clarify: I certainly do not condone the human rights violations in NK; in fact, I find them obscene. My post was made simply to demonstrate that I find it rather offensive that an American should be running such a pontificating website when his own country has perpentrated human rights violations on a far wider scale.
You have addressed but one of the matters that I discussed. It is good to note that the US is curtailing its heinous “War on Drugs,” incepted by its disgraced criminal of a former president, Richard Nixon. In my mind, this absurd war, started by a criminal and perpetuated by successive fools, is a human rights violation of global proportions.
That a person can be jailed for possessing a bit of marijuana in that country cannot be justified by invoking a “transparent legal process that is rather open and is subject to change by a voting population.” This is a cynical statement in the extreme. John Stuart Mill warned of the dangers of the “tyranny of the majority” and this tyranny is rampant in the US. I am loathe to think of how many good people’s lives have been ruined by the imperial arrogance of the US.
The American War of Aggression in Vietnam is another appalling human rights violation of an epic scale. Some 4 million Vietnamese were bombed to death by cowardly American bombers (one of them who is now a senior congressman). MacNamarra, in his autobiography, admitted that he was a war criminal.
The “secret war” and bombing of Cambodia is attributed by most historians as having delivered the Khmer Rouge into power in 1975. After the KR was forced from Cambodia in 1979 by the Vietnamese (who truly did liberate a country from an appalling dictator), US sponsorship kept the KR in a seat in the UN until the early 90s!
Can you not see that the monster bombing of Pyongyang has given the North all the raw materials it needs for its propaganda machine for centuries to come?
Most people in the world are now able to see that the US has no claim to moral supremacy in the world today.
I find it strange that you addressed me as “oh master of who can speak on what matters.” I am simply expressing my opinion here. Do you object to this? Are you able to sustain a debate without resorting to name calling? Kim Jong Il may have started out with your attitude mate.
And just before you reply, I hope you can take time to read a summary of China’s critique of US human rights abuses: http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman030410.htm
Another matter that occurred to me: you stated, “for starters, the US prison population, large as it is, go there by a transparent legal process that is rather open.” Does this apply to those held in Guantanamo Bay?
I would sure love to see a website with satellite images of the US gulag system.
It may surprise you, Mr Atkins, but I’m not a big fan of Guantanamo Bay. But if we’re going to play the game of moral equivalency, may I offer up that I can paint a big-ass sign and go anywhere I want in this country I’m in and have big loud protest against Guantanamo Bay, and I won’t be arrested. Isn’t that amazing! Is that true in the DPRK? Is that true in the PRC?
Second in this round of moral equivalency, if I were to make a defense of Guantanamo Bay, I could easily point out that the people who are there started out as enemy combatants, not people who merely pissed off the regime or threatened it by questioning its ideals or its actions. Is that true in North Korea, Mr Atkins?
As for the Chinese critique, Mr Atkins, I don’t need to read it precisely because we have loads of groups in the United States that freely tell us much the same thing… all without fear of arrest. Is this true in the PRC, Mr Atkins?
But I did read it, and I found some of it quite laughable coming from Beijing. Things like “illegally transferring public wealth to elitist private hands,” something that is now rampant in glorious-to-be-rich China. Ditto for “stealing elections,” since China has no real system of elections to steal.
That’s strike two in your game of moral equivalency, Mr Atkins.
Strange, my second post was deleted despite the fact that there were no profanities in it; only criticisms of the US. Ironic that US citizens seem hypersensitive to criticism on a site such as this.
The hypocracy of the average American is as bewildering as it is hypocritical. I try to engage a matter of comparison here and I am censored on a site that criticises the censorship of DPRK.
Hypocrites. Hypocrites. Hypocrites.
Go on, delete this one too. Or, you could re-instate my second post with the offending sentence deleted with the reason why supplied…. your call admin.
” Translation here. North Korea even has its own nativity story in which Kim Jong Il was born on the sacred Mount Paektu under a mystical star.”
BLASPHEMY!
Everyone predistined for heaven knows that it was really a Jewish carpenter who was the only Son of God and only through Him can we reach the gates of Heaven. All should know that to deny this is to damn oneself to an eternity of living in Hell, where the imps of Satan shall torment you; the sulphur of hell forever curl your lungs and you shall be forever denied the love of God (a first century Jewish carpenter turned cult leader).
How dare the North Koreans try to usurp this most ostensible of truths?!?!
You do realize, Mr Atkins, that the owner of this blog is Jewish and has nothing invested in the New Testament account of Jesus, right?
You seem to be all over the map with your quixotic struggle against American windmills.
kushibo 5, troll 0. nothing to see here, folks.
Poor Peter seems confused about the purpose of this blog named One Free KOREA.
he has far deeper problems.
Kushibo,
You keep picking out one thing (eg: freedom of speech) and then award yourself home-runs or strikes or whatever. Please quote me on where I said that the human rights abuses in the US are equivalent to those in NK. I have never said that; you are reading too far into my intent.
I have lived in China for two years now and the thing I love the most about it is the personal freedom. I have certainly never had the same level of freedom here than I have in any Western country. Friends of mine from the US and Germany openly state the same thing.
A lovely Russian lady once told me that in Russia they say: “In the West you can say whatever you want, in the East you can do whatever you want.” I am sure this does not extend the People’s Paradise of NK however.
I am a staunch libertarian (not to be confused with Australian and US political nomeclature) and I do not condone human rights abuses wherever they occur. I just feel that there is an overtone of holier-than-thou on this website. I do not feel this is really justified coming from the clearly US standpoint of this website.
Kushibo, I see that you do not disagree that there are human rights abuses in the US, both at home and abroad, so there is no need to be overly defensive. You are dwelling on certain points allthewhile avoiding the main points that I have raised.
Peter, you enjoy a lot of personal freedom in China because you don’t do anything that would aggravate the Chinese government. Like raise the issue of Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the demolition of villages for the Three Gorges Dam or Tibeten independence. But then again, it’s hard to find out about these things with all the internet censorship. It’s fine to care about yourself, but what you’ll find here are people who care about a wider demographic than your ‘lovely Russian lady friend’, or your friends from the US and Germany.
Why don’t you make some friends with Falun Gong activists or NK defectors and see what they have to say?
I agree that there are human rights abuses in every nation of the world. But every fool and his dog can see that it’s a matter of extent.
How many forced abortions and summary executions have your friends experienced? Wouldn’t you say it’s a little extreme to be beaten and incarcerated for denouncing a leader who watches over the starvation of his people while he enjoys one of the most lavish lifestyles humanly possible?
The proportion of incarcerated people is a different issue. There might be a lower percentage of North Koreans in gulags, but which is more terrifying: 1 year in an American prison for larceny, or an undefined amount of time in a North Korean gulag for the same offense? Does that mean the North Korean system is better?
Like raise the issue of Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the demolition of villages for the Three Gorges Dam or Tibeten independence. But then again, it’s hard to find out about these things with all the internet censorship.
I raise such matters with the locals often. In fact, last night I was talking with a girl who is active in the CCP and in her final year of political science at uni.
I have a very, very good Tibetan friend who I have spoken to at length with about Tibetan separatism whilst I was in Western Sichuan; this may surprise you, but he and many other Tibetans do not support a split with China. They realise that Tibet would be an economic basket case without Chinese union.
I have a good friend here who is a lawyer who talks about nothing else but how much he hates the CCP.
I asked my travel agent and good mate, who had just returned from Taiwan, if it was a separate country, to which he more or less replied in the affirmative.
Funny you should talk about one year in a US prison. There is an American refugee getting around town here who spent a year in one for DUI. He was gang raped repeatedly there and displays several symptoms of severe psychological trauma.
However, I hope you are not reading into my criticisms of the US here as a defence of NK. I most certainly don’t defend North Korean record on human rights in any way, shape or form.
One of my colleagues here is most vociferous about the effect that Mao’s “Great Leap Forward (ie: backward)” had on her family.
So, yes I do raise these issues with the locals on a frequent basis and, more often than not, they are fairly critical of their own history and government.
kushibo said,
May 26, 2010 @ 4:14 am
You do realize, Mr Atkins, that the owner of this blog is Jewish and has nothing invested in the New Testament account of Jesus, right?
Strange, he seems to be familiar with the term “Nativity Story;” a term that is peculiar to Christianity.
Peter:
I live in China too. You’re right. There are a lot of personal freedoms here. In fact, police tend to give foreigners a wide berth intentionally and are much less scary than cops in the States. I think a lot of the China bashing on this site goes overboard. The lives of everyday Chinese are improving rapidly–and, as far as I know, forced abortions and the like are no longer common place.
The same can’t be said for North Koreans. It is a society that is stuck in time from 50 years ago–with less food and more misery. If you are in China, a visit can be arranged pretty easily if you’d like to see for yourself (though you’ll have to look beyond the focus of the friendly minders you’ll be assigned and the actors systematically placed at locations you visit–ever seen a line of 200 people for a bus before in China? Ever seen upper crust Chinese scrounging to finish every last grain of rice on their plate?). This is a country where millions are on the verge of starvation due to gross mismanagement–where dissidents are discouraged because the leadership will kill and imprison all family members of dissidents.
To equate or compare it with the U.S. or China (unless you’re talking 30+ years ago China) is just knuckleheaded.
Even for the lowlifes of U.S. society that end up in prison, there is no place they’d rather be than America. You don’t see them fleeing for Mexico or Canada–don’t think they’d want to go to North Korea either. Maybe Europe…. how about sending them on a big ship on a one way trip to Amsterdam. I’m sure that’d be great, mate.
Mr. Atkins, why do you say this of Joshua:
“Strange, he seems to be familiar with the term “Nativity Story;†a term that is peculiar to Christianity.”
You mean that only Christians would know the expression “Nativity Story”? That reasoning seems strange.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I don’t think FLG activists or NK defectors would benefit from any contact with Peter.
As Biff correctly noted, foreigners have far more freedoms than PRC nationals. Forced abortions may be waning, but family planning is alive and well. If you read Chinese, you would know that. Financial and legal penalties remain in place for Han who have a second child. As a foreigner, it is easy for you to move to a different city. Your new employer takes care of everything. For Chinese, who are required to have hukous, or residency permits, it is not. Ever notice children on the street during the day when they should be in school? Well, they’re not allowed to attend local schools if their parents aren’t legally registered in the city. Ever been to a hospital? Chinese hospitals are not legally required to treat patients regardless of ability to pay, and payment is often demanded before services are rendered. Not a problem for you, spoiled, insured, overpaid foreigner pampered by personal freedoms, but it is an obstacle to needed health care for many Chinese. Wish to visit Sunday services of a foreign congregation? No problem for you, but probably illegal for your Chinese friends.
Amazing how someone like Peter can achieve native-like proficiency in English yet display gross ignorance of the cultures of the English-speaking countries.
This guy smells like fenqing spirit, with apologies to Nirvana. Long before the advent of the Fifty Cent Party, English Chinese propaganda outlets, such as the China Daily, used to publish letters to the editor in support of Party policies signed by foreign authors. But there were always dead giveaway errors in logic or reasoning that revealed the real author. Editors at the CD told me this was the case.
Mmmm, Sonagi makes some good points. Foreigners probably have a better time of it here than Chinese–actually, this point probably goes for anyone with a decent bit of cash, which is including more and more Chinese, though still many more poor folks. Also, there’s certainly a fair bit of crud that goes along with strong Chinese central control. Nevertheless, I stand by the assertion that life is getting better quickly for most Chinese–which is now being facilitated by that central control. Opening up China overnight is not possible–and really probably would not benefit most Chinese. You can rail against the Hu Kou system or family planning or paying for medical care, but there is logic to most government policies here… maybe even blocking facebook, thought I have trouble conceding that one. In any case, China is at least moving in the right direction.
I just don’t think NK is comparable… they’re marching into oblivion now.
Slim… did you read about fenqing sprit and the Fi’ty Cent Party in the CD too? It’s not really good reading, it’s true. In any case, it’s not as if anyone takes the Chinese print media too seriously…
Oh, there is indeed logic and motive behind CCP policies. What’s a matter for debate is what the logic and motives are.
It’s not only money and power. In China (and its neighbors, Korea and Japan), foreigners are sometimes handled with kid gloves and not subjected to rougher treatment that local peers would receive under the same circumstances. Let me give you one personal example. The Taiwanese owners of the international school where I worked in China were feuding over control. The feuding turned violent when Big Sis had little bro’s righthand man jumped and beaten severely. Little Bro paid back Big Sis by having her son jumped and beaten. Big sis escalated the conflict by bringing a a goon squad of 20 men dressed in black t-shirts and trousers to campus one Sunday morning. The family screamed at each other while the entire Chinese staff stood ramrod straight with petrified expressions. A Japanese teacher who had witnessed company thuggery firsthand in Japan stepped forward and angrily told her to get the men off campus. I gingerly approached and politely implored her to think of the school kids who would be returning to the campus dormitories that afternoon. She shrugged me off and kept arguing until the first carload of kids drove by, their bewildered faces pressed against the windows. Then she made the bad men disappear. None of the Chinese staff dared to say anything to the feuding family during the quarrel.
?????????? Jews have a long-running history with the Nativity Story. I realize it was traditionally Easter when they kept their heads down, but there also was the European tradition of Nittelsnicht in which Torah study was prohibited on Xmas Eve and elders guarded the shul in superstitious terror of the mayhem this one Jewish child had brought.
This tradition died out in the early 1940s. G-d knows why.
The same can’t be said for North Koreans. It is a society that is stuck in time from 50 years ago–with less food and more misery.
Agree.
Even for the lowlifes of U.S. society that end up in prison, there is no place they’d rather be than America. You don’t see them fleeing for Mexico or Canada–don’t think they’d want to go to North Korea either.
Read my previous anecdote. There is an American refugee hanging around this city. He has no intention of ever going back there and he advises everyone else not to go.
Amazing how someone like Peter can achieve native-like proficiency in English yet display gross ignorance of the cultures of the English-speaking countries.
I am a fifth generation white Australian.
Forced abortions may be waning, but family planning is alive and well. If you read Chinese, you would know that. Financial and legal penalties remain in place for Han who have a second child.
I do read Chinese, but one doesn’t need to be able to read to know this; people will tell you. Let put this to you: If there weren’t a tough government in China that could make tough decisions relating to family planning then the world would have something like a half-a-billion more people to feed. Perhaps China should be given more credit for managing 20% of the world’s population than they are given?
The average Chinese lives far, far, far better than the average Indian. India frequently touts itself as the world’s largest democracy, somehow I don’t think this is a good endorsement of democracy at all.
China is the world’s largest oligarchy and I think it should be given a bit of a pat on the back for how much better off their 1/5 of the world is doing in comparison to the Indian government’s share of the world populace. Strange how the Indian government never seems to find itself under fire from self-righteous Americans.
Ever been to a hospital? Chinese hospitals are not legally required to treat patients regardless of ability to pay, and payment is often demanded before services are rendered.
Good thing that no such thing happens in the US.
English Chinese propaganda outlets, such as the China Daily, used to publish letters to the editor in support of Party policies signed by foreign authors. But there were always dead giveaway errors in logic or reasoning that revealed the real author.
This is not what I do for a living mate. However, I concede that the CD is largely a government mouthpiece.
I did a search on the internet, but I am unable to determine what you mean by “fenqing spirit” (with apologies to Nirvana). Please explain.
I really don’t have time to go a few rounds with someone so willfully ignorant, but I will grant that from this statement…
… I must concede that the Chinese are good at managing and controlling their population.
Of course, like so many other sausage-making processes, it’s very unpleasant for everyone to see. No one likes things like this and this, but if we’d all recognize that other countries also have bad stuff, then it’ll all be okay.
Hey, isn’t this the North Korea FAQ? How did we get on a discussion of the merits of China? Seriously, if this were just some post, I wouldn’t mind the digression, but it’s a FAQ that people might actually seek out in order to get information.
So might I suggestion we pull up stakes and go to where this is relevant? Maybe Joshua can provide a “China versus America: Which is the world’s worst
planetcountry?” post that this can spill into. If you don’t, then I will.?????????? Jews have a long-running history with the Nativity Story. I realize it was traditionally Easter when they kept their heads down, but there also was the European tradition of Nittelsnicht in which Torah study was prohibited on Xmas Eve and elders guarded the shul in superstitious terror of the mayhem this one Jewish child had brought.
Yes, but it is a “term” (or shall we say concept, myth) peculiar to Christianity. Christians may be familiar with Puja, but this form of fire sacrifice is peculiar to Hinduism.
A previous poster, Kushibo, said: “You do realize, Mr Atkins, that the owner of this blog is Jewish and has nothing invested in the New Testament account of Jesus, right? “
My reply to this perhaps did not sufficiently relay my intent: I was interested in why someone who has nothing invested in the Christian texts would invoke an article from the said texts in support of his argument against NK.
I was very interested in finding out more about Nittelsnicht as I’d not heard of it before. A Google search however, reveals nothing. Are you able to point me in the right direction for further reading?
For quite an amusing exerciese in comparison and contrast, have a look at the video on the link below. Compare the way this American is handled at the hands of the Chinese police with the way he would have been handled for the exact same behaviour in his homeland.
I think that the police in countries such as the US and Australia have a lot to learn about human rights from their Chinese counterparts.
http://chinageeks.org/2010/04/what-an-idiot-foreigner-shows-us-about-xenophobia-and-sexism-in-china/
I really don’t have time to go a few rounds with someone so willfully ignorant
It’s a pity that you feel you must resort to far-reaching assumptions in the form of insults when answering me. I have certainly not treated you, nor anyone else on this forum, with the same contempt with which you treat me.
Hey, isn’t this the North Korea FAQ?
Yes it is! But I never got an answer to my original question, which was: can’t you see the role that the US’s (historically appalling) foreign policy has played in creating states like North Korea and the Khmer Rouge (or Democratic Kampuchea as it was known)?
The problem, Mr Atkins, is that it’s clear from the moral equivalence paragraph following your original question, that you’re not really interested in the answer.
At any rate, the North Korean government is ultimately responsible for their own behavior, and their ability to stay in power for a whole sixty-year kanji is the result of Beijing’s acts, not Washington’s or Seoul’s.
So then Washington’s foreign policy is in no way helping the NK regime stay in power?
No, I would not consider it to pass the necessary-and-sufficient test.
The bombing of Pyongyang; the embargoes; the Cold War clandestine operations; the killing of 4 million Vietnamese; the current invasion of Iraq … I could go on here… but actions by Washington such as these are not helping the NK propaganda machine, which in turn keeps the regime firmly in power, at all?