North Korea's new young leader will have to share power with an uncle and the military after the death of his father Kim Jong-il as the isolated country shifts to collective rule from strongman dictatorship, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters.
The source added that the military, which is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal, has pledged allegiance to the untested Kim Jong-un, who takes over the family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since it was founded after World War II. ... The situation in North Korea appeared stable after the military gave its backing to Kim Jong-un, the source said.
"It's very unlikely," the source said when asked about the possibility of a military coup. "The military has pledged allegiance to Kim Jong-un."
On Monday North Korea test-fired a missile "to warn the United States not to make any moves against it."
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
In her book Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick wrote, referring to Kim Il-sung's death in 1994: "The histrionics of grief took on a competitive quality. Who could weep the loudest?"
One young student in Pyongyang felt nothing as all around him were wailing, she noted. "His entire future depended on his ability to cry. Not just his career and his membership in the Workers' Party, his very survival was at stake. It was a matter of life and death."
He was saved, she wrote, by holding his eyelids open and his eyeballs exposed until they burned and began to tear up. Once they started, he began sobbing like everyone else.
For many it was probably a natural reaction, says Kerry Brown, head of the Asia programme at Chatham House, because learning about a leader's death raises questions for the North Koreans about their identity, their security and their ability to survive,
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:17 pm Posts: 13574 Location: New England
Occupation: Professor of Sociology
As I have thought more about the spectacle that we are seeing in North Korea, I have realized that I have neglected one thing: the fear that this generation of North Koreans has inherited from their parents and grandparents. They also suffered in the Korean War. They were told then and are told now that the United States poses the greatest threat to their survival. As Kerry Brown wrote, "a leader's death raises questions for the North Koreans about their identity, their security and their ability to survive." They do not only fear the Kim regime; they also fear what they or their forebears experienced.
There may not be a Korean film that conveys what they experienced, particularly not one from North Korea. I suspect, however, that Grave of the Fireflies would also be partly their story. Its author, Isao Takahata, denies that the film is anti-war; he insists that it tells the story of the dangers of social isolation of children and teenagers. I think it tells a story that may apply to the Korean experience during the war and today. Even the uncaring elite are there.
It is the story of two children who suffered from the fire bombing of Kobe near the end of the war. It begins in Sannomiya Station in Kobe on September 21, 1945. This version is in English, but that does not make much of a difference: the story tells itself. It is a full-length anime, 90 minutes long.
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Roger Ebert considers it to be one of the most powerful war movies ever made and recently included it on his Great Movies list.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Sometimes I wish that the U.S. did have psychological warfare capabilities, such as the holographic projection capability that some military analysts and conspiracy theorists claim we have. In the setting of the quasi-religious adoration of the Dear Leader, a full-color hologram that could be seen all over North Korea showing the lies and evil of the current regime might be the only other thing that might cause a revolution. Even showing it just over Pyongyang might have an effect. It could be the modern-day equivalent of the leaflets that the Allies dropped over Germany and Japan -- which did not work.
NPR reported today that South Koreans are filling balloons by the thousands with helium and leaflets, some with pictures of North Koreans who have defected, and letting them go over the DMZ. The North Korean government, of course, told the people that the leaflets had lethal-to-the-touch poison.
There simply have to be North Koreans who are in touch somehow with their families in South Korea. Someone in the north knows what's going on in the real world. Some of the elite have to have traveled somewhere. Right?
_________________ "What are you talking about, 99? We have to shoot and kill and destroy - we represent everything that's wholesome and good in the world." - Maxwell Smart
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:17 pm Posts: 13574 Location: New England
Occupation: Professor of Sociology
From 2008 a photograph of a mass rally in Pyongyang, North Korea, staged for Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.
The design is made up entirely of human beings. That speaks volumes. A comparison to the stands in American football stadiums is not apt: the sports fans showed up of their own volition.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:01 am Posts: 18526 Location: Planet Earth (most the time)
Occupation: I'm not at liberty to say. In other words, I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
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Say what you will about North Korea, at least they're authentically Korean
Quote:
Alex Massie Thursday, 22nd December 2011
Drivel, of course, and the kind of thing you'd expect to find in the Guardian. One expects rather more from the Times but, nay, here is a piece of Simon Winchester's column today:
The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please.
India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.
I'm not sure I've read a more revolting pair of paragraphs this year. Just gawp at the casual glibness of waving aside the horrors of a gulag-famine state in this fashion, all so the world-weary "romantic" can be cheered-up by the refreshing local colour that makes North Korea so charmingly unique.
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:17 pm Posts: 13574 Location: New England
Occupation: Professor of Sociology
There may be a way to weaken and then topple the Kim dynasty and its palace guard. This one would not involve (fallible) strategic bombing, withholding of food and oil aid, or mounting some kind of information campaign that would penetrate the regime's solid wall. It involves what may be a very small number of dissidents, and it would almost certainly provoke a harsh, deadly response from the regime. It has worked against dictators in the past:
The scholar is, of course, the great Gene Sharp. A sidebar in the last article quotes him:
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“Dictators will do all kinds of things to get you to stop the resistance, and it’s the resistance that has given democratic Syrians leverage," says nonviolent resistance advocate Gene Sharp.
Nonviolent resistance was taught to the people of East Germany, Egypt, and a number of other countries by Sharp's little book, From Dictatorship to Democracy. I believe that a Korean translation has not yet been published; there is little money in Sharp's Institution to do much. It has never been funded by the CIA.
As has happened repeatedly in the past, dissidents could be reached in North Korea and trained in the methods of nonviolent resistance. That training will involve how to remove the legitimacy, authority, and power of a dictatorship. The result would inevitably lead to the deaths of many protesters, most of them young. Nonviolent resistance does not mean the absence of violence. The task of identifying dissidents may be very much harder than in the numerous previous actions because there may be so few. It can nevertheless be done at the risk of one's life. It is known how to do it. It requires the people to say "We are not afraid anymore." It requires that people be willing to die for what they know to be right. Although there may be little internal base for a nonviolent uprising, all nonviolent uprisings have begun with the activities of just a few. Starvation may be a powerful inducement to join. As with most uprisings in China, the resistance movement will arise in the countryside.
Peculiarly, it might be done against the wishes of the American government, which seeks stability over honor. The South Korean government also will not help. They are willing to live beside a horror.
We do not know where a future North Korean Solzhenitsyn is now. He or she might be still living in Pyongyang, or hiding in the Chinese borderlands, or washing cars in Seoul. One thing is clear: He or she needs help, and now is the time to provide it.
I would dearly love for Gene to live long enough to see the Kim regime toppled.
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_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Lots of new video on NKTV, they were working last night. Now they are showing hysterical four and five year olds outside in the square. They've montaged the inside hysteria in a 10 minute segment. They have 6-7 desks of guestbooks everyone is signing with gold and marble everywhere; last year they recommended people find roots and edible tree bark to eat. Blitzer has a CNN docu from when he was there last year with Bill Richardson tomorrow at 5pm ET. Been a while since it was posted... the live streaming video runs from 9pm ET at http://112.170.78.145:50000/chosun If you've never seen hardcore communist porn it's a real treat.
I especially liked the vulgar display of the body with the screaming 'mourners'. The women were the worst - it was hysterical on many levels. The announcer sounded like he/she/it was crying while reading the script.
_________________ You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which'll probably get you in trouble.
Or... you can follow the money... which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth. "The Two Jakes"
The sudden death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il poses another, and potentially very dangerous, new challenge to U.S.-China relations. Possible knock-on effects of Kim’s demise – ranging from a regime collapse to provocation by a weak and insecure successor or other forms of civil strife in North Korea – will force China, the United States, and South Korea to respond. If mutual distrust drives Washington and Beijing to take actions that each believes would serve its security interests, but which might be perceived by the other as provocative and ill-intentioned, the United States and China could be plunged into a crisis neither wants.
Sadly, as the two great powers have little control over the succession process in Pyongyang, factors determining the stability on the Korean Peninsula and the complex geopolitical relations in East Asia are the factional dynamics, leadership personalities, and unknown levels of popular discontent inside North Korean. External influence exerted by great powers may affect the political calculations of North Korea’s ruling elites, but only to a very limited extent. Students of history should find this situation familiar: it’s not the first time that the geopolitical fortunes of great powers are held hostage by the political machinations of the rulers of a strategically located small nation. ... The greatest challenge for the United States and China at this crisis moment is to reach a set of strategic understandings that will protect their respective security interests. In particular, Washington and Beijing need to resolve the three critical issues that are certain to top the security agenda in the event of a regime collapse in Pyongyang. First and foremost, they must agree on the lines of demarcation of their respective militaries in case the People’s Liberation Army and the U.S. and South Korean militaries have to go into North Korea to perform combat, stability, or humanitarian operations. Second, they must agree on the deployment of U.S. military after reunification. Beijing will be unlikely concede to extending American deployment north of the 38th parallel [the 1945 dividing line between the two newly independent nations, roughly corresponding to today's line of demarcation between two countries that are still technically at war], but Washington may not want to bind itself to a firm commitment. Third, Washington and Beijing must agree on how to secure North Korea’s nuclear weapons and facilities.
Although conventional wisdom holds that China wields the greatest influence over North Korea, Beijing will actually have the weakest card to play in a regime collapse scenario. Because Seoul and Washington are genuine strategic allies, South Korea is a pivotal player should it take over the north. In all likelihood, Seoul will accede to Washington’s desires, not Beijing’s. Under such a scenario, Beijing’s worst nightmare on the Korean Peninsula could come true: it will find not only the loss of a buffer state, but also an entirely new security landscape in which its own security and influence have greatly diminished – all because of the unexpected demise of one man.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:17 pm Posts: 13574 Location: New England
Occupation: Professor of Sociology
As we wait for the live broadcast of the funeral procession of Kim Jong-il, with its cast of tens of thousands, this news item from June 2, 2011, might be of interest:
The research shows its credibility by not naming North Korea as the world's happiest nation; that spot goes to China.
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The blissful top five is rounded out by Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, reports the International Business Times, which picked up the news from Chinese-language outlet Chaoxian.
There is no prize for guessing which nation earned the 203rd spot in this highly scientific study reported by the Korean Central News Agency.
The hermit kingdom is in such a fug of indoctrination and denial of information that it is quite possible that ordinary North Koreans believed every word of this story, unable to imagine that anything else is possible or desirable.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:17 pm Posts: 13574 Location: New England
Occupation: Professor of Sociology
Windows Media Player is now reporting that it is unable to connect to the server at http://112.170.78.145:50000/chosun. The color bars, followed by the test pattern and then the programming, were earlier available at about this time. The secretive kingdom may not wish the world to see the funeral of Kim Jong-il.
Edit: It may be possible to view North Korean television at http://www.elufa.net/krt-tv/houdou.html. It appears to have archived broadcasts up through 12/27/2011 Pyongyang time.
LiveStream is running a retrospective of the good times under Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il stars as city planner, architect, film director, and visionary. The abundance of food is truly impressive. There is English narration.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
NKTV is back up! 12:51am ET http://112.170.78.145:50000/chosun It's so... Birfer... the hysterics, lack of reality, refusal to accept any other thoughts... Orly should really be watching as a homecoming, or for tips, or at least use the footage to say the people are really reacting to her unfair treatment). The NK anthem would be an excellent Senate campaign song, especially if she didn't know that's what it was!
Kewl, as the sign and car goes down the road, there is like a travelint knot in the crowd as it goes by. The announces is quite the trip. Not as good as Mexican Announcers for American Football, but mildly entertaining.
_________________ You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which'll probably get you in trouble.
Or... you can follow the money... which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth. "The Two Jakes"
Reuters has been reporting for more than a week that Kim Jong-un does not have absolute power but instead shares it with his uncle and some segment of the military. The fact that Kim Jong-un seems never to have worn the black armband that is the symbol of the mourner-in-chief is taken as a symbol of his status in the power hierarchy. The world has reason to be concerned about stability in the hermit kingdom.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Leading the funeral alongside and behind Mr. Kim were a familiar mix of military generals and party secretaries, including elderly stalwarts from the days of Kim Jong-il and his father, the North’s founding president, Kim Il-sung, and younger officials who expanded their influence while playing crucial roles in grooming the son as successor under the father’s tutelage.
Most prominent were the two men whose names seldom fail to pop up when North Korea watchers tried to dissect the palace intrigues in the capital, Pyongyang: Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-un’s uncle and vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, and Ri Yong-ho, head of the North Korean military’s general staff.
Mr. Jang’s influence as power broker expanded after Kim Jong-il, his brother-in-law, suffered a stroke in 2008. He appeared committed to extending the Kim family’s rule to the third generation but his own personal ambition remains shrouded in mystery.
Mr. Ri, a relatively unknown figure during most of Kim Jong-il’s rule, rose to prominence in the past two years as the late leader began grooming his son as heir. He is now considered an important backer of Kim Jong-un in the Korean People’s Army, whose support is key to his consolidation of power.
A South Korean expert on North Korea says that this only indicates who will be Kim Jong-un's closest advisers. That remains to be seen. The choreography that went into the funeral would seem to be aimed at maintaining the cult of the semi-divine Kim family, but that may have been for the benefit of North Koreans watching the spectacle, not an indicator of where power lies. Kim Jong-un has not yet been tested in whether he can impose his will on others even if they resist.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
Windows Media Player is now reporting that it is unable to connect to the server at http://112.170.78.145:50000/chosun. The color bars, followed by the test pattern and then the programming, were earlier available at about this time. The secretive kingdom may not wish the world to see the funeral of Kim Jong-il.
In a sense, you can't blame North Korea for not inviting foreign indignitaries. First, the situation could erupt into a full-blown crisis at any moment, but more likely, they just couldn't scare up enough foreigners who were actors good enough to conceal their delight. I doubt there is a thinking person on Earth who is in the least sorry that bastard is dead.
_________________ L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about? — A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick — And one of the best of its kind I ever heard. -- Sterne
Communist sympathizers? Industrialists hoping for a country with even cheaper wages than China? Journalists? Banksters wanting to make loans? Orly Taitz and her minions looking for allies? Intelligence agents?
Well, maybe the last. However, the headline refers to the Nixon-era Lincoln Continental that carried the casket of Kim Jong-il. The ginormous picture was on a second Lincoln, and the wreath was on a third Lincoln.
Although Kim Jong-il was reputed to be a great fan of Mercedes limousines and to have a personal fleet of them, the Lincolns were probably used because the same cars had been used for the funeral procession of Kim Il-sung. The procession also included dozens of Mercedes and some Volkswagen Passats. I was struck by the presence of military vehicles (of what I know as the "Jeep class") in which the soldiers appeared to be ready to turn back a rebellion (look behind the car with the wreath).
Car buffs everywhere are in awe of the Korean mechanics who kept these cars in top-flight condition.
_________________ "Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people -- not even young people on drugs -- are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!" John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, p. 370.
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