The Curious Case of North Korea

Timothy Spangler
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:15:48 -0700
Opinion

It is important to not underestimate the oddness of North Korea.

Last week, with important diplomatic talks just days away, Pyongyang launched missiles into the nearby Sea of Japan just to make sure that it was not forgotten. Embarrassingly for North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un, the Chinese president was paying a visit to South Korea. In launching the missiles, Kim not only acted like a small child angrily tossing his toys out of his crib but also once again violated a number of United Nations resolutions.

North Korea is clearly worried that if its sole benefactor begins to cozy up too closely with its mortal enemy, then its continued viability — as tenuous as it is — would evaporate. Prior Pyongyang provocations have exhausted Beijing, and the recent missile launches serve as a reminder that no matter what diplomatic bridges are built with Seoul, an unpredictable and unaccountable tyrant sits on China's border.
Updated: Thu Jul 03, 2014

It is important to not underestimate the oddness of North Korea.

Last week, with important diplomatic talks just days away, Pyongyang launched missiles into the nearby Sea of Japan just to make sure that it was not forgotten. Embarrassingly for North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un, the Chinese president was paying a visit to South Korea. In launching the missiles, Kim not only acted like a small child angrily tossing his toys out of his crib but also once again violated a number of United Nations resolutions.

North Korea is clearly worried that if its sole benefactor begins to cozy up too closely with its mortal enemy, then its continued viability — as tenuous as it is — would evaporate. Prior Pyongyang provocations have exhausted Beijing, and the recent missile launches serve as a reminder that no matter what diplomatic bridges are built with Seoul, an unpredictable and unaccountable tyrant sits on China's border.

In addition, reports circulated this week that a pair of U.S. tourists will be tried in North Korean courts for "hostile acts" against the reclusive totalitarian state. Despite stern warnings by the State Department advising against traveling to North Korea, these two men went there on package tours earlier in the year. Who knew that was an option? I just hope their "all-inclusive" food-and-drink plan included all the dirt and bark they could eat!

Apparently, one man tried to claim asylum while entering the country, and the other left behind a Bible in his hotel room. By tearing up his tourist visa with great theatricality, Matthew Miller caused a scene at passport control, which simply is not done in North Korea. Jeffrey Fowle breached the strict rules against proselytizing, which has led to the incarceration of a number of other foreign nationals in recent years.

This reclusive country is bound together by a strict personality cult centered around the Kim family, which has ruled for three generations, and a comprehensive dictatorship that controls all aspects of daily life. Both feed a deep-seated paranoia against foreigners.

However, these incidents only scratch the surface of the oddity and weirdness of the Hermit Kingdom. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, North Korean agents kidnapped children in Japan in order to bring them back and force them to teach their trainee spies how to speak fluent Japanese. Some were abducted from beaches by specially equipped North Korean commandos. Others were snatched while walking home from school.

Kim Jong Il, the current leader's father, admitted in 2002 to 13 such kidnappings and graciously allowed what he claimed to be the last five survivors to leave. The rest, according to Pyongyang, had mysteriously died in car accidents, from gas leaks or under other unusual and implausible circumstances. All of their bodies were then washed away and lost in a flood. As a result of doubts over the official story and concerns that there still may be abductees alive in North Korea, Japan has maintained a strict policy of sanctions and isolation.

Talks between Japan and North Korea this week are intended to continue discussions about this sensitive topic, which has left many of the families of these abductees with answered questions and the glimmer of hope that perhaps their children survived. Earlier this year, one happy couple — whose daughter, Megumi Yokota, was kidnapped as she walked home from badminton practice in 1977 — was allowed to finally visit a granddaughter and great-granddaughter. Pyongyang claims that Megumi died in 1994 after she hanged herself at a psychiatric institute with her own torn kimono. She had married another abductee, and her own daughter was 6 years old at the time. When ashes claimed by North Korea to be Megumi's were sent to her parents, a DNA test revealed they were not.

When contemplating what policy should be adopted with regard to Kim Jong Un's regime, you can't approach the question in the same manner you would approach policy regarding other countries in the world. This is for the simple reason that North Korea is so fundamentally ... weird!

Remember that its current leader is throwing vast amounts of the dwindling national wealth into the industrialization and expansion of his country's mushroom production. That's right — mushrooms! North Korean scientists have invented a new sports drink made from these fungi that will soon take the world by storm and restore their crippled economy. Or not.

The risks we face from North Korea are so great precisely because the normal assumptions we typically make about the sanity and self-interest of other leaders don't apply here. Kim and his cronies are so frightening because they might do anything, no matter how counterintuitive or destructive.

Oddness of this monumental scale is breathtaking. And incredibly scary!