History will judge us on NK

ARTICLE: N. Korea escalates 'cult of Kim' to counter West's influence: In a time of famine and poverty, nearly 40 percent of the country's budget is spent on Kim-family deification, By Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor, January 03, 2007

Great piece that highlights the crucial difference between Iran's soggy authoritarianism and North Korea's over-the-top Stalinist totalitarianism.

The former is breachable by the soft kill of connectivity, but the latter is too determined to topple slowly, because it's so brittle and so top-heavy that when the emperor is finally seen in his nakedness, this thing collapses much like Ceausescu's Romania.

Naturally, Kim will do everything in his power to prevent any such slippery slope from beginning, and this article points out his extreme willingness to do just that: as famine still ravages parts of the countryside, 40 percent of the visible (we're only guessing at the take from his vast criminal enterprises) government budget is now spent on maintaining and expanding the Kim cult of personality (actually not that much beyond Stalin, as many just never realized how vast that cult became by his death in 1953). In 1990, the cult share of the budget was one-fifth. Now it's 40 percent.

Kim has no future in any Korea other than this one dominated by his cult, which is why we won't be able--in all likelihood--to talk him down (now the Chinese...). Instead, we'll likely need to force him out (and the Chinese...) and there all this cultism works in our favor. No need to de-Baathify or de-Nazify. Just get rid of the man on top.

It isn't quite realized [in the West] how much a threat the penetration of ideas means. They [Kim's regime] see it as a social problem that could bring down the state," says Brian Myers, a North Korean expert at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.

Kim's replacement of the party with the military as his main structure of regime support, combined with the new reliance on religous tie-ins and racial superiority, say to me that the meltdown scenario with Kim, where he takes as many of us as he can when he realizes it's all falling apart, is very real.

It's not that I don't think the soft-kill option can ultimately work on Kim, it's that I fear too much that route can only end badly, as in war triggered and nukes flying.

Thus with Kim, but not with Iran, I see the need for some preemptive action by the most incentivized player--China.

History will, I believe, judge us primarily on the possibility of this desired scenario and what we did--or did not do--to make it happen in a timely fashion.

Thanks to Wesley Fredericks for sending this.

Comments

[Anonymous]

no, sam, that won't work. the relationship is too psychotic. S Korea can't see straight on this issue at all.

now letting China lead, that's a different story...

[TM Lutas]

As someone who passionately fundraised, argued, and politicked for a new Romania, the idea that once Kim is gone all will be well is simply not tenable. Ceausescu was replaced by Iliescu and he unleashed men with clubs and rebar (supposedly miners but there were plenty of SRI among them by my own personal observation) on the streets of the capital (eventually they 'invaded' four times).

It took several years, a lot of work, and a great deal of participation by the full range of society for Romania to come halfway around and it's still not home free.

But Romania never thought that running steel cable through prisoners in order to make sure they didn't run was an accepted penological technique. The generals who give the orders to do that sort of thing will not even have the decency of an Iliescu.

[Tom Barnett]

A very realistic analysis, TM.