NEWS: Is North Korea Wobbling?

POLITICS: Is North Korea Wobbling?

Rumors have been plastered all over the Internet during the past couple of months about a possible upcoming implosion of Kim Jong Il’s North Korean lunacracy. The speculation has now reached the highest levels of government in the West, as well as the Guardian’s pages.

If that last bit is true, it’s the most compelling evidence of all. With the destruction of Saddam’s Baath regime North Korea is without hardly a doubt the nastiest place in the world.

Journalists are banned from the country, but Christopher Hitchens managed to finagle a visit. In The Nation he wrote "Everything you have read about the party state in North Korea is true or understated; from a purely human point of view it is the most literally oppressive and regimented society I have ever seen." Australia’s News Weekly quoted him describing it as "a society where individual life is absolutely pointless, and where everything that is not absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden.”

Yanking a dictator's portrait off a wall in a less oppressive (but still perfectly awful) place like Libya or Syria is ballsy enough. Doing the same in North Korea is simply unheard of. Until now, that is, if the report is true.

The implosion of inflexible totalitarian regimes usually appears on the outside to happen all of a sudden. They’re strong, but they’re brittle. They don’t bend. They break.

The speculation could all be nonsense. But the regime won’t last forever. They never, ever do.

Please, please, let it be so. I could use some good news for the holidays, and so could the world.

I dont think I would make that particular claim. I'm not scoffing at the situation in North Korea's place in the annals of nastiness. The place is a hell hole. In fact, I'd say it was easily worse than Iraq, as NK is much much colder, lacks any kind of electrical grid outside of the capital, is far more restrictive of its citizens than Iraq ever was and is run by a lunatic. However, compared to places like Sierra Leone, its at least relatively stable in that the North Korean people are not embroiled in a genocidal civil war being fought by armies of disease ravaged child soldiers.

Anyway, regardless of where it sits on the list of awful places, I do hope there is truth to these rumors and that the situation doesn't turn into a civil war or spread beyond the DMZ.


[Edited on Dec 23, 2004 by bruiser_boy]

I'd rather live somewhere insanely unstable where I had a little freedom than somewhere stable-ish where I had none. At least in an unstable country there is hope.


[Edited on Dec 24, 2004 by Keith]

Everyone thinks dictators are invulnerable, but the slightest squeeze can topple them. All it takes is the cojones to do it.

My friend who left Liberia shortly before the bloody civil war of the early 90's would probably disagree with you.

Wow a completely unstable country with a million man crack army, long range missle technology, and nukes.

Sounds like a winning combo to me.

Ah, isn't this about the time that some liberal is supposed to chime in with something like "at least N. Korea isn't ruled by George Bush" or "at least they have socialized medicine" or "at least they have full employment"? Sorry, I'm being cruel I know in attacking such a soft target.

Not so much cruel as baseless and lacking insight, perception, and focus. What we have here is an article pointing to the likely demise of what is potentially the most dangerous regime on the planet, something that pretty much the entire world can rejoice in, and you decide to play the "red vs blue" card. Not everything is about the US or our retarded-ass irrelevant and indistinguishable politics. Take your head out of your ass.

Anyway.

This is great news for the region. There's no doubt a large amount of instability in that country that will result from this, but they're starting from about as close to zero as you can get, so it's not like it can get much worse. Here's to hoping the replacement has at least an iota more sense than Kim and his cast. At the very least, I hope the Japanese will enjoy the respite from pointedly disturbing ICBM tests.

SirPsychoSexy: It isn't exactly stable with a government in place, I'm honestly not sure how much anarchy will degrade the situation.

Yeah, but the view from inside my ass is pleasing to me. I apologize with some degree of sincerity for being such an unpleasant reactionary, but I'm older than most of you. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s I was surrounded by libs and lefts who were always making excuses for the damned Soviet Union. I had a great aunt (sorta, actually she was my grandmother's first cousin) who was a retired college instructor. Back in the 1930s, after FDR established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, she and about 200 American academics went on a "fact-finding" tour of the Soviet Union. Needless to say they were gloriously snowed. She got to see all the wonders of the Soviet economy, the happy Russian and Ukrainian people and had supper with Russian intellectuals like Sergei Eisenstein. I was especially impressed by her having meet Eisenstein, having just watched "Battleship Potemkin" on PBS. Anyway, to the end of her long life (I think she was 97 when she died) whenever the Soviet Union would come up in conversation, she'd start nattering on about her trip and what a great guy Stalin was. After all, she'd been there and seen it all with her own eyes, hadn't she? Oddly enough, I don't recall her being particularly leftist otherwise.
To cite another incident that still rankles; in Feb. 1980 I walked into a bar in Northampton, Ma. only to overhear some professorial type sitting at the bar with a buddy say something like: "there's really no difference between the United States and the Soviet Union." God, I hate this moral equivalency stuff! I ignored him of course, being with friends and not wishing to make a scene, but I just hope that bastard has drunk himself to death mourning the demise of his favorite country. Bastards!!!

[Edited on Dec 24, 2004 2:35AM]

Sympathy and all that jazz, but not really. Quite simply, I don't care what sort of hippie crap you've had to put up with in the past. I'm a political science major, and believe me, I've put up with the same quantity of bullshit from both sides of the fence, and you're not exaclty showing your best face with comments like that. I don't wave the flag of moral equivalancy myself, but I will hoist one for recognizing there are two sides to any given issue - that is, after all, what a discussion is. If you're not going to recognize other points of view, there's really no point in continuing to interact with other people, and there's certainly no point in inviting flames to a topic that's been relatively benign so far. As someone once said, "you can't claim the high horse and take the low road."

If it is, i wonder what the repurcussions will be for South Korea because i'm liivng in South Korea right now.

Being flamed doesn't really bother me, after all this is only a semi-serious forum at best. I can certainly see the advantage of seeing all sides of a question, but serious people eventually do have to take a position about serious subjects. The Cold War was serious indeed, and those individuals who persisted in believing in the Soviet Union clearly picked the wrong side. I'm a bit of a flag waver and I'm always more inclined to favor the U.S. over any other country. That does not mean I'm completely blind to our national faults. Take me as I am; or not, as you may choose.
Speaking of that fact-finding trip to Russia, does anybody know anything about it? My great aunt implied that it was at least semi-official and there seems to have been quite a few people involved, but I've never been able to find out anything about it, other than what she told me. I'm curious.

Pabbott: I really don't care what you think of being flamed, I don't want to see another thread hijacked by Coulter and Franken. Yes, we eventually have to pick a side, but wisdom comes from the recognition of fault - realize that you don't know all the answers, nor all the info, and don't preclude other conclusions. The point of discussion is not just to enforce your view, but to understand others views and incorporate what information and perspective they can offer into your own world view. That's how we grow as individuals, by expanding our knowledge and accepting the fact that we might be wrong, even about the things we hold closest.

Anyway. Didn't mean to attack you specifically, I've seen too many threads recently hijacked by the Red vs. Blue bullshit, so while you were the catalyst, this wasn't meant to single you out.

</rant>

Back to the thread, my appologies to the poster (and I recognize the hypocrisy here, thank you. )

[Edited on Dec 24, 2004 by r3z]

well if we actually decided to go to war with them , we wouldn't need to lie about WMD's cause we know they have them right???..but of course if we did that , then we would bring on armageddon resulting from all the nukes splayed around the globe which of course would make all the fundamentalist psychos happy because they would think the bible was coming true when in reality we are doing it to ourselves...i say it again..."God Hates Us All"

oh , i forgot to say..go see Team America..it says it better than I ever could.....

oh christ. This will be just the excuse we need to invade.

But it really would be nice to see it go.
so conflicted.

SO you say in a post below that youre older than most of us.. well could you ever so kindly grow the fuck up already . No its not cruelty youre displaying, its childishness. I was reading this thread thinking it was interesting and here you come waving your 'red vs. blue' banner and taking cheap potshots at everyone who doesnt share your particular political ideology. This news isnt about the States- you made it so. Not all of us are American here and not all of us give a shit about your country's internal political climate. If you cant have a rational discussion without waving your flag and throwing insults, then kindly leave.

so why did america have to go into Iraq with bombs and bullets?

The people will always break free of an oppressive regime if allowed the opportunity. the sanctions thoroughly weakened their abilit to resist.

It looks like Korea will be brought down from within and this is the best way to end totalitarianism, unfortunately, i can predict america and various other neo liberal nations and institutions rushing in to take advantage of the power vacume to the detriment of the people of korea. If they would be allowed to sort out their own futures on their own, the result would be far more stable and desirable than an ideology imposed from abroad for the benefit of others.

When Kim Jong Il's regime collapses we are going to see the U.S. corporations flooding in to try to buy up as many resources as cheaply as possible. this is Not a good thing.

What are we going to squeeze them with? Hugs?

Yes, "if allowed the opportunity." Most dictators prefer not to allow that opportunity. Note the totalitarian state.

Perhaps not, but there are viable options to spending a quarter of a trillion dollars the bomb and bullet technique. $10 billion spent on manipulating regime change from within probably works when combined with continued financial and political pressure. It's not as simpleminded as the black and white bullets or hugs model you frame.



[Edited on Dec 24, 2004 by Adroitbeing]

The squeeze can come from inside their own country, in fact, it's extremely desirable that this happens, if a dictator is toppled before the people are strong enough to oppose him themselves they are likely to be hostile to an invading force no matter how noble the invadors goals are (they rarely are noble)


"if allowed the opportunity" was in reference to international interference or the interference of an interested emperialist.

Btw, with reference to history, the trend is the more totalitarian the regime and the tighter the grip they attempt to hold over the population, the more likely there is to be an uprising unless there are envoronmental elements preventing so (for eample debilitating famine)

Not if the regime is Stalinist. Stalinism is the most effective tool of political oppression ever designed, which is why Saddam Hussein used it as the model for his Baath regime. The people of the Soviet Union weren't able to tear their own government to pieces until the state had been substantially and willingly weakened by its own leaders.

Other equally oppressive regimes like Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia were only demolished by foreign invasion.