Nicholas Eberstadt—as far as I know, the only non-state entity to carpet bomb Cheong Wa Dae—looks at North Korea’s road to ruin under Kim Jong-il. Read it in its entirety: here’s just a sample:
Kim Jong Il did not immiserate his country in a fit of absent-mindedness. Quite the contrary: It was a direct but incidental consequence of a grand strategy he relentlessly pursued.
His father, the Great Leader, may have been a monster — it was he who launched the Korean War and perfected the North Korean police-terror state, among other things — but he nevertheless retained a measure of peasant cunning and pragmatism: Kim Il Sung recognized that people would work harder and better if you paid them more, for example, and he wrote as much in his collected “Works.”
The Dear Leader, by contrast, would have none of this. In his ideologized worldview, granting North Korean workers material incentives and blandishments would risk fueling “egotism” and “bourgeois thinking” — potentially lethal afflictions for North Korea’s pristine socialist system. From Kim Jong Il’s standpoint, the survival of the juche (self-reliance) state depended on extirpating — or better yet, completely preventing — any such noxious attitudes in the population under his command.
“Reform” and “opening,” he proclaimed, were regime slayers for socialist states.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s pretty clear the KJI regime’s top priority was staying in power and his successor regime is probably unchanged. Kim Il Sung was the same but in his day economic development was both possible and actually achieved, at least in the first 2 decades.
I don’t know if I’d put all the blame for the Korean War on KIS either. Rhee Sung Man wanted war and did plenty to provoke it.
Whatever Rhee’s shenanigans, it’s clear that at the end of the day, it was the Norks who launched a massive invasion across the demarcation line, that they did so with the deliberate intent to conquer the ROK and that ROK provocations played no part in the decsion or its implementation (except as a smokescreen for their aggression in their own propaganda and the rantings of the usual suspect revisionists).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a parallel between North Korea’s supposed higher productivity in the 60s and 70s and the amount of Soviet aid they were receiving? And that likewise, that ‘productivity’ fell as Soviet aid was cut back and the USSR went out of existence?
Regarding Rhee’s ‘shenanigans’, the DPRK did promote and assist anti-Rhee guerrilla campaigns in the ROK, whereas the ROK and U.S. had no idea that there was an active anti-Communist guerrilla campaign going on in nearby Hwanghae-do province. Furthermore, the KPA was armed, equipped, and trained by the USSR for the coming invasion, whereas the ROK was still transitioning from a Constabulary force to an under-trained and still ill-equipped Army. Whatever Rhee’s rhetoric, the fact remains his armed forces were demonstrably not prepared for a defensive war, much less an offensive drive north. So how much Syngman Rhee actually ‘did’ to provoke the war is open to question.
Wait…for a minute there I thought this article was about Obama.
iMe — Oh no, we’re not allowed to notice the similarities between the Remarkable Leader and the Great Successor. Even if they’re amusing.
That s*** did what s*** supposed to do. Stink up the whole continent.
Why expect better from the son of the s*** father, Kim IlSung, the s***tty ass?
I am not even going to waste my time talking about the worst Koreans ever lived.
Do you guys mean Obama the Fascist Egotist Who Suppresses Us All, or Obama the Stalinist Commie Who Will Socialize Everything? Which one outlaws “bourgeois thinking”? (really, guys? Now he’s anti-elitist?)
Or is this, as I suspect, a shot at Obama the Blank Slate Onto Which We Project All Our Fears?
what? who? i was just talking about this “transformative” teleprompter dude, err, i mean president who wants the power to detain, torture and/or just assassinate american citizens without due process. maybe i should give him some leeway here since it’s not like this wall street buttboy was a constitutional “scholar” or anything. *cough*affirmative action*coughcough*
“Analysis: What’s the plan if North Korea collapses?”
I don’t believe it. What else would China tell South Korea? That she was planning to take over North Korea and restore ancient Chinese territory as soon as the opportunity presented itself?
If China were really interested in seeing the two Koreas reunified, then I think she would be working secretly with South Korea to plan for such an event.
gbevers wroteL
Hey, antient Chinese territory was only upto the great Wall. The northeastern Asia had not been Chinese territory for the most period of Chinese history.
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Best Dishes.
Then, again, China has regarded territory they formerly controlled as being rightfully theirs. So, back in late 1950 and early 1951, they controlled the Korean peninsula almost to Suwon, past Wonju and south of Gangneung.
It doesn’t take much to claim territory – Serbia claimed some land in Croatia based on the fact that one of their poets had written a poem about that territory.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Dokdo is Irish
Top ‘o the mornin’ to you
And don’t forget that Koreans are the Irish of the Orient.
Well, enough Christmas silliness….
Here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
Q wrote:
Yes, exactly. The whole reason they built the Great Wall was to protect their land from nomadic invaders, who posed such a grave threat.
(that’s what the Disney movie ‘Mulan’ was about.)
China was conquered twice by nomadic tribes, Mongols and then Manchus.
(though these days China claims that the nomads were all “Chinese”, so they were never technically conquered. go figure.)
Merry Christmas to all, by the way.
Th’art a scholar; let us therfore eat and drink.
Almost 700 years of the last millennium of mainland China were colonial history of Chinese ruled by Khitan, Manchu, and Mongols.
Liao: 916-1125 (209 yrs)
Jin: 1115-1234 (119 yrs)
Yuan: 1271-1368 (97 yrs)
Qing: 1644-1911 (268 yrs)
No way they were Chinese.
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