Sunday, July 17, 2005
Nicholas Kristof gives us much important data on his trip to North Korea. While the well-informed understand all this already, I think the average guy has no idea what a crazy place it is. Reading about it always reminds me of that 1960's TV series, The Prisoner. 
In the series, Patrick McGoohan plays a secret agent who, upon resigning his position finds himself gassed, kidnapped and transplanted to a place called "The Village." In The Village, everyone is a number, no one has a name, the location is unknown, as are the identities of the people who run the place -- even what they want from McGoohan and why they're holding him are questions. No one escapes from The Village, and every move is monitored. Who are the warders and who are the prisoners? The line is blurred.
Here's Kristof:
Every subway car carries those same two portraits as well, and every adult wears a button depicting the Great Leader. And every home (or village, in rural areas) has an audio speaker, which starts broadcasting propaganda at 6 each morning to tell people how lucky they are.
Children spend long hours in day care centers from the age of 6 months, sometimes returning to their parents only on weekends. Men normally perform seven or more years of military service. Disabled people are sometimes expelled from Pyongyang, a green and well-groomed capital that is one of the prettiest in Asia, because they are considered unsightly.
And although the national ideology is juche, or self-reliance, the U.N. World Food Program feeds 6.5 million North Koreans, almost one-third of the population. Even so, hunger is widespread and has left 37 percent of the children stunted.
Yet North Korea focuses its resources on prestige projects, like an amazing 10-lane highway to Nampo (with no traffic). [That one reminds me of Stalin's White Sea Canal. -Sol]
Many conservatives in and out of the Bush administration assume that North Korea's population must be seething and that the regime must be on its last legs. Indeed, the Bush administration's policy on North Korea, to the extent that it has one, seems to be to wait for it to collapse.
I'm afraid that could be a long, long wait. The central paradox of North Korea is this: No government in the world today is more brutal or has failed its people more abjectly, yet it appears to be in solid control and may even have substantial popular support.
From a brief visit like mine, it's hard to gauge the mood, because anyone who criticizes the government risks immediate arrest. But Chinese and other foreigners I've spoken to who live in North Korea or visit regularly say they believe that most North Koreans buy into the system, just as ordinary Chinese did during the Maoist period...
There's no question that North Korea is an extremely effective, and brutal, Stalinist regime. And you know what, if the Chinese (and South Koreans) don't want it to fail, I'm not sure there is a decent policy to pursue toward the North beyond buying time and waiting for an opening.
Kristof's piece is a good primer on the situation, but then New York Times-itis strikes. In that effort to blame...everything...on...Bush he shits the bed in the end.
Instead, we maintain sanctions, isolate North Korea and wait indefinitely for the regime to collapse. I'm afraid we're helping the Dear Leader stay in power.
And I'm afraid that going on ahead and pretending it's business as usual with the North will have exactly the same effect. I am a Sharanskyite in this regard. Legitimizing the Kim regime, bringing in hard currency (with which they could further militarize and repress their people), and providing an incentive for our business community to lobby for our government not to rock the boat there so as not to jeopardize what will amount to a slave-labor situation will also be a God-send to the Dear Leader. Our businesses will be under the control and exist under the forbearance of the regime. They will be another arm of the government in a place where everything is an arm of the government (an even worse situation than Microsoft's despicably helping the Red Chinese keep the words "freedom" and "democracy" off of Chinese blogs). It's like being a shop-keeper in The Village -- you're just a part of the repressive apparatus.
We may not need to overtly topple the regime, but we should do nothing to help prop it up. American business at the service of the Dear Leader would do just that.
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Patrick McGoohan has died. We are Prisoner fans around these parts (the font on the nav bar in the upper right is called 'Village.'), and The Saint wasn't too bad, either. Via Ed Driscoll, you can watch the entire series... Read More
Great post, Sol. Enlightening and frightening. (But I did especially enjoy the photos -- one of my all-time favorite TV shows.)
Thanks! Couldn't help but add one more picture -- the fat shopkeeper, of course.