Hopeful signs have apparently surfaced.
It’s Thursday in Japan and I have received email from Kyoto from Mongai Kome, frequent commenter on this blog. His morning paper (Sankei Shinbun) is reporting anti-regime flyers being posted in over fifty places in North Korea. This public display of disobedience in that benighted country is unprecedented and has been going on for the last month. Here is Mongai:
The most prevalent flyer is called the “sixteen lies” of tyrant Kim and his tyrant father and it takes apart the fundamental myths and propaganda regarding the cult of the Kims and outlines the failings of the regime. Another flyer is based on the thesis that Kim Jong-il killed his father (perhaps some propaganda in and of itself but a brilliant move given the traditions of the Korean culture.)
Here is hoping things happen in twos and in Iran and North Korea justice will be done, and done soon, and done of, by, and for the people there with a little help from friends.
From earlier in his email, Mongai means Bush and Rice who he is happy are in office, considering the circumstances. But I think if Kim Jong-il is finally going to be gotten rid of, we already know who is going to do it.
PJM Home
36 Comments
1. Frank Martin:This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/11-18b-04.asp
and if THATS not weird enough:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SEO352569.htm
Looks like I’ve got to get another bottle of champaign to celebrate another dictatorship in the ditch.
Nov 17, 2004 - 5:22 pm 2. Sandy P:Keep checking out Rantburg, everyone.
And check out the last few days of Korea articles.
I wonder if the CIA knew this was going to happen?
Nah, missed the boat again.
Nov 17, 2004 - 5:58 pm 3. Sandy P:His favorite concubine just died of cancer. He has a son by her.
Maybe his portrayal in Team America put him over the edge.
So, who’s doing the pushing?
China? Or did we make an offer to those behind the scenes they couldn’t refuse?
Nov 17, 2004 - 6:01 pm 4. Terrye:high time.
it would be so nice if we could stop worrying about these people.
Nov 17, 2004 - 6:12 pm 5. ms anne:let’s hope this gives dr. rice her first big success at state.
Nov 17, 2004 - 6:27 pm 6. Charlie (Colorado):Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Nov 17, 2004 - 6:32 pm 7. Final Historian:Libya, then North Korea? You have got to be kidding me…
I mean, really, that just seems a bit much. Its time to start checking the local pig farm to see if they have been experiencing some oddities lately…
Nov 17, 2004 - 6:35 pm 8. Byron00:It’s hard to imagine that any group other than the military would dare even try this. It may be that with Bush’s re-election, the NK generals have decided that Kim’s approach to international relations is doomed to end in disaster.
Nov 17, 2004 - 7:06 pm 9. lindenen:There was a recent report (and I can’t remember where I read it–Nevermind!) that Kim Jong Il’s picture had mysteriously vanished from public places in NK.
Just Google North Korea and there seems to be a flurry of news reports.
Nov 17, 2004 - 7:58 pm 10. Ben:Of the two (NK & Iran), I believe that there is more hope for Iran. From what I have read, that country has a restive middle class yearning to be free of the Mullahs’ oppression, and improving economy, etc. NK, on the other hand, is a complete basket case, replete with a psychotic leader, mass starvation and a Third World economy. Paradoxically, revolutions tend to occur when things are getting better (Iran), not when they are at rock bottom (NK) - usually it’s the almost elites versus the elites. A society that is a complete basket case does not have a large enough group of almost elites to form a robust revolutionary cadre.
Nov 17, 2004 - 7:58 pm 11. Ben:Of course, all of this assumes that China does not turn on Kim. If it does, he is finished, as NK is almost completely dependent on China for economic and military support. To date, China has tolerated Kim’s wackiness because it suits China’s purposes to divert US attention (China sees the USA as its chief rival for hegemony in East Asia). This is why the Bush Administration refused to conduct bilateral negotiations with NK - such negotiations would play in to the hands of the Chinese and, accordingly, would be doomed from the beginning. As long as China can keep everyone talking, China’s goal is accomplished because the USA is less able to focus on China. By refusing to talk to NK without the presence of China, Japan and SK, the USA has made it clear that it will not fall for this strategem.
Nov 17, 2004 - 8:04 pm 12. PeterUK:I cannot see Little Kim getting to retire in his villa on the Rue de Tyran in Paris,more likely to end up hanging from a lampost.
Nov 17, 2004 - 8:11 pm 13. Macker:…by his balls. That is, if we don’t end up frying them first.
Nov 17, 2004 - 9:24 pm 14. Tom Holsinger:The pamphlets appear to orginate in China. There are many implications to this.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1282313/posts
Nov 17, 2004 - 10:51 pm 15. Willa:I’m not seeing anything on this in the papers or the news here in Tokyo. You should know that the Sankei Shimbun is a slightly wacky paper (just slightly more legitimate than the evening sports tabloids). The more respected Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, and Nikkei are better sources of information.
When rumors like this arise, you ought to first look on the English sites of these papers to confirm them. Or check out Google News for a quick sanity check: http://news.google.co.jp/nwshp?hl=ja&gl=jp . It’s in Japanese, but it takes only a few clicks on the top stories to see the pictures, and if there aren’t any pictures of Kim Jong Il you can assume there is no big news about North Korea.
Nov 18, 2004 - 3:58 am 16. Byron00:Pamphlets are one thing; they could easily be part of a US-Chinese subversion operation. But taking down public portraits of the Great Leader is something else again. Nobody is sneaking across the border to do that.
The indication to me is that Kim’s military leadership has turned against him, and that may be in coordination of some kind with China, the US, Japan, all the above.
NK can be seen as one-man rule, where that man has absolute control of the military. Or, it can be seen as a military dictatorship, fronted by Kim. I think in the end it is the latter, even though Kim may not have thought about it that way until lately. His confrontational policies are not working with Bush, the military sees its gravy train getting upset, and Kim is finished.
Nov 18, 2004 - 7:29 am 17. Sandy P:Unfortunately, Roh sounds like he’s gone off his rocker.
What really scares the Sorks is that they paid attention to what happened to Germany after reunification. It bankruputed them and Sork fears the same, so they want to “go reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally”
slow.
http://rantburg.com/poparticle.asp?HC=Main&D=11/17/2004&ID=49068
below is a snippet w/commentary:
Roh also said that it is “understandable” for North Korea to seek nuclear deterrence to cope with external threats.
This is an amazing statement. Rho is going dhimmi.
He urged the United States instead to take “new measures” to guarantee the security of North Korea in order to end the nuclear standoff.
The US is to guarantee the security of the Norks, an enemy of the US and of SKor? WTFO?
Nov 18, 2004 - 7:37 am 18. Sandy P:Well, via Rantburg:
North Koreaís official media have dropped the honorific “dear leaderíí from reports on Kim Jong Il, a Japanese news agency reported a day after other reports said his portrait had been removed at some public sites.
The Northís Korean Central Broadcast, the Korean Central News Agency and other media are describing the nationís leader as “general secretary of the Workersí Party of Korea,íí “chairman of the Democratic Peopleís Republic of Korea National Defense Commissioníí and “supreme commander of the Korean Peopleís Army,íí Tokyo-based Radiopress said on its Web site….
Nov 18, 2004 - 7:53 am 19. lindenen:“I think in the end it is the latter, even though Kim may not have thought about it that way until lately. His confrontational policies are not working with Bush, the military sees its gravy train getting upset, and Kim is finished.”
If this is true, it makes you wonder what would have happened had Kerry been elected instead of Bush.
Nov 18, 2004 - 8:37 am 20. mongai:Willa,
To call Sankei “wacky” and Asahi and Mainich “respected” (I’ll give Yomiuri and Nikkei a pass) tells us a lot about you. It is true Sankei is conservative and has been in its editorial pages supportive of Koizumi-Bush as it was of Nakasone-Reagan back in the eighties, but when does conservative=wacky. Willa go back and read the last ten years of Sankei and Asahi and compare which paper broke the most stories (true stories) on North Korea. Which paper do the families of victims kidnapped by North Korea trust most with their story? Which paper does Koizumi and Abe and other leaders, yes conservative leaders, use the most to talk directly to the public and make timely leaks? Is there a better, more fair, more thorough Washington correspondant in the Japanese press than Sankei’s Komori? I could go on and on but I won’t. Suffice to say your “wacky” paper is my and many of my Japanese friends’ equivalent to the Wall Street Journal. I ask you to give us concrete examples of Sankei’s wackiness and if you do I’ll try to give you examples of its sobreity. Also, please give us concrete examples of say Asahi’s legitimacy and reasons we should respect it. The reputation of Asahi and Mainichi with the people I am around reminds me of Roger’s present thoughts on NYT-CBS. Only worse. Much, much worse. In any case do me a favor and read both Sankei and Asahi for a month, I trust you have no problems reading the Japanese language, and get back to me. I’d like to hear what you have learned. (Of course just reading the English sites of these papers is a recipe for disaster.) But I do agree Willa, flyers are a far cry from the Koreans taking back their country and too much optimism is bound to meet disappointment, yet the posting of flyers against the regime I believe is true, especially because Sankei broke this story and Asahi and others are for the moment silent.
Nov 18, 2004 - 9:20 am 21. Mikey:If this is accurate, it is good news. Cults of Personality do not lighten up on the worship of the Leader, unless the leader is gone. No one said anything bad about Stalin (officially) until he was good and planted.
Perhaps China decided that a nice, safe, general would be the right way to keep things from tipping out of control on their border without getting the US involved any deeper in the Korean peninsula.
We’ll see how things pan out.
Nov 18, 2004 - 9:36 am 22. Half Canadian:Could this be the result of a special ops project? Plant some agents with some posters/pamphlets and they plaster them around at night?
I’d prefer it to be native, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
Nov 18, 2004 - 10:28 am 23. JJay:Dictators can hang on for a long time even after the first crack appears. Saddam and Castro are good examples, so is Mogabi.
Nov 18, 2004 - 11:14 am 24. betterred:The likely delay in resolving North Korea is deciding who is in charge of the mess when Kim is dead. The possibility that Kim Jong-Il could be assasinated by the Chinese as quickly as banging a gong, should be obvious. Things blow up there all the time, and the Chinese undoubtably have him in their sights. Of the major players, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, and the US, I don’t see any objections arising to any ‘permanent sanctions’. Note that the UN has not been approached by any of these players. The discussion that is secretly being made is after he is gone, does South Korea get the North or does the China try to absorb it? My money’s on China, and the South Koreans want to agree, but they can’t break the news to their citizens. Thet definitely don’t want the North Koreans to decide. Dictatorships are a hell of a lot easier to overthrow than governments.
Nov 18, 2004 - 11:40 am 25. Tom Holsinger:My money is on China putting their own puppets in charge of North Korea with the fraternal assistance of several hundred thousand humanitarian aid workers contributed by the People’s Liberation Army.
The alternative is for North Korea to collapse as the result of staggering corruption and incompetence by the Nork’s gangster confederacy - in particular 10-15 years of capital disinvestment. It doesn’t matter how much aid is provided for operations - eventually the lack of spending on capital investment aka civil infrastructure will bring the place down. It’s just a question of when.
The final collapse seems to be coming due to termination of rail service in particular, as that is the principle source of food distribution in the interior. North Korea is so mountainous that rail transport is the only feasible means of moving large quantities of food outside port areas. And the areas with rail service have been shrinking for years.
It appears that rail service is now largely confined to the valley containing the capital city of Pyongyang, the rail routes to China, plus the areas around ports and the rail routes to China. The inland areas have been reduced to subsisdence economies - they’re tearing up the no-longer used rail lines and associated electric power distribution lines to sell as scrap and buy food.
When the final collapse comes, and IMO that is about six months away, one of the things which will happen with the ROK’s expansion to the Yalu will be:
American counter-proliferation teams will secure North Korea’s WMD programs, notably nuclear, including all their paperwork and personnel. Which will reveal the extent of Chinese support for that, PLUS major, major Chinese technical assistance to the nuclear weapons and missile programs of Pakistan, Libya, and IRAN.
The Chinese will do just about anything to avoid that.
And letting even a Communist monarchy cease to exist due its own incompetence, and be replaced by a democracy, would set a most undesirable precedent.
So I think the Chinese will take over North Korea rather than let it collapse. And they are running out of time.
Nov 18, 2004 - 12:14 pm 26. finlay:Tom, the only problem with your thesis is that South Korean racial identity would be inflammed if China interfered in North Korea like you say. You really have to appreciate that Koreans view themselves as one people with a greater Korean destiny and nation at stake. It would be a very bad thing, because it could devolve quickly into a full scale military conflict between the ROK and China with the US stuck in the middle. I don’t see an Eastern Europe style resolution to Korean unification. More likely there is going to be violence and messiness.
Nov 18, 2004 - 1:09 pm 27. puredata:Some of our Chinese developers are saying the Chinese bloggers are reporting that Kim was arrested by NK Military. No real news on PRC or Free Chinese news sites in English or Chinese yet.
Nov 18, 2004 - 1:34 pm 28. Tom Holsinger:Finlay,
South Korea can take over North Korea at any time - the NKPA doesn’t exist anymore. All the ROK has to do is send a corps north. There isn’t anything to stop them.
The alternative is to wait six months for millions of starving North Koreans to head south (millions more will go to China and some even to Russia).
So what is stopping the ROK from reunifying Korea? Might it be that they don’t want to? Perhaps Sandy P. is right in saying:
I used to agree with you - there are major, major downsides to a Chinese takeover of North Korea, and the point you raise was only a minor one of those.
But IMO China’s ruling group will do anything to avoid threats to their own rule from events in North Korea. And it is also a question of them being paranoid control freaks - they’d much rather have the ability to influence events than be forced to merely endure them.
Nov 18, 2004 - 2:30 pm 29. Big Dan:Don’t forget how it was Mao that let the reins loosen a little bit, to see who said what. Then came the Cultural Revolution smackdown.
Also known as “Rope-a-dope”. Watch for it, especially if this is the only indication that the NorKs are getting restless.
I’m just sayin’…
Nov 18, 2004 - 2:50 pm 30. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):I doubt that the ROK would be permitted to take NK. China has a long history of requiring buffer states on its borders, and in this case it is North Korea. If the ROK went to the Yalu, I suspect war would follow. In that sense, the same forces that existed in the 1950s are still there.
This is historic Chinese security policy of many centuries - China is the center of the universe, and anything right around them needs to be properly tamed.
It is possible that ROK could cut some sort of deal where a reunified Korea would be acceptable to China, but the price would be steep - probably at least a minimal loss of sovereignty.
Nov 18, 2004 - 5:34 pm 31. Korla Pundit:Maybe Kim was ronery.
Nov 18, 2004 - 8:25 pm 32. Willa:Mongai,
Okay, maybe “wacky” is too strong a word. “Washingtontimesesque” may be a better adjective. I admit they scoop more North Korea stories than the others, if only because they are obsessed with North Korea and run many more stories than anyone else. But for every hit they have there are a couple stories like “Princess Tenko and Kim Jong Il’s Secret Love Nest.”
But in general all Japanese papers are suspect. I’ve done some public relations work that involved visits to the press clubs, and amazingly the reporters from the various newspapers don’t even have desks at their own companies: they sit side-by-side at their desks in the press clubs, listening in to each other’s conversations.
The lack of real city or regional newspapers is also a problem. All the major papers are national. Comparing it to the U.S., it’s like only the NYT, Washingon Post, USA Today, LA Times, and WSJ existed, with the next level being the neighborhood advertiser.
Nov 19, 2004 - 12:04 am 33. ambisinistral:Don’t you think China would be very cautious about military adventurism? At this point the last thing China can afford is another Vietnam Incursion style clobbering of their army. Taiwan would be gone in a heart beat if that happened and it wouldn’t help the situation in their Western Provinces.
Nov 19, 2004 - 4:50 am 34. mongai:Willa,
Thanks for getting back to me on the subject. I am wondering if in fact you read these papers in Japanese. Cover to cover. Everyday. I am also wondering if you are or are not confusing Sankei newspaper with say Sankei Sports. Sankei Sports is indeed a bit wacky, but no more so than any other of the evening sports papers. The one thing Sankei newspaper does have is an editorial page that is strongly anti-communist (thus its interest in North Korea and Taiwan) and strongly pro Japanese-American alliance. Its straight news I find less ideologically tainted than all the other papers, or at least on par with Yomiuri. But Mainich and Asahi to a much greater extent than even their European counterparts lets their political leanings color the straight news. With the communists and socialists taking such a beating these last few years one often hears from the papers that support the far left, these being Asahi and Mainichi to a lesser extent, the belief there is a vast right-wing conspiracy doing them in. This leads to the Sankei=wacky meme. What you say about the reporters, especially those in Washington, is very true, except for Sankei’s Mr. Komori and one or two others. The papers you speak of all have regional bureaus and thus each edition of each paper differs to some extent by region. Not to mention, places like Kyoto, have their own paper. I would say Sankei serves a very important function, debunking Asahi, and is part Washington Times, part Wall Street Journal, and part Washington Post on a good day. To end, the reporters I know all have their own desks. With this said your overall suspicion regarding the mass media in Japanese is well founded.
Nov 19, 2004 - 6:05 pm 35. Eric Scheie:“Maybe his portrayal in Team America put him over the edge.”
Kim Jong Il is known to follow foreign reports about him closely. AND he enjoys watching foreign films.
What this means is that someone was forced to translate “Team America” (words and “wonewy” music) for the paranoid little Stalinist.
(Not a job for which I’d volunteer. . .)
Nov 19, 2004 - 6:32 pm 36. FIELD_NICKNAME:FIELD_MESSAGE_eltcovarc
Dec 14, 2008 - 9:52 pm