The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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North Korea's Iron Grip is Cracking
by James Dunnigan
July 26, 2009
July 10, 2009: North Korea's constant attempts to create pointless crises is believed to be part of a program preventing growing domestic unrest in North Korea from turning into open rebellion. Many North Koreans are engaging in illegal behavior (black market, corruption, smuggling, violent crime), but still remain largely ignorant of what is going on outside North Korea. So when the government releases its diatribes, news of its missiles launches or military maneuvers, and selected reactions from foreign nations, North Koreans feel that they need their government, no matter how screwed up it is, to protect them and maintain order. All this is a bit odd to outsiders, but makes sense from inside the world's most vicious police state.
Kim Jong Il has made 77 public appearances so far this year, more than twice as many as last year. These more numerous visits have reassured North Koreans that their leader was still in action. But Kim's haggard appearance makes it clear that he is not well.
Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Memorials are being planned in the United States, but much less so in South Korea itself. There is a major generation gap in South Korea when it comes to the Korean War. Leftist politics and media have, over the last two decades, shifted attitudes of younger South Koreans, planting the idea that the U.S. was at fault for starting the Korean War, not the invading (but misunderstood, as this version goes) North Koreans. This sounds strange to outsiders, and it infuriates older South Koreans who personally experienced the war, and how close South Korea came to being part of that big prison camp up north. There is a growing controversy in South Korea, largely along generational lines, over how the 60th anniversary of the war should be recognized.
People in northern China and South Korea know more about the succession situation in North Korea, than most North Koreans do. That's because the state controlled media in the north has said nothing about the succession. North Korea officials have talked, to outsiders, but the majority of North Koreans, who get most of their news from the state media, know little about all this. However, there has been a lot of coverage of Kim Jong Il's 26 year old son, Kim Jong Un, as an up and coming government official, not as his father's successor. Public reaction to all this up north has been largely negative. More than that, most North Koreans don't care who the next leader is. Most North Koreans have more pressing problems, like getting something to eat, or getting out of the country.
North Korean efforts to grab more control over the, now legal, open markets, have failed. The merchants either ignore the orders of the local communist officials, or quietly pay some more bribes to make the new policies go away. This is another example of how the "iron grip" of the North Korean government is cracking, and increasingly subverted.
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