2:57PM
The real suicide watch
Friday, October 13, 2006 at 2:57PM Interesting analysis of long-time North Korea watcher who says the Kim family's ideology is far closer to fascism, with its emphasis on racial purity, than to Stalinism (which it more obviously resembles, to include the severe disconnectedness with the outside world).OP-ED: "Kim Jong-Il's Suicide Watch: To understand North Korea, think hard about fascist Japan," by B.R. Myers, New York Times, 12 October 2006, p. A27.
Consider that ideology and the lack of alternative power centers in North Korea (unlike Iran), and Ahmadinejad's clumsy bluster scares less than Kim's spooky silence.
Reader Comments (5)
What an astonishing article. No dates attached to it at all that would help pin down any messy details. Instead it's a 2 minute hate piece that does not connect this racial theory to the past, does not provide enough context to review.
When I would read about North Korean prison guards routinely killing the babies of repatriated border jumpers, I thought it was just because they hated the chinese. Surely a generalized racial hatred would have been noted and accounted for in our dealings with them. But apparently not.
When did N. Korea develop such a severe racial theory? How long has this been apparent to specialists? Why haven't we been hearing this until now? Does this recast Clinton as the Neville Chamberlain II? Were the dots connected in classified briefings up to now and the rubes (that's us) been kept ignorant of DPRK racism because it would have disturbed the realpolitik?
Labels matter and North Korea's political coloration matters quite a bit both because it will affect how we do the postconflict and it will help us to maintain sustainability in whatever we're going to end up doing.
Neither China or South Korea really wants to resolve the problem of North Korea because both of them see the post conflict period consuming so much in the way of their own resources that it would throw both countries off their current track to first world status.
South Koreans have enjoyed first world lifestyles for maybe a decade or so. They can remember what it was like to be poor. If they had to absorb the north the way West Germany had to absorb the east, many South Koreans would never experience life as part of the first world middle class again in their lifetimes.
The Chinese are on track to create the largest first world middle class on earth and are afraid that millions of starving Koreans streaming over the border would disrupt their plans.
Since North Korea seems to be too big a problem for any of the neighbors to deal with, how about we break the problem down into more manageable pieces. China wants a buffer in between it and the connected, open South Korea. How big a buffer do they want and how large a chunk of real estate are the Chinese willing to manage. How many people would South Korea feel they could absorb without plunging back down the economic ladder so far that it would be another generation before they would ever see today's level of prosperity? How many miles north of their current border would take in that many people?
For the rest of the country, I am sure that Russia would like a piece. The Europeans and Canadians are happy to tell us what an awful job of nation building we are doing in Iraq. Here would be a perfect opportunity for them to show us how to do it the right way. If Brazil and India want a piece, we ought to let them take it.
The only Core countries that I think ought to refrain from taking over a piece of North Korea are Japan, for historical reasons, and the United States because our presence will encourage everybody else to slack off and hand the problems to us.
After ten years with absolute sovereignty of their little piece of Korea, everybody can get together again and decide what, if anything, they want to do to change things or to hold onto their little laboratories of Sys Admin.
Mark: really interesting, but nothing about ethanol ;-)
but seriously, Tom's emphasis lately in situations like this has been on racial/cultural/national groups. could breaking them up really work? maybe with abused, under-developed N Korea. maybe the administrative model of post WW2 Germany could work.
in my mind, more in keeping with Tom's ideas would be a multi-national SysAdmin force for the first few years: S Korean, Chinese, and Russian, at least. Indians? Americans?
the part most like your idea would be the G20 Int'l Reconstruction Fun. what is N Korea costing your economy right now? China - in counterfeiting, etc? US - 30k troops in S Korea, missile shield development? Russia? Japan? what's the humanitarian angle worth? this is where we lever on the EU. everybody pony up, share the cost, let's get this thing fixed and move on to shrinking the Gap for real without hemorrhaging for outliers in otherwise stable, globalizing areas.
TM, I'm lost on your apparent outrage. This analysis isn't particularly new WRT Kim dynasty. Been there all along. Just not well explored in West because NK in general not explored. Experts on NK have always noted this tendency, which has always made NK an odd socialist duck.
Sean
No ethanol because that is how you fix Africa, not Korea. ;)
Sure, a multi-national Sys Admin force would be nice. Where is it? Anna Kournikova showing up on my doorstep with a letter of permission from my wife, a special dispensation from the Pope and a lusty twinkle in her eye would be nice too and almost as likely.
While we are waiting for that multi-national Sys Admin Force to be created, we ought to consider what we might be able to do if North Korea implodes or goes over the line anytime soon. In any event, rather than arguing among the participants how the Sys Admin force should act, let each of the players try what they want in their own area of responsibility. Some things are going to work better than others. Lets get some real world data and experience on that. There will be plenty of opportunity to interact as the various occuping powers coordinate things like the movement of people, products, food and energy between their zones. Maybe some kind of multinational Sys Admin organization would evolve out of the Korean occupation coordinating process. Isn't that basically how NATO was created?
Then we can get started building some ethanol plants in Africa so that the Core would give a damn if that whole continent sank into the ocean.