Across North Korea at 7am each day, loudspeakers come to life and blare a rousing song titled 10 Million Human Bombs for Kim Il-sung and, according to recent visitors, it is common to see people of all ages singing along fervently. That Kim Il-sung has been dead for nine years does not seem to have diminished the song’s appeal.
| "Kimmie, we will defend you with our blood, even though you're moulderin' in the grave..." |
With his late wife, the senior Kim has been elevated into a trinity along with their son, the current leader Kim Jong-il, in what some regard more as a state religion than just a bizarre ideological variant of Marxism-Leninism: it even has its own nativity scene, set in a mountain-top log cabin during wartime Japanese rule.
| No doubt with a visit by three ideologically sound men... |
North Korea’s Juche or self-reliance doctrine borrows these and other elements of Christianity and combines them with the patriarchism of the ancient Chinese sage Confucius and a millenarian Korean sect called Chondogyo. Kim Jong-il is the chief shaman or priestly miracle worker in this quasi state religion. "It’s a lot worse than even George W. Bush thinks it is," says a senior Western diplomat who frequently visits Pyongyang. "It is something very depressing to the human spirit. They want everyone to think the same thing at the same time, and they are close to getting it. That’s what makes it horrible." The tight grip of this leadership cult, and the suicidal militancy expressed in the song, make this and many other observers in the region wonder whether the Bush Administration really understands the beast it is now tackling through hardline diplomacy and tightening inspections of North Korean export shipments. "The idea that this is a ... state that only needs a prod to collapse is false," the diplomat said.
| Depends on the nature of the prod... |
Despite North Korea’s failed economy and the misery of most of its 22.5 million citizens — trapped in poverty and decayed housing and ravaged by malnutrition and periodic famine, power blackouts and diseases such as tuberculosis and cholera — its core belief still burns bright in the country’s self-isolation from the world. The cult tells North Koreans they are a special people who evolved separately to other humans, according to neolithic "discoveries" by North Korean archaeologists. They learn that they are ruled by special leaders and that the hardship is merely the prelude to an early paradise that will come through a sudden convulsion.
| Right after the Sea of Fire... |
Elites at the top of a social ranking divided into 54 classes — from Kim Jong-il’s inner circle down to hereditary class enemies and collaborators — are, meanwhile, kept quiet with privileges and supplies denied the ordinary population. "They are very eager to keep the regime in existence," says Choi Jin Wook, a senior researcher at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification. "If it fails, it’s the end of their privileges." In the past two months, Kim Jong-il has intensified his "army first" doctrine in which the KPA has effectively replaced the Communist Party as the key structure in the regime. This may signal that advocates of economic liberalisation in the trade and light industry ministries and the committees dealing with Asia-Pacific relations and flood rehabilitation have already lost out to the old-guard military-heavy industry camp. But a clock is ticking in this war machine. The newest artillery, tanks and aircraft were supplied in the last days of the Soviet Union, and are more than a decade old. The struggle to shield heavy industry from North Korea’s overall economic decline is getting harder. Even the human quality of the KPA is shrinking: the height requirement for new recruits is now 1.3 metres(less than 4 1/2 feet), reflecting the effects of nearly two decades of malnutrition.
| It's a strange world, where we're under threat of attack by vicious dwarves, gaily singing the praises of an hereditary little round man... |
The new Chinese leadership under President Hu Jintao has fewer sentimental ties to North Korea than Beijing’s old guard. In March, Beijing turned off the spigot on its oil pipeline into North Korea for three days to reinforce a warning against resuming ballistic missile tests. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party’s "leading group" on North Korea, formed in February and chaired by Hu himself, has studied all options to head off a Korean war because it would be ruinous to China, too. China’s tearaway 7 to 8 per cent annual growth is founded on massive trade and investment links with the US and its strategic partners. Even China’s trade with South Korea totalled $US44 billion ($67 billion) last year, and is expected to reach an annual $US100 billion in five years. As well as cutting this off, a Korean war would force the closure to international shipping of all Chinese ports north of Shanghai, including the major export outlets of Qingdao, Tianjin and Dalian.
| That's actually the same set of considerations South Korea's dealing with. Warlike people tend to be the ones who don't have something to lose. I think it was Herodotus who commented on the same phenomenon with the Medes and the Persians of his day. |
As revealed this week in the Herald, these studies included the feasibility of China’s People’s Liberation Army conducting a lightning strike to disarm North Korea. The conclusion was that the PLA did not have the logistics capability to reach the DMZ fast enough to prevent the North Korean military attacking south to engage US troops. China’s changed attitude is revealed in a directive recently issued to the Chinese media by the central propaganda directorate: "Regarding the DPRK [North Korea] nuclear crisis, China and DPRK now have divided opinions on many issues, so we require media not to play on this nuclear issue and stick to the Xinhua [official news agency] version only." |