So, a question to ask is do the North Korean people even want reform, or can we not know for sure?
The Japanese (soldiers at least) seemed pretty dedicated to their ideology during WW2. I don’t know if North Koreans are or not though. the cult of Stalin was pretty entrenched, but they still had reforms after he died. Not that North Korea is going to reform, just to show it is possible even when the public believe in the cult of personality.
I have read several books on North Korea over the years and a couple of concepts come up more than once.
For one the entire north is deluded under massive amounts of misinformation and propaganda (which is obvious). But due to the infiltration of cell phones and VHS tapes, people are realizing the outside world isn’t nearly as bad as the north says they are. Supposedly people are waking up to the fact that they’ve been lied to their whole lives.
Also the famine of the 90s made people realize the gov. really doesn’t care about them or know how to deal competently with problems. So supposedly that led to widespread disillusionment.
But I don’t think there have been any kinds of riots in North Korea. If there were, I doubt they would get out anyway.
I really don’t know what’ll happen. Hopefully it is an improvement, but who knows.
Oak, let it be said that the first thing I thought of when I heard of Kim’s death was our recent mini-debate in the Pit on whether we needed to show respect to everyone who died, no matter how bad they were.
Let the record reflect that I said…tramp the dirt down.
I recently read a book compiled from NoKo refugee accounts, and a physician who escaped across into China said that one of the first things she saw on the other side was a bowl of meat and rice just sitting on the ground in a Chinese peasant farmer’s backyard. She realized then that dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.
OTOH, this mysterious Kim Jong-un apparently does have the advantage of education abroad. (In Switzerland, where the dogs eat better than peasants in China.)
Imagine him and Kim striking up a conversation while waiting in line at the pearly gates. That’d be one for the ages. And potentially, a band name.
And a more general question occurs to me. The leader, and his inner circle, must know the unbelievable degree of bullshit they are shoveling. The seven-holes-in-one, and so many other things, they have to know those are lies, right? Meanwhile, the people at the bottom of the pyramid, the farmers, doctors, and such, appear to buy into it all wholeheartedly. (Although Wesley Clark’s post calls that into question.) So my question is, is there a sharp dividing line, a wall of secrecy between knowing everything and knowing nothing; or is it something more gradual? As these tales of the Leaders exploits or the country’s good fortune get concocted and spread to the masses, does each person believe them a little more, or is there a defined point where they go from bogus to gospel?
i agree that now is not the time for simplistic thinking.
Simply saying “Kim Jong-Il was batshit insane” does nothing to help us figure out what is really going on. Yes, Kim Jong-Il was pretty much the definition of a bad guy. That aside, the military buildup does actually make sense from the North Korean perspective. They’ve had the world’s largest military at their doorstep, with everything they have aimed at them…for fifty years. No country is going to chill, or even have a chance to evolve normally, in that situation. Indeed, from their perspective they see the military buildup as the only way to survive in a hostile neighborhood. It’s also important to acknowledge that in those early days, nobody knew which way it was going to go. North Korea’s development indicators were on par with South Koreas as late as the early 80s. In the 60s and 70s, South Korea was a third-world style light dictatorship, and North Korea was rapidly industrializing. There were plenty of moments in history where people credibly believed that North Korea might actually be the bright new future.
Fast forward to modern times- things didn’t get to their gnarliest until the famine in the 1990- which was a mix of some really horrible policy-making, the collapse of Communism and the economic system that allowed North Korea to survive as a connected nation, and massive flooding. Since then, a lot has changed. Cell phones have come through, outside news is mildly more accessible, and nobody can ignore the flood of cheap Chinese goods. Small scale private commerce has been somewhat decriminalized and there is local trade in goods, including copious goods from China, which people have pretty much realized is a nice place and not the starving hellhole they were brought up to think it was. International trade has increased significantly. The prison camps are there, but the peak is long passed.
It’s not “better,” but it’s also not 1997 over there.
Don’t mistake this as apologism or as “it’s our fault.” It’s not- history was one bad set of circumstances in this case. But it does make things clearer to see things from their perspective, and to understand North Korea as a living, changing nation.
Anyway, a lot could happen. The best thing we can do is figure out ways to welcome North Korea back into the international community with dignity. If we can do this with tact and let them keep some of their pride (and, for now, their nukes) then we stand a much better chance of doing good for the country.
I remember an episode of Law & Order where they had to conduct some sort of mock legal proceeding to find a corrupt judge, or something. They used a term to describe the line between who knew and who didn’t, but I don’t think “Chinese wall” was it.
Slightly off topic, I could not believe NPR this morning. I turned on the radio, sat through a long story about hazing in college marching bands, then they cut to a promo where the host started off, “With Kim Jong-Il dead…” What? When did this happen? Was Renee Montagne in the ladies’ room when the story broke? Geez.
You would have heard it if you had tuned in at 6:00 a.m., 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, 8:00 or 8:30. They do headlines at the beginning of each half-hour segment.