North Korea

Ok, not sure if anyone has been paying attention to the news, but North Korea launched a rocket. Though from another report, I heard that it was not successful. Nevertheless, what I really want to detail is the why – or more specifically respond to a clip of some US government official. That official stated that North Korea should abandon its missile and nuclear program and join the family of nations. Implicit in the statement was that the US would be willing to take steps to normalize relation with that country and of course provide it with material assistance if North Korea would stop and dismantle those programs. Not sure if that statement was purely for domestic US consumption. If it was, then I can understand the statement – every administration would like to be seen by the US citizens as pursuing peace (whether it is the best course of action is another matter). If it was targeted for North Koreans, then I think that US official should quit and find another line of work. The Kim regime in NK knows that once they ‘join the family of nations’, their days of rule will be numbered. This is a country that let one to two million of its citizens die in the late 90’s instead of opening itself up – that is 5-10 percent of its population.

Ok a little history here: back before the 90’s North Korea survived with massive assistance from their communist brethren in the USSR and China – whom NK played off of one another. With the fall of communism, that well dried up. So what does a poor country do to get hard currency without opening itself up? One thing that it does is get involved in criminal activities. North Korea is a center for counterfeitting and I believe drugs as well (plus of course weapons). The second thing that it does is ratchet up the tension to extort other countries to pay it to be quiet. In other words, it acts like some mafia crime family.

Why does it do this? I think it is because, ironically, the institutions of central government control are breaking down – black markets are all over the place and if one has enough money, you can literally get away with murder. Corruption is rampant. So the only real thing that it has is keeping their population on some sort of heightened war footing. North Korean population are constantly being told to sacrifice to keep the imperialists at bay and every time some country (US, South Korea, Japan usually) pays up, it is propagandized as some great victory – trying to further the government’s legitimacy. Now, what do you think will happen if NK agrees to make peace, open up and have US or Japan diplomatic presence in the country? That’s right, the Kim regime would lose its major claim to legitimacy.

North Korea, like many of the problems of this world, is where there exists no good options, just a bunch of bad or worse ones.