A Nation of Racist DwarfsKim Jong-il's regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, at 10:01 AM ET

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial "minder" whom I'll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world's most hysterical and operatic leader-cult. One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he'd heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity.

I was struck at the time by how matter-of-factly he said this, as if he took it for granted that I would find it uncontroversial. And I did briefly wonder whether this form of totalitarianism, too (because nothing is more "total" than racist nationalism), was part of the pitch made to its subjects by the North Korean state. But I was preoccupied, as are most of the country's few visitors, by the more imposing and exotic forms of totalitarianism on offer: by the giant mausoleums and parades that seemed to fuse classical Stalinism with a contorted form of the deferential, patriarchal Confucian ethos.

Karl Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire wrote that those trying to master a new language always begin by translating it back into the tongue they already know. And I was limiting myself (and ill-serving my readers) in using the pre-existing imagery of Stalinism and Eastern deference. I have recently donned the bifocals provided by B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent "Constitution," "ratified" last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian "military first" mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia.

These conclusions of his, in a finely argued and brilliantly written book, carry the worrisome implication that the propaganda of the regime may actually mean exactly what it says, which in turn would mean that peace and disarmament negotiations with it are a waste of time—and perhaps a dangerous waste at that.

Consider: Even in the days of communism, there were reports from Eastern Bloc and Cuban diplomats about the paranoid character of the system (which had no concept of deterrence and told its own people that it had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in bad faith) and also about its intense hatred of foreigners. A black Cuban diplomat was almost lynched when he tried to show his family the sights of Pyongyang. North Korean women who return pregnant from China—the regime's main ally and protector—are forced to submit to abortions. Wall posters and banners depicting all Japanese as barbarians are only equaled by the ways in which Americans are caricatured as hook-nosed monsters. (The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.) The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea's food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader.

Myers also points out that many of the slogans employed and displayed by the North Korean state are borrowed directly—this really does count as some kind of irony—from the kamikaze ideology of Japanese imperialism. Every child is told every day of the wonderful possibility of death by immolation in the service of the motherland and taught not to fear the idea of war, not even a nuclear one.

The regime cannot rule by terror alone, and now all it has left is its race-based military ideology. Small wonder that each "negotiation" with it is more humiliating than the previous one. As Myers points out, we cannot expect it to bargain away its very raison d'etre.

All of us who scrutinize North Korean affairs are preoccupied with one question. Do these slaves really love their chains? The conundrum has several obscene corollaries. The people of that tiny and nightmarish state are not, of course, allowed to make comparisons with the lives of others, and if they complain or offend, they are shunted off to camps that—to judge by the standard of care and nutrition in the "wider" society—must be a living hell excusable only by the brevity of its duration. But race arrogance and nationalist hysteria are powerful cements for the most odious systems, as Europeans and Americans have good reason to remember. Even in South Korea there are those who feel the Kim Jong-il regime, under which they themselves could not live for a single day, to be somehow more "authentically" Korean.

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick

A piercing account of the daily ordeals faced by ordinary North Koreans.

North Korea maintains a robust military. Soldiers get fed, at least. Author Barbara Demick talked to defectors who saw children starve. (Spiegel & Grau / April 13, 2008)

By Art Winslow

January 10, 2010

Nothing to Envy

Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick

Spiegel & Grau: 320 pp., $26

In her early 20s, Mi-ran became a schoolteacher in a North Korean village not far from where her parents lived. She was lucky: Her father, a southerner taken prisoner by the north during the Korean War and not allowed to repatriate, was politically suspect, which meant that Mi-ran's family occupied a low rung in the politically defined caste system imposed by Kim Il-sung (postwar head of state and father of Kim Jong-il, North Korea's current leader). That could well have barred Mi-ran's entry to teacher's college, for the family was considered beulsun, to have "tainted blood," a stigma that carries across generations and did thwart her siblings' entry to schools.

The unlucky -- the ghastly -- part of Mi-ran's experience was that when she encountered the 5- and 6-year-olds who were to be her classroom charges, she noted that they "looked no bigger to her than three- and four-year-olds" and might have been present only to eat the school's free lunch, a soup constituted from leaves and salt. Over time, attendance thinned ominously, from 50 children to 15. As Barbara Demick writes in "Nothing to Envy," a piercing account of the lives of a handful of North Korean refugees, Mi-ran "described watching her five- and six-year-old pupils die of starvation. As her students were dying, she was supposed to teach them that they were blessed to be North Korean." The Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, Demick takes her title from a song of national pride that teachers commonly had their classes sing, which claimed, "We have nothing to envy in the world."

Demick has woven together life stories of half a dozen defectors that credibly suggest a human rights tragedy of enormous proportion is taking place relatively out of Western public view, while the news headlines (for good reason) focus on North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

The country's 23 million inhabitants contend not only with extreme privation in a land of rusted train tracks, exceedingly sporadic electricity and chronic, life-threatening food shortages, but also do so under an information blackout in a police state apt to whisk inhabitants off to labor camps or worse at the slightest provocation.

A recent report in the Washington Post noted that the military has recently "grabbed nearly complete command of the nation's state-run economy," taking over sale of raw materials to China to replace hard cash lost under U.N. sanctions imposed to block its sale of missiles. Defectors who claim firsthand knowledge report that Kim Jong-il skims from the profits to fund himself, his nuclear program and to ensure the loyalty of elites, and that "the military is also sending trucks to state farms to haul away as much as a quarter of the annual harvest for its soldiers," as well as posting guards there.

Those recent state actions were almost predictable, judging from "Nothing to Envy," in which Demick follows her subjects on a trajectory of self-chosen exile that, roughly, extends from the mid-1990s in North Korea to the mid-2000s as expatriates.

Demick characterizes her book as "primarily an oral history," but it contains strong cultural portraiture as well, including an excellent evocation of the largely idled industrial city of Chongjin, a northern port and the country's third-largest metropolis, from which some of her refugees hailed or had connections. (Demick's book originated from reporting she did for the Times as a correspondent based in Seoul.)

In its way, and graphically, this book demonstrates that global issues of nuclear proliferation, free expression and human rights are inextricably intertwined in North Korea, with its cult-of-personality rule and its gulags (Amnesty International estimates some 200,000 people sit in various detention facilities there). A doctor named Kim Ji-eun, another of Demick's primary sources, dealt with famine victims firsthand and provided testimony eerily paralleling Mi-ran's: As a 28-year-old pediatrician at a small district hospital, Kim noticed severe wasting (in which the body eats its own muscle tissue) among many of the children. "They would look at me with accusing eyes. Even four-year-olds knew they were dying and that I wasn't doing anything to help them," Kim told Demick. "All I was capable of doing was to cry with their mothers over the bodies afterward." Her hospital became so strapped that it remained unheated, bandages were fashioned from cut-up bedding, and beer bottles substituted for IV pouches.

Some of Demick's people were longtime supporters of the North Korean regime until disenchantment and anger took hold. Dr. Kim found out accidentally that, despite her years-long volunteer service to the regime's Worker's Party, she was on a surveillance watch list, for example; and even a professional like her was forced to scavenge in the countryside for edible weeds to eat. Others became skeptical at an early age. Jun-sang, a relatively privileged youth whose Korean parents had been born in Japan, managed to get into a university in Pyongyang, the capital. His rare access to books of foreign origin ("Gone With the Wind," "One Hundred Years of Solitude"), plus curiosity enough to rig a television to receive signals other than the preset government station's, quickly created doubt in him about the worldview put forth by the state-controlled media.

Entering China on foot by wading across the Tumen River is a common path for many who seek escape from North Korea, with a small percentage eventually defecting to South Korea. Missionary efforts and bride-for-order schemes play a part in this process too, and defections have soared since 2001. Yet, as Demick chronicles and as an authoritative 2006 study she cites also points out, China "selectively cooperates with North Korean persecution of its refugees," allowing North Korean security forces to cross the border while refusing area access to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Many, if not most, defectors would wish to return if there were a regime change, Demick concludes, given adjustment difficulties and the provisional feel that their lives sometimes take on.

As for Mi-ran, which incidentally is a pseudonym intended to protect relatives left behind, she lives in South Korea, but the fate of two sisters remains unknown. After her defection, they were taken away in the night.

Winslow is a former literary and executive editor of the Nation.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

. Korea's Kim Said To Pledge Nuclear Disarmament

Published: February 08, 2010

by The Associated Press

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il reiterated his country's pledge to achieve a denuclearization of the Korean peninsula when he met a senior Chinese envoy, Beijing's official news agency reported Tuesday.

"The sincerity of relevant parties to resume the six-party talks is very important," Kim said during a meeting Monday with top Chinese Communist Party official Wang Jiarui, Xinhua News Agency reported from Pyongyang. Kim reiterated his country's "persistent stance to realize the denuclearization" of the peninsula, it said.

Kim referred to stalled six-country talks on ending the North's nuclear weapons program. The North walked away from the disarmament talks - held with the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Japan — last year in anger over international condemnation of a long-range rocket launch.

Earlier Tuesday, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency reported that Wang conveyed to Kim a verbal message from Chinese President Hu Jintao and that the North Korean leader asked him to convey his regards to Hu.

KCNA said the two had a "cordial and friendly conversation" but didn't elaborate on what was discussed.

Wang's trip came as Pyongyang has embarked on a flurry of diplomacy with Washington, Seoul and Beijing after months of tension on its nuclear and missile programs.

Pyongyang on Saturday released an American missionary detained since Christmas for illegal entry, and on Monday officials from the two Koreas met in a North Korean border town to discuss restarting joint tours suspended in 2008.

U.N. political chief B. Lynn Pascoe was due in Pyongyang on Tuesday, reportedly bearing a letter from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of South Korea. Pascoe's trip will be the first by a high-level U.N. official since 2004, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry.

Pascoe will urge North Korea to rejoin the nuclear talks, and discuss the country's relationship with the world body, a U.N. official in New York said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.

North Korea has made clear it wants sanctions lifted and a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War before returning to the disarmament talks. Washington has responded that Pyongyang must come back to the talks first before any talk about political and economic concessions. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press

The Real Story Behind North Korean Jeans

By Sandra Schulz

REUTERS

Noko Jeans founders, from left to right, Jakob Ohlsson, Tor Rauden Källstigen and Jacob Aström with a pair of their jeans produced in North Korea.

It was an idea born out of a late night of drinking, but it quickly became reality. Three Swedish men have established a line of jeans made in North Korea and sold in Stockholm. But they weren't prepared for the criticism their pants have produced.

They were three young, hung-over Swedish men who had been out drinking the night before to drown their sorrows -- and they had an idea. They sent an e-mail to North Korea. The subject line read: "Investing in the Democratic People's Republic." More than two years later, a shipment of 1,100 designer jeans arrived in Stockholm. There were two models -- "Kara," a slim fit, and "Oke," a loose fit -- and they were made in Pyongyang.

This is the story of an experiment. How does one gain access to one of the most sealed-off countries in the world? In the digital age, North Korea is the last remaining bit of terra incognita in the Worldwide Web. Whereas Jakob Ohlsson, 23, Tor Rauden Källstigen, 24 and Jacob Aström, 25, spend a lot of time online, and they are never without their laptops.

On that July 20, 2007, the three Swedes were skimming North Korea's "official Web page" and discovered a new button, titled "Business." After only two mouse clicks, they found themselves looking at a list of possible North Korean export goods: cosmetics, trucks, marble, weapons, mineral water, fire extinguishers and -- jeans. They wrote to the contact address, claiming that they were import-export managers for a fictitious company, and they waited. Less than 24 hours later, a friendly Mr. Sapmak wrote back and thanked them for their interest. It was the beginning of "Noko Jeans."

Aura of Credibility

In November 2007, the three Swedes made their first telephone call to the North Korean Embassy in Stockholm. Ohlsson said: "I'm calling from Stockholm." The embassy spokesperson replied: "That's nearby. We also live in Stockholm." Ohlsson: "We have started this company…" Embassy spokesperson: "It'll be Christmas soon." Otherwise, the North Koreans promised the Swedes whatever support they could provide. The three Swedes brought along Ohlsson's father, a suit-wearing dentist, to their first meeting to add an aura of credibility.

In December 2007, they gave a North Korean delegation two sample pairs of jeans, including a used pair owned by one of the three Swedes, for inspection at a textile factory in Pyongyang. In the spring of 2008, they sent the North Korean Embassy a wish list for their upcoming trip to the North Korean capital: a visit to a computer center, meetings with ordinary young people in Pyongyang and "mass games," a North Korean specialty which sees huge numbers of performers take part in highly choreographed spectacles.

The embassy replied with its own agenda, which included visits to the mausoleum of the "Great Leader," former President Kim Il-sung, a statue of the Great Leader and the Great Leader's collection of gifts from foreign dignitaries, including a bear's head from former Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, a crocodile leather suitcase from former Cuban President Fidel Castro, and a bulletproof limousine from former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

'Night in Pyongyang'

On July 27, 2008, when the Swedes arrived in Pyongyang on a train from Beijing, their minders met them at the station: Mr. Dong, Ms. Lee and a man who was introduced as "Mr. Driver." They spent their first evening together in the karaoke bar at the Koryo Hotel, which would later serve as the inspiration for the names they gave their two models (Kara and Oke). At the bar, the Swedes and their hosts alternated between singing North Korean marching songs and Beatles songs, and the evening ended with a joint version of "Night in Pyongyang," a ballad often played on the state-owned radio network. The Swedes were familiar with the song from the Internet.

They spent the next 10 days visiting textile factories, but without success. They did manage to fit in a trip to the terrarium at the Pyongyang zoo, to which a Swedish TV star had once donated used equipment and a few wild animals. The three Swedes thought that even the crocodiles looked sad.

On their last day in North Korea, they finally met the director of a mining operation that included both a zinc processing and a textile division. The deal was sealed with a handshake, a group photo and Swedish vodka. They decided on black jeans. The Swedes had discovered that the North Koreans were hesitant to produce blue jeans, apparently because they were perceived as an American symbol. On the other hand, the director was very interested in the possibility of the young foreigners perhaps creating a Web page for his business.

A year later, in the summer of 2009, the Swedes, who worked for a marketing company, returned to North Korea to ensure that the North Korean women who worked in the factory, wearing red work coats and red caps, were sewing correctly. They were, but unfortunately they were missing the buttons, which had become stuck somewhere en route from Pakistan to Pyongyang.

So Tremendously Complex

On Nov. 11, 2009, the jeans finally arrived in Stockholm, but then the experiment turned into a problem. The department store where the Swedes had planned to sell their Noko Jeans from North Korea refused to cooperate, claiming that it didn't want to become involved in politics.

A public debate erupted in Sweden over whether it was ethically permissible to produce jeans in a dictatorship that confines its own people to labor camps and threatens the world with nuclear weapons.

The three Swedes have since become more cautious about the things they say. "We don't believe in isolation," they say. "We believe that any outside influence can only be a good thing for such a country." And they say: "We aren't a fan club for North Korean policy." They say that they saw the human beings behind the mass games, and that they made friends in North Korea, including Ms. Lee. They say that everything is so tremendously complex.

But this is also a story of self promotion. The Swedish trio has just opened its own shop in Stockholm -- which includes both jeans and a museum of North Korea. They seem to have learned all about propaganda in Pyongyang.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Calm urged after N Korea missiles

Russia, China and the US have all called for calm after North Korea test-fired a series of missiles.

Seven Scud-type ballistic missiles with a range of about 500km (312 miles) were fired in an apparent act of defiance against the US, on 4 July.

Russia and China urged Pyongyang to return to talks, while a US official urged it not to aggravate tensions.

North Korea is banned from all ballistic missile-related activities under UN sanctions.

The sanctions were strengthened after the communist nation carried out a second underground nuclear test in May.

North Korea has launched a number of missiles since the test. On Thursday it test-fired four short-range missiles.

'Not helpful'

Saturday's launches came from a base on its east coast. Three were fired early in the day, a fourth around noon local time and three more in the afternoon, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The missiles fell into the Sea of Japan, known in South Korea as the East Sea.

South Korean officials said some of the missiles could have been medium-range Nodongs - which have the range to strike Japan - but that their flight distances had been deliberately shortened, Yonhap news agency said.

Both South Korea and Japan called the launches an "act of provocation".

The US state department called them "not helpful" and said North Korea should " refrain from actions that aggravate tensions and focus on denuclearisation talks".

Russia and China called on all parties to show restraint and avoid actions which could further destabilise the situation, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Ties between North Korea and the outside world have grown extremely tense since it walked away from talks aimed at ending its nuclear programme.

Some analysts suggest Pyongyang's bellicosity could be linked to internal issues, amid questions over the health of leader Kim Jong-il after his apparent stroke last year.

Reports suggest he has named his youngest son as his successor - and some believe the nuclear and missiles tests could be a show of strength aimed at securing internal support for his plans.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8134462.stm

Published: 2009/07/04 14:28:43 GMT

© BBC MMIX

U.S. Journalists Sentenced to 12 Years of Hard Labor in North Korea

By , Agence France Presse
Posted on June 8, 2009, Printed on June 8, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140508/

SEOUL (AFP) -- North Korea sentenced two female U.S. journalists to 12 years in a labor camp Monday for illegal entry and an unspecified "grave crime," further fueling tensions with Washington after testing a nuclear bomb.

U.S. President Barack Obama was "deeply concerned" about the sentences handed down to Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and his government was using "all possible channels" to obtain their release, the White House said.

A five-day trial "confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing," the official Korean Central News Agency said, without explaining the crime.

The Central Court "sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the charges against the pair are baseless and they should be allowed to return home.

Clinton also said the United States was considering putting North Korea back on its terrorism blacklist following its recent nuclear and missile tests.

Border guards detained the TV reporters on March 17 along the frontier with China while they were researching a story about refugees fleeing the hardline communist North.

The North has been showing an increasingly uncompromising face to the world since it fired a long-range rocket on April 5.

After the United Nations Security Council punished the launch by tightening sanctions, the North responded on May 25 with its second nuclear test.

It has also renounced the armistice on the Korean peninsula and is said to be preparing to test medium-range missiles and a long-range Taepodong-2.

Pyongyang on Monday vowed to retaliate if the Council adopts a resolution punishing the atomic test.

It will regard "any sanctions against us as a declaration of war and will respond with due self-defensive measures," the communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said.

Analysts say the women will become pawns in efforts to open direct negotiations with the United States.

The North has long made clear its preference for direct talks with Washington over the stalled six-party negotiations on nuclear disarmament, of which the U.S. is a part.

The sentences "are tougher than expected," said Yoo Ho-Yeol, a North Korea expert at Korea University.

"They aim to send a strong message to the United States that the North is taking the case very seriously and gravely," he told AFP.

"It also shows the North's strategy to bring the United States to the bilateral negotiating table."

Cheong Seong-Chang of Seoul's Sejong Institute think-tank said the pair would not be freed soon but added: "However, North Korea will consider releasing them if Washington accepts Pyongyang's demand for (direct) talks."

Pyongyang has in the past freed captured Americans but only after personal interventions. The U.S. State Department last week did not rule out a mission by former vice president Al Gore.

Gore is chairman of the California station Current TV which employs the two journalists, both aged in their thirties. Both are married and Lee has a four-year-old daughter.

Friends, family and colleagues held candlelight vigils in U.S. cities last week. Their relatives have appealed for clemency and urged the two governments not to link the case to the nuclear standoff.

The North on May 26 allowed them to phone their families in the United States.

"We had not heard their voices in over two and a half months," said Ling's sister Lisa last week. "They are very scared -- they're very, very scared."

The State Department in its latest rights report describes prison conditions in the North as "harsh and life-threatening" with cases of torture.

Convicts sentenced to "reform through labor" are typically subject to hard work at farms, mines, construction sites or factories, Cho Myung-Chul, a former defector and now an analyst, told Yonhap news agency.

The North's actions in the past two months have been "extraordinarily provocative," Obama said Saturday during a visit to France.

"And, in fact, we are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation," he added.

The North is also holding a South Korean employee of the Kaesong joint industrial estate just north of the border.

He has been detained since March 30 for allegedly criticizing Pyongyang's political system and encouraging a woman worker to defect.

© 2009 Agence France Presse All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140508/

May 27, 2009

In Defiance, North Korea Is Said to Test More Missiles

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — One day after a surprise nuclear test drew angry and widespread condemnation, North Korea continued its defiance of the international community on Tuesday by test-firing two more short-range missiles, a South Korean government official said.

The missile firings came just hours after South Korea said it would join an American-led operation to stop the global trafficking in weapons of mass destruction, an action the North has previously said it would consider a declaration of war. The missiles launched Tuesday were surface-to-ship and surface-to-air projectiles, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. The South Korean news agency Yonhap said the missiles each had a range of 80 miles. They were apparently launched from a base on the central eastern coast into the sea opposite Japan, further rattling nerves in the region.

The South Korean Defense Ministry declined to confirm the report.

After its nuclear test on Monday, the North test-fired three short-range missiles, also off its east coast. An intelligence official in Seoul said that move indicated Pyongyang was “getting its back up” about the possibility that United States military aircraft would fly close to North Korea in an attempt to collect radiation data from the nuclear blast.

South Korea’s long-delayed participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative, the anti-weapons of mass destruction trafficking program, followed a statement on Monday by the United Nations Security Council that unanimously condemned the nuclear test. The council called it a “clear violation” of a previous resolution and also vowed to craft a new resolution that could impose further sanctions on the increasingly isolated North.

In Japan, the lower house of Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution Tuesday condemning the North’s nuclear test — its second after an apparently smaller test in 2006 — and threatening to step up sanctions against the communist regime.

“Japan, as the world’s only nation to ever suffer a nuclear attack, cannot condone” North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests, the resolution said. North Korea’s recent belligerence has also prompted Japan’s ruling party to debate whether Tokyo should consider preemptive strikes against states considered hostile — actions that would likely require changes to Japan’s pacifist Constitution.

North Korea appeared unfazed by the world’s condemnation, which included strong rebukes from allies such as China and Russia. In Tuesday’s editions of Rodong, its main party newspaper, Pyongyang declared that it was “fully ready for battle” against the United States, accusing President Obama of “following in the footsteps of the previous Bush administration’s reckless policy of militarily stifling North Korea.”

North Korean officials have said that South Korea’s full membership in the anti-proliferation initiative would be seen as a “declaration of undisguised confrontation and a declaration of a war.” The international effort was begun in 2003 by the Bush administration in order to interdict shipments — especially at sea — of suspected weapons of mass destruction, their related materials and delivery systems.

Russia, Britain, France and Israel are among the 95 signatories to the initiative, to which India, Pakistan and China did not sign on.

South Korea decided to join the initiative to “counter the grave threat that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles poses to global peace and security,” Moon Tae-young, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Tuesday in a statement.

North Korea has called such interdictions “terrorism” and sees the initiative, which is largely aimed at its weapons sales, as proof of American bias. North Korean exports of missile parts to countries in the Middle East, particularly Iran, remain a key source of revenue for the impoverished nation. South Korea had wavered on joining the initiative for fear of provoking the North. But on Tuesday, President Lee Myung-bak, who came to power with a promise to take a tougher approach toward Pyongyang, spoke with Mr. Obama about the North Korean threat and the South’s decision to join the effort.

On the phone, Mr. Lee emphasized to Mr. Obama that the United States and its allies “should not repeat the pattern” of “rewarding” North Korea’s provocations with dialogue and economic aid, as they did after the North’s first nuclear test in October 2006.

Over the years, North Korea has gained confidence through its brinkmanship, Mr. Lee’s aides said, enough that it asked the Security Council to apologize for the sanctions it imposed following the North’s long-range rocket launch in early April.

Mr. Lee’s tougher approach to the North marks a sharp departure from the conciliatory gestures that were prevalent in Seoul during the 10 years of liberal rule under his two predecessors, and the current posture is more closely aligned with Washington and Tokyo.

On Monday, Mr. Lee’s defense minister, Lee Sang-hee, told a parliamentary hearing that a “very effective tool” to stop the North’s nuclear and missile programs would be to “cut off the money.”

The effectiveness of any United Nations sanctions will also depend, in large part, on the willingness of China, the North’s key ally and trading partner, to carry them out.

At the Security Council on Monday, the American ambassador, Susan Rice, said Washington would seek a “strong resolution with strong measures.” Britain, France and Japan were expected to join in the push for new sanctions.

“We are going to pursue a strong resolution with teeth,” Ms. Rice said Tuesday morning in an interview on CNN, though she declined to specify details about the discussions.

Russia and China are likely to remain reluctant to punish North Korea too harshly, although China on Monday said it was “resolutely opposed” to the nuclear test. The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly I. Churkin, told reporters that the North’s action was “very serious and needs to have a strong response.”

North Korea has a history of flouting such international condemnation, especially recently: It launched a long-range rocket on April 5 despite international calls for restraint; quit nuclear negotiations; restarted its nuclear plants, and threatened more nuclear and long-range missile tests.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

N. Korean Gulags

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466/

I didn't remember if I'd posted this link before...

I Was Kim Jong Il's Teacher -- Then He Had My Family Killed

By Kim Hyun Sik, Foreign Policy
Posted on February 13, 2009, Printed on February 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/125724/

I first met Kim Jong Il in October 1959. He was a senior at the elite Namsan Senior High School, and I was a 27-year-old professor of Russian at the Pyongyang University of Education. I also happened to have been chosen as a private tutor for the family of North Korean President Kim Il Sung. One day, the Great Leader remarked that he found his son’s Russian to be very poor and told me to go to his school and evaluate both Kim Jong Il’s proficiency and the quality of Russian education there. Handpicked by Joseph Stalin to rule over North Korea and a fluent Russian speaker himself, Kim Il Sung deemed study of the language essential to relations with the Soviet Union, North Korea’s biggest political, economic, and military patron. At the school, I attended every Russian class, made evaluations, and then summoned the 17-year-old Kim Jong Il into the principal’s office. The principal, one of the school’s Russian teachers, and I, in accordance with Kim Il Sung’s orders, jointly administered an oral Russian exam for Kim Jong Il.

Just a young student at the time, the examinee appeared to be extremely nervous sitting alone for an oral exam before the three of us -- especially one arranged at his father’s behest. The shy boy with puffy, red cheeks responded meekly to each question I posed.

“Please open the book, Ri Su Bok, the North Korean Matrosov, and translate it,” I told Kim.

He proceeded to read passages slowly from the book and translate them into Korean. His translations were not outstanding, but he managed to read and translate the text without making an error.

After a while I said, “Please summarize the contents of the book.”

“You mean in Korean?” Kim asked.

“No. It should be in Russian, of course,” I replied.

Looking a bit flustered, he began to speak in halting Russian. His spoken Russian seemed to lag behind his reading and translation.

“OK. Next I will test you on noun/adjective inflection, verb tense, and the first/second/third-person form.”

When his father ordered me to evaluate Kim’s Russian, he had praised his son’s grammatical skills. He was right. When I rapidly threw out words at him, he replied without the slightest hesitation.

“Finally, I will test you on Russian conversation. Please listen to my questions and remarks and respond accordingly.” I asked Kim Jong Il routine questions like his name and birthday, the date and day of the week, and the weather, yet he had a hard time responding. During the final conversation phase, he blushed and beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. Without ever boasting that he was the son of the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il patiently endured the exam.

My evaluation of Russian education at Namsan High School was that the instruction of spoken language had fallen behind that of grammar. When informed of my finding, Kim Il Sung became irate and demanded that any Russian teacher at Namsan High School who was not fluent in Russian be dismissed. I recommended a new, conversation-focused Russian program and suggested holding the annual nationwide Russian teachers’ convention at Namsan the following year.

The following January, Russian teachers from across the nation convened at the high school. At the convention, Kim Jong Il showed off his new Russian skills with confidence. The combination of a new curriculum and the prodding by his father had paid off: Kim’s nervous, diffident demeanor from the exam a few months back had disappeared. As an educator, I was quite gratified by his impressive progress.

Nearly 50 years have passed since the day I administered that test, but I still remember the questions I posed to Kim Jong Il, and the answers he gave in his amateur Russian: “I love and respect my father more than anyone else.” “I plan to enroll in the Kim Il Sung University upon graduation from Namsan Senior High School.” “I enjoy watching films more than playing sports.”

It doesn’t sound like an extraordinary moment. Just a teacher and a student behaving as they would anywhere. Of course, I’ve seen enough now to know just how far from ordinary anything about North Korea ever is.

Had I died fighting the Americans in the Korean War -- which I almost did -- I might not have ever come to know just how morally bankrupt were the ideals I was defending. But I survived. I went to college. I learned Russian. I was lucky enough to teach the language I loved to generations of students, some of whom went on to hold positions of power and influence throughout the country. I became dean of the foreign-language department. I wasn’t particularly wealthy or privileged. But, through my travels beyond the Hermit Kingdom, and my contacts, and that special secret responsibility of tutoring Kim Il Sung’s family for 20 years, I did have something most of my fellow citizens never did and still don’t: a window through which to understand the dynasty that continues to terrorize North Korea.

I wish I could argue that the shy and determined young man I first met that October day is the real person behind the cruel and mercurial dictator the rest of the world now knows him to be. But too much has happened since then.

In 1991, during a stint as a visiting professor in Moscow, I was approached by a South Korean agent. He brought me incredible news. He could arrange a meeting with my older sister, who had fled to the South during the Korean War and later moved to Chicago. Arranged by South Korea’s national intelligence agency, it would be the first time we had seen each other in more than 40 years. All that time, we thought the other was dead. I was overcome with emotion. She begged me to come back to the United States with her and become a minister -- our mother’s dying wish for me. Although I could not return with my sister, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Our joy was short-lived. Another agent who had allowed us to use his house as a meeting spot was, in fact, a double agent working for the North. I received instructions from the government to return home the very next day. But I knew very well I couldn’t; I would be killed as a traitor. I anguished over what my failure to appear would mean for my family back in Pyongyang. It’s bad enough for a soldier or a student to defect. But I knew intimate details of the ruling family’s inner circles. Surely they would view my betrayal as a personal insult.

I never returned to North Korea, and I never saw my family again. A few years later, I heard from a well-placed South Korean minister that my family had been sent to a gulag and murdered, the innocent victims of my treasonous crime. To this day, I know nothing of the details of their deaths, or whether they blamed me as they perished.

I ache when I imagine what Kim Jong Il did to my family. So many times, I’ve imagined killing him and then killing myself. Countless days and nights I have pounded my chest with guilt and grief, unable to forgive myself for the ghastly fate that I have brought my beloved wife -- my lifelong companion -- our daughters and son, their spouses, and even our dear grandchildren.

But I am willing to let go of my painful grievance against Kim Jong Il. My only wish is that he opens North Korea’s doors and lets the hungry, tired people enjoy the kind of freedom and abundance that South Koreans, Americans, and so many others do. Until then, I will let the rest of the world see what I’ve seen: a young, innocent boy who turned into a monster, and a country with so much promise transformed into a concentration camp.

SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER

In September 1973, Kim Jong Il’s daughter, Sul Song, was to enroll at Namsan Primary School. Surrounded by tall, green poplar trees where birds rested and sang, the school had the air of a natural park. Beyond the rear of the school’s stadium atop Haebang Hill sat the mansions of the highest officials.

Its pastoral setting was reserved for children of the elite -- party officials above the rank of vice minister. They enjoyed all the perks that come with a rarefied spot in North Korean society: the best teachers, the best facilities, and just a few days of mandatory farm work every spring (as opposed to the average 60 to 90 days). Graduates of Namsan were guaranteed a spot at any university of their choice and an open door to a successful career. Isolated from the children of ordinary people, the students at Namsan would go on to become officials of the party and state.

Naturally, Kim Il Sung’s children had studied at Namsan, including Kim Jong Il. Throughout his years there, Kim was a rather ordinary student. From academics and art to sports and extracurricular activities, he excelled in none. He made few friends. Upon graduation, Kim and his siblings all enrolled at Kim Il Sung University. His daughter’s life was planned out much the same way -- until that September day.

The school’s staff waited by the entrance gate with flower bouquets in hand. As the minutes passed and the bell rang, Sul Song failed to show up. The staff grew increasingly anxious. One hour later, the school received the following one-line notification from state authorities: “Kim Sul Song will not enroll in Namsan School.” Disappointed, the teachers and staff, who had been preparing for Kim Sul Song’s enrollment, were simply left to wonder if she would be studying abroad instead.

They didn’t have much time to linger: That day also marked the enrollment of another important first-grader. He was none other than Kim Min Chul, the nephew of Kim Il Sung’s second wife. I remember that day extremely well, for I had been selected to evaluate the 6-year-old child’s aptitude for advanced education. That day, Kim Il Sung’s mother-in-law came to see her beloved grandson begin his schooling. Several other relatives milled about, and the school bustled with the unusual presence of so many important people.

Kim Jong Il was incensed to know that his only daughter would be sharing the spotlight throughout her early education with a child from the “side branches,” those relatives who lay outside the main family line. So, he had decided to hire a private tutor for his daughter rather than send her to Namsan. Withdrawing his daughter from the school was a public revelation of his hostility toward his extended family, but, on its own, it wouldn’t eliminate those potential rivals to his own children. Which is why Kim Jong Il had his alma mater, where he had spent so much of his youth, blown up.

Several years later, in 1982, as he was consolidating power within the party, Kim Il Sung’s mother-in-law (and a close friend of mine) described how Kim Jong Il finally executed his plan. First, he brought up the school at a meeting of high officials.

“Comrades, what do you think of the fact that Namsan School is located right in front of our Central Party office building?”

His sycophants got the message.

“Dear Comrade Leader, is it not advisable to have a school inside the Central Party district?” was a typical response. “I think it best that Namsan School find another site and be relocated.”

Kim Jong Il became more and more pleased with each nod of agreement.

“I have thought so for some time. I have long believed that the presence of a school within the party district is inappropriate, and I am opposed to having party officials’ children educated at a special school like Namsan. Why should party officials receive special consideration, and why should their children be educated by themselves, cut off from the rest of the people? Let’s put an end to dividing the party officials and the general public.”

Now, the original intent behind the school was to sequester the children of high officials in an attempt to thwart the spread of sensitive state secrets. But, as in so many communist societies, the school actually served to keep the lavish lifestyles of high officials hidden from the rest of the population. While the children of ordinary North Koreans ate cornmeal with soybean soup and soy sauce chemically made from soybean dregs and unseasoned kimchi, the students of Namsan ate high-grade white rice with meat, fish, and eggs. Should the wider population discover such a contrast in lifestyles, the image of the socialist state was bound to suffer.

A few nights after Kim’s meeting, the Namsan School was blown up by a demolition squad of the North Korean Army. On the very same plot of land, a new office building was erected. It would house the party’s Organization and Guidance Bureau. As the Namsan School vanished into thin air, so too disappeared the hopes of the school’s teachers and staff, students, and parents of students who had looked to Kim’s other relatives as potential successors to Kim Il Sung. By demolishing the school, Kim Jong Il was effectively declaring that he, and only he, was the rightful successor.

Even today, long after becoming the sole supreme leader of North Korea, Kim refuses to allow graduates of the Namsan School in his inner circle. After all, those who have known Kim Jong Il since youth are bound to see him as human -- not the center of a god-like cult of personality.

‘A WORLD WITHOUT NORTH KOREA NEED NOT SURVIVE’

At the Three Revolutions Exhibition Hall in northwestern Pyongyang, there hangs a big sign that reads, “A world without North Korea need not survive.” What do these words mean? And what do they tell us, if anything, about Kim Jong Il’s military mind?

In late 1993, when North Korea was gearing up to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, fears of an imminent war broke out across the Korean Peninsula. The eyes of the world were firmly fixed on the region. Not a day passed without some international coverage of the North Korean nuclear crisis.

In the midst of such concerns, Kim Il Sung convened a meeting of all his military officers above the rank of commanding general. One general who was in the room later explained what happened next. Kim posed to his generals the following question: “The American scoundrels are about to start a war against us. Will we be able to defeat them?”

The generals replied without hesitation: “Yes, we can win!” “When have we ever lost a war?” “We shall win every battle!” “How can we ever lose when we have you, Commander of Steel, our Great Leader, to lead us?” “Oh, Great Leader! Just give us the order!” “In a single breath we will rush to the South, drive out the American imperialists, and unify the fatherland!”

Despite such vigorous displays of bravado, Kim Il Sung did not appear satisfied. “That’s all very well,” he replied. “But what if we lose? What shall we do if we lose?”

Kim Il Sung’s prodding was unexpected. The moment that their Great Leader uttered the word “lose,” the generals’ lips closed and remained tightly shut. As they sat still in extreme anxiety, the 51-year-old Kim Jong Il suddenly stood up. Raising his clenched fists, Kim yelled out, “Great Leader! I will be sure to destroy the Earth! What good is this Earth without North Korea?”

Kim Il Sung looked at his eldest son and smiled.

“That is surely the answer. I am pleased to see that a new North Korean general has been born at this very gathering. Henceforth, I transfer to you the operational command of the North Korean military.”

A short while later, Kim Jong Il was named the commander in chief of the Korean People’s Army. And a big sign inscribed with Kim Jong Il’s words, “A world without North Korea need not survive,” was duly installed at the exhibition hall, the nation’s flagship display of achievements in industry, technology, engineering, and agriculture.

In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and with a tide of democratization and reform spreading across the world, Kim Jong Il chose to buck the trend and implement a “military-first policy.” True to his familiar slogan, “The military is the core force of the revolution and the pillar of the state,” Kim called for the militarization of the entire society. He believed that even though North Korea was a small state, he could stabilize the nation and make the country powerful and prosperous by growing the military.

Today, just as he hoped, Kim Jong Il’s vision has been realized -- albeit through a continuing policy of military extortion. Whereas international trade and finance have only played a marginal role in North Korea’s economy and security, Kim has managed to extract resources from wealthier and stronger states by manufacturing crises and generating international instability. His brand of nuclear blackmail is a virtual guarantor of bottomless international aid for the world’s most militarized society.

‘PARADISE ON EARTH’

Living under a totalitarian regime requires a daily suspension of disbelief. Nowhere is that more true today than in North Korea, where otherwise ethical people contort themselves into untenable moral positions because they’ve bought into the oft-repeated notion that their country is “Paradise on Earth.” Simply to survive in North Korea, citizens must believe they are living in a chosen land. And when ideological indoctrination morphs into reality, the dictator need not even be nearby to spread fear. Not if average people will do his bidding for him.

All of which is bad news for those who don’t fit into Kim Jong Il’s ideal of a healthy, vital citizenry. In the people’s paradise that is North Korea, disabled -- even short -- people are considered subhuman. In 1989, Pyongyang hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students. In preparing for the international gathering, the entire nation was encouraged to outdo South Korea’s hosting of the Summer Olympic Games the year before. Pyongyang’s event had to be bigger and more glamorous. One such method was to purify the revolutionary capital of Pyongyang of disabled people.

Six months before the festival, the government rounded up all disabled residents of Pyongyang and sent them away from the capital to remote villages. The majority were clockmakers, seal engravers, locksmiths, and cobblers who made their living in the city. Overnight, they were forcibly deprived of the lives they had known.

I saw this policy of “purification” up close. I have an old friend who, upon graduation from the Pyongyang University of Medicine, built a career in the state Academy of Medical Science. We were classmates at Heungnam High School and fought together in the Korean War. We were like brothers. One day during May 1989, he visited me at home looking deeply upset.

“What’s troubling you? You look very distressed,” I said to my friend.

“Well, I’m OK, I guess . . . but I’ve done a terrible thing. An abhorrent thing.”

“What do you mean? You aren’t a bad person.”

His eyes welled with tears.

“I have made cripples out of normal, healthy people and sent them away for good,” he said. “It is inhumane, what I have done. I shall never be able to hold my head up again.”

My friend, a well-connected physician at the time, told me that he had been ordered by the Communist Party to pick out the shortest residents of Pyongyang and South Pyongan province. Against his conscience, he went out to those areas and had local party representatives distribute propaganda pamphlets. They claimed that the state had developed a drug that could raise a person’s height and was recruiting people to receive the new treatment. In just two days, thousands gathered to take the new drug.

My friend explained how he picked out the shortest among the large group. He told the crowd that the drug would best take effect when consumed regularly in an environment with clean air. The people willingly, and without the slightest suspicion, hopped aboard two ships -- women in one, men in the other. Separately, they were sent away to different uninhabited islands in an attempt to end their “substandard” genes from repeating in a new generation. Left for dead, none of the people made it back home. They were forced to spend the rest of their lives separated from their families and far from civilization.

“I can hardly believe that I’ve done such a terrible thing,” he told me.

My friend, who still lives in North Korea, will spend the rest of his days tormented with guilt. At the same time, he did not forget to beg me over and over that this incident was a state secret and that I was not to tell a soul, not even my wife. I kept his secret for some 16 years. There seems little point now in protecting a party, a government, and a leader that failed to do the same for its people.

WITNESS TO HISTORY

In late June, the United States took the dramatic and highly symbolic step of removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. As one component of the ongoing six-party talks to encourage North Korea to give up its nuclear program, the trade-off doesn’t seem so bad. But a lack of hard evidence doesn’t mean something isn’t true. Although the current chatter revolves around Kim Jong Il’s possible ties to a nascent Syrian nuclear program, one episode from 25 years ago reminds me of the very real dangers the North Korean regime poses to international stability.

A bright former student of mine had risen to become a high-ranking official in the Central Party’s Department of Propaganda and Agitation. One day in October 1983, he invited me and two other professors to his home for dinner. He lived in a luxury apartment complex for officials of the Central Party with the rank of director or above, where he shared a unit with his son, himself a special reporter for the official North Korean news agency.

All of a sudden, as we were in the middle of dinner, our host’s son ran into the room out of breath.

“Dad, we have a serious problem,” he said. “Have you heard the news?”

Our hearts skipped a beat. What could possibly have transpired to put an experienced news reporter in such an agitated state?

“This just came in over the wire. They botched the job. It’s a serious situation. The bald goon survived and his underlings died instead. Our news report is now worthless, and they sent all of us home.”

Our host excused himself suddenly and rushed back to his office. The three of us left the apartment puzzled and concerned.

Within two days, news of a terrorist attack had spread far beyond my friend’s apartment. At the time, we were told that a bombing in Burma had narrowly missed its target: the traveling South Korean president. In Pyongyang, nationwide rallies blamed an inside job by a rogue South Korean agent and, more broadly, the “American imperialists.” Calls for the liberation of the South through revolutionary war were rampant. Only then could I guess at the reason for the commotion at my former student’s place two nights before: His son had been informed of the operation ahead of the actual bombing in Burma and had written the news report in advance under the assumption that the operation would be a success. He assumed the South Korean president, as well as his entire entourage, would be dead. At his rank, our dinner host, my former student, not only would have known about the attack, he probably would have helped plan it.

In North Korea, there is a special unpublicized wing of the Communist Party called Bureau 3 that oversees all operations vis-à-vis the South. Another former student who works in Bureau 3 said that the director of a special team assigned to the Burma operation was dismissed suddenly. We later learned that he was demoted to party secretary at a small factory in the eastern coastal city of Sinpo for botching the secret mission of assassinating the South Korean president.

The Aung San terrorist bombing of Oct. 9, 1983, claimed the lives of 17 South Korean cabinet members, including Deputy Prime Minister Suh Suk Joon and Foreign Minister Lee Beom Suk. Fifteen more suffered major injuries. A year later, the Burmese government reported to the United Nations that the country had carried out the Aung San terrorist bombing and severed diplomatic relations with North Korea. I only learned those facts many years later, upon coming to Seoul. At the time, I was oblivious to the truth and was busy being summoned every day to rallies condemning the South Korean regime for the bombing.

Now, when I hear of tragic events on the peninsula, such as the incident in July in which a North Korean soldier shot and killed a 53-year-old tourist from the South, I think of the lies that the North must be telling its citizens. That is, if they hear anything at all.

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

Thirty years have passed since I last saw Kim Jong Il. Upon leaving Pyongyang, I spent some 10 years in South Korea. And now I am living in the United States, the land of my so-called mortal enemy.

A world away, I think of Kim often. Any day, I imagine he will be taken out by the single bullet of an aggrieved underling. Who could blame such a person? He has driven his people to starve to death. He is the only person in the country who enjoys basic freedoms and human rights. He has managed to shut the eyes, ears, and mouths of the North Korean people.

And yet, I hope that he does not meet such a tragic end. At times I pray for him. More than anything, I am saddened by how he has changed since that day we met so long ago. Sometimes, I even feel guilty, for I could claim to be indebted to his family. Because of his father’s immense zeal for education, I studied for free and became a university professor.

Today, I remain optimistic. News of the outside world has been silently seeping into North Korea. Day by day, the number of people leaving the country grows. More than 10,000 North Koreans have resettled in South Korea, and tens of thousands hide in China. Try as Kim might to intimidate his people with guns and knives, they are abandoning him more and more. But even if he refuses to open North Korea’s heavy and sturdy doors, the currents of history have grown strong enough to break them open like floodgates.

If Kim Jong Il ever realizes that opening up North Korea is in his interest, I will return to Pyongyang the very next day. I want to devise the best education system in the world based on my observations and experiences in Seoul and the United States. But I am already more than 75 years old. I can feel myself growing weaker by the day. Before I grow so infirm that my experiences become useless, I would love to meet Kim Jong Il one last time and give him one last lesson. I, who became a university professor thanks to his father; I, who traveled to Russia, Seoul, and now Washington. I no longer loathe him. I pity him. Even though he killed my family, I have already forgiven him.

For More Online

For a photo essay tracing the notorious and bizarre moments of Kim Jong Il’s life, visit: ForeignPolicy.com/extras/kim.

Kim Hyun Sik is research professor at George Mason University. For 38 years, he served as a professor of Russian at the Pyongyang University of Education. His memoir, A 21st Century Ideological Nomad (Seoul: Kimyoungsa), upon which this article is based, was published in South Korea in 2007. This article was translated by Sung-Yoon Lee, who teaches international politics at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

© 2009 Foreign Policy All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/125724/

S.Koreans 'Fear Unification'

South Koreans are happy with the status quo and fear the instability of unification with the North, American conservatives claim. According to a report titled "An American Strategy For Asia" out Monday, the conservative American Enterprise Institute says, "From an American perspective, many South Koreans seem to harbor unrealistic hopes of achieving inter-Korean comity in the near term, yet remain reluctant to take any steps toward unification for fear of triggering instability and creating a huge financial burden." The report says Korean society “is changing rapidly, and the rising generation remembers America more as the backer of repressive anti-Communist military governments than as the nation’s ally and defender during the Korean War." The report echoes earlier remarks by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs during the first Bush administration, who said South Korea's remarkable economic success has paradoxically made its people comfortable with the status quo. In an article in the November/December 2008 issue of the National Interest, a periodical published by the Nixon Institute, he said although South Koreans prefer national unification in the abstract, they fear the economic difficulties and potential costs of absorbing North Koreans. As a result, South Koreans are apathetic about North Korea and the South Korean government, regardless of its political propensity, has tried to avoid tension with North Korea, or even given "protection money" to the North, Kelly said. (englishnews@chosun.com)

url: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200901/200901140003.html