Bloodthirsty, brainwashed, and out of touch with reality. That's a dangerous combination...
From a white pavilion, the view offered a timeless tableau of Northeast Asian tranquillity: a frozen lake, a shoreline of fir trees, and an ornamental pagoda perched on a snow dusted island. But the strident voice of a park guide grated with this image of peace. "If the United States attacks, and if there are U.S. troops in South Korea, they should be attacked," Kim Hwang Hyok, a 30-year-old guide in a black parka, told a knot of South Korean reporters here today. "If there are U.S. troops in Japan, they should be attacked."
| "In fact, if there are U.S. troops anywhere, to include the moon, they should be attacked!" |
North Koreans are notoriously shrill about their animosity toward the United States. But random interviews today with 10 North Koreans — a composer, a band director and his assistant, a tourism director, and half a dozen park guides — underlined how pervasive and deeply held anti-Americanism is in "the hermit nation."
| Insular, ignorant, prone to rabies... |
As North Korea's government presides over a failed economy, the poorest in the region, the United States serves as a scapegoat. It also serves to motivate what is probably the world's most militarized society, with 1.1 million men and women in arms, the fifth-largest army in the world. This is the backdrop of officially sponsored hostility against which the United States must determine its response to what seems to have been a decision to produce nuclear weapons.
The policy options being debated in the Bush administration include negotiations and sanctions. Chun Moon Il, a 44-year-old composer from Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, was watching a brass band performance when a South Korean broached the topic of the United States, noting that the United States has rivaled South Korea in food donations to the North. "We can live without it," Mr. Chun, a member of the Pyongyang elite, snapped dismissively. "The United States showed its true colors during the Korean War, by making North Korea a victim. The Korean War was started by the U.S., and today the U.S. continues to threaten us with the nuclear issue. We have a lot of monuments about atrocities committed by the U.S. during the war. We don't have nuclear weapons, but our nuclear weapon is our strong unity among ourselves."
| Yep. We started the Korean War by stopping Kim Il Sung's proposed "reunification" of the country. It was all our fault... |
In reality, it was a 16-country United Nations force that battled on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea's People's Army launched a surprise invasion of South Korea. But every year, a million North Koreans, about 5 percent of the population, go through the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, where exhibits indicate that the United States attacked North Korea. At the 82-room museum, visitors are taught that American troops committed worse atrocities than Nazi soldiers did in World War II, dropping germ and chemical bombs on northern villages.
Another popular spot is the Pueblo, a Navy spy ship captured in 1968 by North Korea and never returned. A videocassette describes American negotiations for the return of the 83-member crew, saying the "enemy knelt down before the Korean people, as the myth and might of the United States crumbled before the will of the Korean people." Films, art work, television documentaries and newspaper articles relentlessly portray Americans as bloodthirsty aggressors. One new poster given wide distribution last month shows a People's Army soldier thrusting missiles toward a shredding American flag and an exploding United States Capitol.
| Actually, they're artillery shells, but the Times can probably be forgiven for not knowing the difference... |
"All servicemen of the Korea People's Army should always be on the alert," the newspaper Rodong Shinmun warned in an editorial today, the birthday of the nation's leader, Kim Jong Il. "All party members and workers must burn with hatred and hostility in their hearts toward U.S. imperialists."
Indoctrination here is so deep that when five Japanese citizens returned to Japan last fall, 25 years after they had been kidnapped by North Korea, the Japanese government had to resort to a cult deprogrammer to get them to abandon plans to return to Pyongyang. The depth of this anti-Americanism hampers any initiative from Washington. "North Korea is the only socialist country left in the world; why does the United States want to get rid of it?" said Li Ok Hwa, a 27-year-old guide. "But the United States is not attacking us, because we are strong militarily." In a system where might makes right, several guides told interpreters that they thought that the United States' reluctance to attack North Korea showed a national weakness. Ri Jo Won, a 23-year-old guide, said: "I don't think the United States is particularly strong. If they are so strong, why haven't they engaged us in war already?"
| Couldn't possibly be because we're not bloodthirsty warmongers, like... ummm... North Korea. |
Ms. Kim, the woman in the black parka, predicted, "The United States will probably attack Iraq, but not North Korea because North Korea maintains a strong military and is much stronger." Any nuclear bombs that Pyongyang may be producing, several people said, are to protect North Korea. "We don't want war, but we are not afraid of war against the United States," Chang Myung Ae, a 21-year-old guide. Referring to the atom bomb attacks that ended the war with Japan in 1945, she said: "The United States used nuclear bombs to invade other countries. But we just want to use them for our survival." Kim Chong Duk, a North Korean band manager, argued here today with South Koreans that the sole obstacle for uniting the two Koreas into a nation of 63 million people was the presence of American troops on the peninsula. "The South must expel that presence," he said. "Only then will it be possible to unify." |
