Kim Jong Un has proved a shrewd negotiator, staving off any attack on his growing nuclear capabilities until they crossed the barrier into practicality.
In the northeastern corner of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), otherwise known as North Korea, there is located a prison complex reserved for the most heinous of crimes in the Hermit Kingdom, any sign of opposition to the state. The “crime” could comprise a casual remark reported immediately to the security agencies by a friend to whom the remark was made. Or the “friend” may have invented such a remark, to get into the good books of the authorities by unmasking a traitor to the Kim monarchy that controls the levers of authority in that country. The culprit is bundled off to the prison, where he is thrown into a cell that has only a cold floor, with no bed, leave alone a mattress or a blanket. Soon he develops frostbite, but despite the obvious signs of that, is forced to work in the biting field of ice that is that particular location in the DPRK. His legs get eaten away by frostbite and he is soon hobbling around, but nevertheless forced to work until he collapses. Once he does, the body is not taken away but left to remain in the ice, ultimately to be washed into the nearby ocean waters. While he survives, the victuals served are not, to put it euphemistically, of Michelin standard.
Mouldy food infested with maggots is his daily fare. Insects are another staple, meant to be consumed raw while still alive. Occasionally, foreign visitors are permitted entry, to see how “enemies of the state” are being looked after under the rule of the Kim Monarchy. If vegetarian, the problem is severe, for minders in the DPRK have no concept of vegetarian food. Even the rice noodles are laced with bits of pork, as that is concerned within the definition of vegetarian. Either the noodles get eaten, bits of pork included, or miss lunch or dinner, because there is only a single main dish with no provision for more. Watching the grossly underfed and maltreated prisoners go about their daily lives (if lives is the correct word to describe their situation) is to witness a film so dystopian that no nightmare could in future match it. For the prisoners, death is not an unwelcome arrival but a welcome guest. As for his family, the spouse if young and pretty gets used as recreation by soldiers in the military before committing suicide or being killed through extremes of physical abuse. The children are packed off to state orphanages, where they are taught to hate their parents as traitors and to spit on their photographs. Eventually, the best will be admitted into the North Korean Army, a force of fanatics who are prepared to give their lives for the glory of the Kim Monarchy.
They are reminiscent of the kamikaze pilots of Japanese Zero dive bombers during World War II, who would steer their aircraft down towards a capital ship of the US Navy, mouthing “Tenno Heika, Banzai” before they crash into the ship of the US Navy. Tenno means Emperor, who in Japan was in the past worshipped as having a divine bloodline, the model that the Kim dynasty has taken over from the otherwise hated Japanese. It must be admitted that the founder of the dynasty, Kim Il Sung, was a courageous resistance fighter against the Japanese, and assumed power in North Korea once the Korean War entered into an armistice in 1948, with the country split in two, the DPRK and the Republic of Korea (RoC), usually referred to as South Korea. Given his autocratic tendencies, it was no surprise that Kim let loose the concept that his bloodline was composed of a divine element that made his dynastic rule essential for North Korea. After his passage in 1994, Kim was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un, who passed away so that the baton of absolute power was passed on to Kim Jong Un, the present Emperor of North Korea. Kim Jong Un has proved a shrewd negotiator, staving off any attack on his growing nuclear capabilities until they crossed the barrier into practicality. North Korea is a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, like India, the US, Britain, France and Israel. Within North Korea, he has made it a criminal act for anyone to believe that the people of North Korea are not the luckiest persons in the world, as they are ruled by the Kim family.
North Korean soldiers have the fanaticism of Japanese forces, some of them. It was not through generosity that General Douglas MacArthur spared Emperor Hirohito. It was clear that harming the person and privileges of the Tenno would unleash a guerilla war against the US occupying forces. MacArthur had the good sense to understand that, and resisted efforts from the Pentagon to hold the Emperor accountable. To his credit, it must be said that Emperor Hirohito was by nature in favour of peace, and unhappy at the war that was begun by the Japanese navy in their attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The attack freed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Neutrality Act, and he unleashed the force of the US manufacturing juggernaut on the armies of Germany and Japan. Had Roosevelt been alive after World War II ended, it may have been possible to enter into a modus vivendi with the Soviet Union to keep the peace. However, he died before the war formally ended, and his successor Harry S. Truman loathed the Soviet Union, unleashing the security apparatus on what was then described as “Communist subversives” inside the US. Roosevelt could not have chosen a more different person than himself in Truman, just as Abraham Lincoln chose a Vice-President with closet racism.
Once he became US President after the assassination of Lincoln soon after the Civil War was won, Jackson snatched back the rights given to African Americans by the Emancipation Act. It took a hundred years more before African Americans universally throughout the US were given the vote, through the Civil Rights Acts of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s. The difference between North and South Korea illustrates the difference between a free and an enchained people, with South Korea a global economic powerhouse in comparison with impoverished North Korea. Given his ruthlessness, it is probable that Kim Jong Un will be succeeded by his progeny. Here it is pertinent to mention that Kim has ensured that his sister Kim Yo Jong has a position of responsibility second only to himself. She is capable and as steely as her brother is in maintaining the Kim dynasty. Both she and the wife of Kim, Ri Sol Ju, have the natural good looks of Korean women. Will the future see a transition from dictatorship to democracy as was witnessed in South Korea after President Chung Hee Park? Unlikely at present, but it must be remembered that even in 1986, it was considered “impossible” by Henry Kissinger that the Soviet Union would collapse. North Koreans merit the freedoms their kinsfolk have in the South, but a rebellion against the Kim dynasty is unlikely in view of the consequences of failure.
The North Korean prison network looks for more prey every day, and stands as a deterrent to change, If change were to come, it would have to be from within the governance mechanism of North Korea, with or without the dynasty getting involved in such a transition. Kim Jong Un was right when he went ahead with nuclear weapons. His example is likely to spawn more nuclear weapons states, given that only such weapons are a preventive against attack from outside for the ruling dynasty in North Korea, which has repeatedly said that its nuclear weapons are non-negotiable. President Trump, give up this delusion of yours that you can persuade the DPRK to surrender its nuclear weapons. Get real, Mr President.
