 | | "Have some of this juche Kool-ade! There's plenty to go around! Dip right in, but remember: Army First! |
| | | | Guess we can't use the lemmings picture any more. | |
North Korea urged its impoverished people to rally around Stalinist leader Kim Jong Il on Saturday, after Washington rebuffed the communist North's demand that the sides hold bilateral talks to curb nuclear tension. Pyongyang's state-run daily Rodong Sinmun allotted the whole front page of its Saturday edition to an editorial that said "the single-minded unity serves as the strongest weapon," said the official news agency KCNA. "At a time like today, when the situation gets tense, no task is more important than to strengthen our single-minded unity," the editorial said. Minju Joson, another state-run daily, said that "devotedly protecting the leader is our life and soul."
The surge in communist rhetoric followed North Korea's announcement on Thursday that the reclusive communist country has nuclear weapons for self-defense. With that declaration, Kim brandished his strongest diplomatic card yet and dramatically escalated the nuclear standoff with Washington and its allies. North Korea's claim could not be independently verified. It remained unclear whether North Korea intended to remain a nuclear power or was trying to use the weapons as a bargaining chip to win aid, diplomatic recognition and a nonaggression treaty with Washington — measures the North believes will guarantee the survival of Kim's regime.
My mind keeps drifting back, lo, these many years, to Romania, and how they used to have occasional demonstrations and parades and expressions of love for their version of Kimmie. Then, one day, they took him and the little woman out and stood them against a wall and shot them. They hunted the Securitate guys down and killed them in the streets. Then they moved on to trying to put together a country that works, with all the problems that entails along with the necessity of trying to repair the damage Ceaucescu and the Commies did.
Yet people keep buying the expressions of adoration produced by a state-run press, keep accepting as genuine government-organized demonstrations. I wonder if, a dozen years from now, we're going to be watching some other regime on the edge of dissolution, and the thought of North Korea and how it collapsed is going to pop into somebody's mind? Or will we still be "negotiating" with these nitwits in between KCNA harrangues and diplomatic walkouts, while the population is reduced to eating stones and the average height of an adult male's dropped below three feet? |
As the standoff intensified between Pyongyang and Washington, newspapers in South Korea urged the government on Saturday to stand firm against North Korea. "We should be resolute against any nuclear problems that decisively threaten our national security," said the mass-circulation Joong Ang Daily in an editorial. "Seoul and Washington should closely cooperate in finding out the North's intention." |