Kim Jong-un may be enjoying the political scandal going in South Korea, but I am willing to bet the people in North Korea are noticing in the images shown in the media how South Koreans are allowed to rally and protest their government and they cannot:
Now, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-Un can just sit back and watch as his counterpart President Park Geun-hye looks set to leave office under popular pressure. South Koreans have protested against Park for five straight weeks over her alleged involvement in an influence-peddling case, adding to spiking frustration with the nation’s history of political corruption.
“For North Korea’s leadership, the political instability [in South Korea] is excellent evidence for why its system and society are better than South Korea’s, supporting its position that North Korea is the one true, legitimate Korea,” Alison Evans, deputy head and senior Asia-Pacific analyst at IHS Markit, explained.
The two Koreas share language and family ties, but remain bitter enemies at the political level, having fought a three-year war to a stalemate in 1953. But they are currently experiencing a rare moment of unity in their common resentment towards Park.
Media outlets in both countries have lashed out against the head of state, with op-eds routinely referring to Park as a traitor and calling for her prosecution. Of course, North Korean media is entirely state-run, unlike the South.
“North Korean media has widely reported on the turmoil in South Korean politics to show how, unlike Kim Jong Un’s government, South Korea’s government does not listen to its people, particularly the workers’ unions,” Evans continued. [CNBC]
Over at One Free Korea he has a great read posted in response to Joel Wit’s recent article in the Atlantic advocating for President-Elect Trump to negotiate a deal with the North Koreans. You can read my response to Wit’s article at this link. In One Free Korea’s post he does a good job articulating what North Korea’s negotiating strategy really is:
What North Korea really wants is a peace treaty negotiation — the longer and more inconclusive, the better. Its diplomatic strategy is to draw the U.S. and South Korea into an extended “peace process” in which it would make a series of up-front demands (the lifting of sanctions) in exchange for (at most) a partial freeze of its nuclear programs, which would effectively recognize it as a de facto nuclear weapons state. In short order, it would also demand the end to U.S.-South Korean military exercises, the curtailment of missile defense, and other demands that would ensure its nuclear and military hegemony over South Korea. Then, Pyongyang would demand an end to diplomatic and humanitarian criticism of its regime, censorship of anti-regime leaflets, demonstrations, and satirical films — in short, a limited recognition of its political supremacy over Seoul that would end in a one-country-two-systems Korea under North Korean domination, with Pyongyang gradually escalating its financial and political demands. [One Free Korea]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pays tribute to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro at the Cuban Embassy in Pyongyang on Nov. 28, 2016, in this photo released by the North’s ruling party organ Rodong Sinmun the next day. (Yonhap)
I am sure the priority for North Korea’s Longevity Institute is to keep Kim alive, but I would think all these scientists are also responsible for keeping other regime officials as healthy as possible as well:
Hyeong-soo Kim said the mysterious Longevity Institute where he worked had the sole purpose of pushing back the leader’s death.
And with the lifestyle of North Korea’s leaders being notorious for its huge meals, that meant a constant fight with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
It left researchers desperate to study other obese people, but with North Korea unable to feed its population, they were forced to spy on overweight foreigners instead. (……..)
He continued: “They developed food products because Kim Jong-il had cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
“The two Kims were rather obese, so they monitored and researched people that were obese, which is hard in North Korea.
“Because most of the people are going through malnutrition, they had to study and research the obese superiors or the political leaders.
“Even foreign diplomats or correspondents that come to North Korea were actually researched. These people didn’t even know they were being studied.” [Daily Star]
You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime should have just sent a spy into America and spied on how the people who frequent Wal-Mart keep themselves alive.
It still amazes me that despite all the evidence to the contrary people still think North Korea will denuclearize if the US just makes the right deal:
Joel Wit, editor of the website 38 North, enters a Geneva hotel for talks with North Korean officials on Nov. 17, 2016. (Yonhap)
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump should use his seasoned negotiating skills to cut a deal with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, a U.S. expert Tuesday said after rare talks with a group of senior diplomats from the communist nation.
Joel Wit, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s US-Korea Institute and founder of the website 38 North, made the suggestion in an article to the Atlantic magazine after returning from three days of meetings with North Korean diplomats in Geneva last week.
Wit called for opening negotiations with Pyongyang, saying that the North Korean nuclear issue, one of the biggest problems facing the incoming administration, might also be his biggest opportunity.
“Donald Trump could have an opportunity early in his presidency, if he follows his instincts instead of all the wrong advice he is likely to get on how to deal with North Korea, to prove his Promethean negotiating skills on one of the most serious national-security challenges the United States will confront over the next four years,” he said in the article written jointly with Richard Sokolsky, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
During campaigning, Trump expressed a willingness to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying there is nothing wrong with talking, Wit said. However, the incoming leader appears, like his predecessors, appears to “want to dump the North Korean problem into China’s lap,” he said. (…….)
“No one believes that the North will agree to give up all its nuclear weapons and related infrastructure and abandon its development of ICBMs and missiles,” Wit said. “But there is a great deal that can be done to freeze and then maybe eventually reverse these programs, bringing the world closer to that ultimate objective.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but Mr. Wit can count me as one of the people who are non-believers in North Korea ever denuclearizing. Considering what Kim Jong-un has seen happened to other leaders (i.e.: Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) in recent years that did not have nuclear weapons why would he ever consider giving up his? The best the US could hope for is a nuclear development freeze which would only last until the North Koreans found some reason to break the deal long after they received whatever benefits they negotiated for. This is historically what they have done and blamed the US each time they broke the deal.
What in the nature of the Kim regime has changed to think that they will act in any other way this time?
The Kim regime to maintain its legitimacy as rulers of North Korea has to keep its people on a wartime footing. The below article is an example of some of the little things they require their citizens to do to maintain the illusion of war being just around the corner:
North Korea is making its people put together plans to move the relics and portraits of their late leaders — Kim Il-sung and his son Jong-il — to safe places in the event of an emergency like war, a U.S. broadcaster, monitored here, reported Monday.
“Of late, preparations to transfer the two Kims’ relics and portraits displayed at the provincial artifacts centers are underway in case of a contingency,” The Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, citing a source in the country’s northeastern North Hamgyong Province.
“A minute order regarding transfer places and the materials necessary has been issued,” the broadcaster said.
In case of the Provincial Artifacts Center in Cheongjin, it has been decided that the relics there will be moved into a cave in the Chongam District, according to the broadcaster. [Yonhap]
