how about no

This is a propaganda piece depicting one of Kim Il Sung's visits to the front line. It is meant to depict his naivety, spontaneity, and childishness - qualities of purity that Koreans consider themselves uniquely privy to. Koreans believe Kim Il Sung is the greatest man to have ever lived, and if they believe this, then it goes without saying that they believe him to be the most Korean Korean who ever lived.

Notice how he's standing in mud, but doesn't seem to sink in it. Or how he still manages to smile after being informed by the Korean soldier that the front line is just up the road. His dress is meant to convey humility, and we are meant to be in awe that he only has a single escort. Notice the cleanliness of the Koreans versus the dirtiness of the Earth.

Aren't they indoctrinated to believe that Kim jong il visits his ancestors on the moon and is essentially a god of sorts?

>>209590
i said NO!

Sung's portliness has never been shyed away from in propaganda pieces. Actually, if you look in photographs, he was much fatter than he was ever depicted in propaganda. His portliness was meant to reflect his spontaneity and naivety, again.

Has anyone ever read the official history of the United States according to North Korea? Would you like to know what Korean children are taught about the US?

>>209608

I'd like to know what they're taught, OP

>>209595
No, although the amount of adoration and myth attributed to him would naturally make an outsider like us westerners think so. They love him, intensely, even so long after his death. There's a reason he's been declared by them as the President forever, or whatever official title they gave him after death.

I MUST be told.

>>209624
K. Give me a minute and I'll copy it out of this book. It's incredible.

>>209634
Cheers

I sometimes dream about hiding in N. Korea, just in the mountains, peering down into the villages and observing daily life.

Pfft. Poser.

>>209664
You sick fuck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AK5fPgkpSs

Throughout its disgraceful history the United States has wrought misery on peace-loving people of the world over. After wiping out their continent's indeginous population and enslaving millions of Africans, the Yankees turned their attention to Korea, disptching a gunship in 1866 to bully the proud nation into opening its markets. To the Yankees' surprise the Koreans refused to yield; none other than the Parent Leader's great -grandfather Kim Ung'u organized farmers into an attack force that sent the USS Sherman to the bottom of the Taedong River. Furious at this setback, the Yankees set about subverting the peninsula from within. Working first with landowners, then with the Japanese colonial administration , missionaries prowled the peninsula in search of converts or Christian churches, all the while committing unspeakable outrages against helpless children.

>>209677

>>209679

How am I a sick fuck?

In 1945, while Kim Il Sung was busy routing the Japanese, the Yankees took advantage of the confusion to occupy the southern part of the peninsula, where they massacred democratic forces and installed a puppet government under "president" ["P" in not capitalized on purpose] Syngman Rhee. On June 25, 1950 the Yankees and their lackeys launched a surprise attack on the DPRK, but the heroic People's Army drove them back. In desperation the Yankees resorted to the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, but still the Korean people refused to yield, and finally, on July 27, 1953, the United States was forced to sign an abject surrender.

It was the first in a long string of Yankee defeats. In 1968 an American spy ship ventured brazenly into DPRK waters; it was captured at once and its crew held until the US issued a servile apology. A year later and American spy plane was shot down over Korean territory, but for all Washington's saber-rattling, which included the threat of nuclear attack, it ultimately did nothing. In 1976 People's Army soldiers at the DMZ were ambushed by axe-wielding Yankee troops; the Koreans wrested the axes from their attackers and killed two of them. Again Washington's bark proved worse than its bite.

>>209711

Nice. They don't even mention Chinese intervention.

> sign an abject surrender

Yet NK still doesn't control SK, wonder what they'll cook up to explain that

>>209685
>>209711
lol but they are right about killing the Natives.

>>209682
Notice how the South Koreans and Americans are all wolves, weasels, rats and similar animals.

The DPRK joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, but refused to allow inspections of its peaceful atomic program until the Yankees withdrew their nuclear weapons from south Korea [again "S" is not capitalized on purpose] - which they soon did. When the UN inspections of the DPRK's facilities ended without incident, the Americans incited impure elements inside the UN to demand inspections of additional sites. Naturally the DPRK refused to allow the enemy to lay bare one military secret after the other. Washington then announced that it would resumed "Team Spirit" war rehearsals with south Korean soldiers.

>>209737
it seriously isn't about what colonists have done to indians

In response the Dear Leader placed the DPRK on a war alert in March 1993, throwing the Yankees into a panic. Weeks later he struck a second blow by announcing that Korea would withdraw from the NPT. The Yankees promptly waved the white flag, promising the Leader's diplomatic warriors that they would cease their provocations and even provide the DPRK with light-water reactors. President Clinton personally affirmed his commitment to the treaty in a letter offered up to the Dear Leader. But despite their humiliating defeat the Americans continued scheming against Korean-style socialism.

In 2002 their new president Bush reverted to America's traditional strategy of threats and provocations, calling Korea part of an "axis of evil." The Dear Leader responded to this hard-line policy with a "super hard-line" policy of his own, successfully testing a nuclear deterrent in 2006. With this brilliant triumph Korea joined the world's most elite club, the club of nuclear powers. Again the Americans raged - and again they came crawling back to the negotition table. In 2009 Clinton himself came to North Korea to apologize for the illegal activities of two American journalists. The DPRK's military first policy has so intimidated the Yankees that even in south Korea they are lying low. The day is nigh when these jackals in human form - now as always the sole obstacle to national unification - will be driven from the peninsula for good.

End

>>209751

> the Americans incited impure elements inside the UN

Lol, as if the US can influence the UN to do anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w49WNIBLDeU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6E3cShcVU

MOTHERFUCKING OBLIGATORY.

>>209804
>>209774
>>209751
>>209727
>>209711
>>209685

And yet North Korea has a higher life expectancy than the neo liberal puppet states in Africa

>>209841

And paltry compared to South Korea, that other neoliberal puppet state you forgot to mention that might be a more relevant comparison, wouldn't you agree?

Besides, do you really believe any news or statistics that come out of that country? Do you understand what an Orwellian dystopia is like?

>>209841
If you don't have a healthy amount of skepticism for any information coming out of North Korea, you're...in need of a lesson in critical thinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCxdku8sx-A&feature=related

This is how close north Koren provocation has come to leading to war with the south

I raged, then lolled and then raged once again at people commenting on Youtube as how Scandinavian states and Switzerland are "socialist" or "communist" countries. Fuck you stupid left-wing idiots, read something about motherfucking Soviet Union before calling democratic state with respect for human's fundamental laws socialist.

North Korea is far right wing racist state, not leftist.

>>209902
pretty much every country in the EU is socialist. you're fucking dumb.

>>209920

It's neither rightist nor leftist. Totalitarianism does not belong to one side.

>>209920
yeah, but only stupid lefties from the rich West would make stupid claims about how good socialism is and how we should all shove ourselves up Stalin's ass

>>209932
The way you think is very simple

>>209932
Socialism is good in moderation, you can support social programs while hating states such as soviet Russia or north Korea.

>>209920
>>209920
sorry, big facist governments, are techincally leftist. More government= leftism. Hitler was a leftist. So was stalin, and mao

>>209954
>>209954
Socialism sucks, it rewards lazyness, and extorts and steals from the working class

>>210007

> More government= leftism

Generally speaking, in the USA, yes. It is not that polarized in many other countries.

Obligatory in these NK threads

all big government facists are leftists

Why don't you guys just invade North Korea along with Japan, America, Britain and Russia. China can protest the invasion all they want, but they'd never actually do anything.

Then Korea can just be Korea.

>>210109

Until we get a real, working anti-ballistic missile defense system, the North Koreans will be capable of reducing Seoul to burning ruins very quickly.

>>210124
NK don't need ballistic missiles to reduce Seoul to rubbles. THey got enough guns and artillery to do that already.

>>210136
>>210124
>Implying South Korea's military isn't many-many times stronger and larger and more capable than North Korea's.
>Implying South Korea couldn't do the same, a lot faster.

>>210159

It isn't about whether South Korea could do the same. South Korea doesn't want their country ruined by war again. As strong as they are, there is no guarantee they can prevent widespread destruction in the South.

>>210166
That's what the rest of the world helping them are for. Like America would give a shit what happens to South Koreans, as long as they get to shoot and bomb the shit out of something.

The North Korean propaganda machine is strong within the country, hell, they have the whole personality cult thing going on. However, North Korea is really just talking a big game to the rest of the world while their citizens starve to death. Without international aid North Korea would collapse.

>>210166
You've definitely never been to South Korea. SKs wouldn't hestitate to push NK's shit in if the rest of the world let them do it.

http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-14

White american in NK, also he sings some songs later on that are worth watching.

>>210159
>Impying it is
>implying it could

NK has like, the 4th largest standing army in the world. And a shit load more heavy weaponry than SK lol.

>>210196

I imagine before they collapsed, they would start a shooting war. The elite there really would have nothing to lose by that point.

China is the main factor preventing reunification. They won't tolerate a united Korea reaching out to the Korean minority in northeastern China.

>>210184

Yeah but the South has to approve of war before it can happen. War is a nasty business, even if SK+US/allies had 10 time the army NK had, NK could still do a lot of terrible damage.

>>210228
I'm sure you didn't know this but at the DMZ, North Korean guards are not allowed to be at a post by themselves. Why? Because people in the North Korean Army began defecting at such a high rate that they had to begin pairings so if one person tried to defect the other would shoot him. That just goes to show their level of morale.

>>209827

This is good. 10/10

>>210228
Millions of peasants whose moral and allegiance is paper-thin. NK isn't Afghanistan, and North Koreans attempt to escape into South Korea and China constantly.

The whole population is starving.

Good luck fighting a modern war NK.

>>210271
The Iraqis managed to fair well, and they only had a 20th of the forces North Korea has

>>210297

The Iraqi army couldn't do shit.

The prolonged insurgency featuring IEDs and suicide bombings, on the other hand, was harder to stamp out.

Though appearances may suggest it, it is highly unlikely that the North Koreans are truly as fanatical in their devotion to the State as the Iraqis terrorists are to Islam.

>>210297
>fair well

we annihilated them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsfwPsuVjOk

>>210297
The reason the little shits are still around is because we can't kill civilians, the moment they ditch the gun they look like a civilian. The guy you were talking to a minute ago is now shooting at you. fun place easy to win (sarcasm)

>>210329

lmfao

> One day you'll say why is everyone dead
> why didn't we just do what Kim Jong Il said

thanks for sharing it

>>210228

Yeah, which are all mostly antiques from early in the cold war. No doubt 20-30 years older than the soldiers operating them.

They hate us. And yet when famine struck North Korea in the mid-90s, the USA gave $644 million dollars in aid to the country, almost half of all the aid given to North Korea worldwide. Of course the common people of that nation were never told that.

It's like we are helping to prop up a country that teaches its people that we are the epitome of evil. Why do we do this?

>>210224
the tea girls expression when he told her he didn't want any coffee or tea..;_;

>>210538
Because we don't want millions of Koreans to starve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_parliamentary_election,_2009

The people of North Korea unanimously support the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. Long live Kim Jong-Il!

I imagine, if America was ever taken over by a cult, like Scientology, it'd end up like North Korea.

>>210720

Nah, we're too big.

We'd collapse into individual regional/state governments, some of which would start to resemble NK.

That Propaganda village of theirs would be a kickass place to live.

>>209902
...OR THE ussr WASN'T PROPERLY SOCIALIST AND TEH NORDIC STATES ARE?
caps locks, whoops

>>210538
You realize the US did that because the US didn't want to look bad in the eyes of the world, right?

The US didn't give all that money because they remotely cared about North Korea or it's people.

>>210885

So the US, whose share of global GDP is ~25%, has to give half of all the aid to North Korea? Obviously some countries did not contribute their fair share, and yet they were not demonized. Why would the USA be any different?

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the invincible independant great powerful prosperous country that no formidable enemy dare oppose because the People, Army and Party are always solidly unified with the single-minded harmony around the Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il the brilliant statesman, political genius, prodigious humanist, and invincible military commander holding aloft the sacred Banner of Songun politics as the Korean people's treasured Sword of Might, and they become the flesh rampart in defence of the Leader who is more precious than their own lives.

If the US imperialists think they can have the leisure of bullying the Korean people with force of arms they will discover who really is strong. The criminal US imperialists would therefore be well-advised to abandon their plans for invasion of the DPRK as a pipe dream akin to trying to covering the Sun with the palm of a hand.

>>210538
>They hate us. And yet when famine struck North Korea in the mid-90s, the USA gave $644 million dollars in aid to the country, almost half of all the aid given to North Korea worldwide. Of course the common people of that nation were never told that.

>It's like we are helping to prop up a country that teaches its people that we are the epitome of evil. Why do we do this?

We do it because either way, North Korea is going to use the United States as a scapegoat. The external "eternal enemy", for which the "military first", far right, racist cult of a society can continue to serve the interests of the crime family in control of it.

During the famine, North Korean citizens actually wanted to go to war with the US and the South, desperately.

Any aid we send them is explained as tribute given to the most perfect, pure, and terrifying-to-his-enemies man, the Dear Leader.

We're damned when we do, but damned by the rest of the world if we let North Koreans starve. They've already starved. Starvation won't make North Korea collapse. Even the prosperity of the South won't make it collapse. Only a legitimacy crisis can make it collapse. If enough hard evidence or information were made widespread enough in North Korea to show the propaganda for what it is, North Korea would collapse. But good luck. North Koreans LOVE Kim Jong Il.

They love Big Brother. These are a people that don't want saved. They are the ignorant damned.

>>210720
The difference between a cult and a religion is numbers. There are plenty powerful cults in the United States. They have the freedom to exist because they call themselves something different and don't always serve Kool Aid.

>>210012

Capitalism sucks, failed companies get rewarded for ruining the economy, and extorts and steals from the working class

>>209563
How could one country be so backwards in every category except lulz per capita

What book are you quoting this from?

>>210961
You make it sound like every North Korean is just arrogant of the place there in? I mean, do you truly believe that every citizen in North Korea is just a brained washed person and that some just don't chose to to stay in North Korea because they actually like the system?

>>211009
A story of two political prisoners in North Korea

They watched a movie about a hunger strike of North Korean prisoners in South Korea

that very moment they decided to defect to South Korea

where people have the luxury to not eat as a form of protest. Where they would go 2-3 weeks without any meals

bump

this is flamoot. it's 2010 and i have a brain implant because i use drugs. i know how this sounds. but stories of going schizo from hallucinogens are only myths

lsd and shrooms etc are as mind opening as the rumours say, but it is a big secret because the government is performing crowd-control on the people who know about them. on the number of psychedelic users in society... they can only handle so many of those kinds of people. but psychedelic users are mostly young and hip and feel things deeply and are thus perfect victims for the very evil.

very

>>211009
Most North Korean refugees voluntarily return to North Korea. The author of The Cleanest Race claimed that many North Koreans who choose to stay still choke up or speak very fondly of Kim Il Sung.

Mix a racist supremacy complex with a lock down on the flow of information and a national obsession with a Matriarchal leader free of all blame except who is to be blamed for success and you have North Korea.

Yes. They love him.

> As of last September, there were officially over 17,000 North Koreans living in South Korea, triple the number from 2004, according to the Unification Ministry, the government agency in Seoul in charge of North Korean affairs.

> Almost 80% of North Koreans defecting today are women.

interesting

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100209/wl_time/08599196083000

> But there were good times in Pyongyang too: evenings with friends when they watched smuggled South Korean soap operas and American films like Superman Returns and Titanic. "North Koreans love foreign dramas," says Myung, using an alias to protect his family living in the North. "Many people watch them in secret, even when the police have tried to stop it."

> "The government is terrified of the ideas North Koreans are getting about the outside world," Myung says. "The people are starting to ask, 'Why are we poor?' And they point to South Korea."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1933096,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world-
related

> North Korea celebrated the birthday of leader Kim Jong Il on Tuesday with musical performances, floral shows and news footage of the dictator doling out cookies to children.

> The spectacles were larger this year than last and appeared designed to counter his regime's diminished standing after it clamped down on independent economic activity and wiped out the savings of many of its 22 million citizens.

> Mr. Kim's moves robbed most North Koreans of their savings by strictly limiting the amount of old currency that could be converted to the new. But he failed to show that his government could take over the role private business increasingly played over the past decade in getting food and other basic goods to people.

> Prices of foods and other goods soared as the value of the new currency plunged against the U.S. dollar and Chinese yuan, based on reports of unofficial market values. The North Korean won isn't officially traded with any other currency.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575068821029954204.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

NK will fall just like the Soviet Union.

All communist countries today are all privatizing.

Any of y'all seen the Vice travel guide to NK?
Shit's fascinating.
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3

>>210961

don't want TO BE saved.

Sorry, I don't grammar nazi at people for anything else, but this absolutely infuriates me. Are you from Ohio? I never heard it before I came here.

>>211755
He probably just mentally thought "to be" never actually typed it and just thought he did. I do shit like that all the time especially on long posts.

>>211773

yeah i do it all the time. i mean this is 4chan, we gotta give each other a break on grammar, unless it is intentionally incorrect

he Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been confounding America and its policy leadership for some sixty years. Over that time, both America and Northeast Asia have experienced sweeping change; yet North Korea plods on as it has since the beginning. It has survived a devastating three-year war, Japan’s economic ascent, South Korea’s remarkable economic and political successes, the end of the Cold War and now the rise of China. Only occasional crises have reminded most Asians and Americans that a small but dangerous Kim-led state persists—persists, to be sure, in self-imposed isolation and with impoverished, starving citizens, but guarded by a formidable military machine.

Every peninsular crisis has been different, of course—the Pueblo incident, the assassination of South Korean cabinet ministers, revelations about the abduction of Japanese citizens, games of “chicken” at sea and over nuclear technology. But the underlying situation has remained the same—until now. Today the Kim Jong-il state is equipped with some form of nuclear weapons. The DPRK is also changing significantly in the wake of a major famine and exposure to the bright lights of China’s booming economy. The political elite is trying mightily to keep tight control, and in that effort maintaining isolation and stoking external tensions are very much a part of a singular strategy.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that North Korea’s present strategy will fail. We are six years (and one New York Philharmonic concert) into the second nuclear weapons crisis with North Korea since 1992. Much has happened, including a nuclear weapon test, ruptured agreements and years of stop-and-go talking. The Six Party Talks represent a new instrument of diplomacy, but they are also more than that. The talks’ scope of participation has broadened since the bilateral U.S.-North Korea discussions of 1992–94. South Korea, Japan and Russia now participate, and the sessions are hosted and chaired by China, constituting in essence Northeast Asia’s first inclusive multilateral dialogue. Each participant has a vital interest in the outcome as regards Korea, but each pursues broader regional interests, as well, for which the Six Party Talks are useful.

The talks have produced thus far a process that has been frustrating and slow, and one yet-to-be implemented agreement, reached in February 2007. It is a labor-intensive form of diplomacy, rarely the choice of American leaders. But it’s worth it, for the Six Party Talks are not only a product of broader changes in the Peninsula and the region, but an accelerator and a shaper of them, as well. There is no preferable alternative, either. Now comes Yoichi Funabashi’s monumental effort (nearly 600 pages long), The Peninsula Question, to describe the first four years of the second nuclear crisis, in which the Six Party Talks stand front and center.

The Peninsula Question is comprehensive and very dense, an exceptional example of primary-source history, with more than 160 acknowledged interview subjects from seven countries, plus many more anonymous sources. The narrative is built on these interviews, allowing readers to sense the political microclimate as well as the larger issues at play. Funabashi, the editor-in-chief of Asahi Shimbun, quotes specific conversations, occasionally at length—a technique prominently used by Bob Woodward. Like Woodward, some of Funabashi’s quotations are more likely approximate than literal, but having participated in some of those conversations myself, I can testify that Funabashi’s sense of verisimilitude is uncanny. He has set a standard for documentary reportage against which all future efforts to relate Northeast Asian politics will be measured.

The Peninsula Question, previously published in Funabashi’s native Japanese and in Korean, is also important because it offers Asian viewpoints on a crucial question that endangers Asians more than it does Americans. Funabashi demonstrates his wide access to U.S. policymakers, but probably no other writer could or would have had the ability, time or access (and the support of his editors) to interview the full international panoply of his sources. Surely no American would have had the access or language skills to cover Japanese, Chinese and Korean angles as Funabashi has done. His access to several unnamed North Korean participants helped him trace the origins of North Korean positions in Kim Jong-il’s circumstances and objectives. I certainly learned many new details, including a few about my own government’s internal discussions.

Indeed, Funabashi thoroughly covers the tensions and disagreements in the U.S. government and within upper political echelons of the Bush Administration, especially those between non-proliferation specialists and regional-affairs officials, of which I was one. He recounts one noteworthy instance when those difficulties became all too public. In a background briefing for the media after the APEC Summit in Mexico in late October 2002, I was asked whether the 1994 Agreed Framework was “dead.” Having returned from an unusually telegenic trip to Pyongyang earlier that month, I replied that it was badly injured, but that no decision had been made to shut it down, not least because that decision would have to involve other countries. The following day, newspapers characterized my comments as contrary to Administration policy, representing a State Department “in revolt” against the White House.

In fact, my remarks displayed no nostalgia for the Agreed Framework, only an appreciation of the fact that the agreement had required billions of dollars in investment in North Korean alternate light-water reactors by our Japanese and South Korean allies. It was hardly a novel thought that these allies at least be offered the courtesy of consultation before their costly efforts would have to be suspended. I was also mindful that for eight years the agreement had been keeping a probable fifty kilograms of fissionable plutonium from being reprocessed. So the State Department was not “off the reservation”, but it was poorly attuned to the priority given by our government’s non-proliferation experts to what I call “expressions of indignation.”

There have been many statements of that sort in recent months over reported delays in implementing the agreement reached with North Korea in February 2007. Frustration, even a sense of anger, is natural. But the rhetoric of indignation is more attuned to the applause-meter of American political speech than to the realities of serious negotiations. It reeks of unilateralism, too, which is ironic considering that President Bush’s consistent pursuit of a diplomatic solution in a multilateral setting required just the kind of tailored cooperation with our Six-Party partners that many “non-proliferators”, still steeped in the bipolar atmosphere of the Cold War, find so hard to accommodate.

Though he has access and a sound grasp of what American officials say, Funabashi naturally approaches Korea from a Japanese perspective. He begins the book with two chapters detailing the remarkable visits in 2002 and 2004 of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea and the surprises (to both sides) that sprang from the abduction issue.11. North Korea for some years (mostly in the 1970s) had randomly kidnapped Japanese, including children, often through coastal raids from small armed boats. This level of detail, along with two later chapters on the internal struggles among South Korean politicians and bureaucrats, may prompt some American readers to wish for less, but it would be a great mistake to view North Korea solely through U.S. eyes. Neighboring Asians, especially South Koreans but also Chinese and Japanese, have a greater stake in the outcome of the nuclear issue and the future of Korea than do Americans. It is not lost on Tokyo that, of North Korea’s July 2006 ballistic missile tests, the sole weapon that could threaten America failed, but the six Rodong missiles, well suited to attack Japan, all performed flawlessly.

>>211788
>>211773

Yeah, leaving stuff out in writing is totally understandable. It just jumps out at me because people around here routinely say things like "X needs fixed" in actual spoken language. I would love to know how widespread and old it is.

Especially significant is Funabashi’s extensive treatment of China’s role and its reading of the Korean situation. Given the opacity normally associated with Chinese internal and diplomatic processes, even the most experienced reader will learn much here. Although many individual Chinese views seem to contradict one another, the account as a whole succeeds as a rare, accurate portrayal of how Chinese leaders make policy. Funabashi emphasizes, for example, that China’s President Jiang Zemin believed for several months at the end of 2002 and early 2003 that there was a real chance of a U.S. military attack on North Korea. This stimulated an unusually energetic diplomacy that helped bring about the Six-Party Talks, and it helped to shape a far more active Chinese role than that undertaken in the earlier North Korea nuclear crisis. The Iraq war subsequently led China to discount the prospect of U.S. military action against North Korea, but by then China saw other potential benefits in continuing its leading role in the talks.

Funabashi’s coverage of the North Korean side is necessarily spare, but it is clear that internal pressures, usually poorly understood outside Korea, are extremely important drivers of Kim Jong-il’s decisions. We can see more clearly now that Kim made many significant decisions in 2002 that fell apart in short order. In July, his economic reforms included a drastic currency revaluation and suspension of the country’s dysfunctional food distribution system. The effect was rampant inflation, as cheapened money chased scarce goods. At the same time, his government declared a so-called Special Economic Zone (SEZ) located in the town of Sinuiju, hard on to the Chinese border, and gave a Chinese businessman who had impressed Kim extraordinary powers over the territory. But the regime did all this without consulting China. After an initial pained silence Chinese authorities jailed the businessman for a lengthy sentence on corruption charges. The Sinuiju SEZ never came into being. All this was going on amid negotiations for the Koizumi visit, which Kim hoped would end with a pledge of at least $10 billion worth of “economic cooperation.” That hope fell flat over the abduction issue.

At about the same time, North Korea finally accepted a proposal of talks with the United States, which Washington had sought quietly since June 2001. (As noted, these talks were held on October 3–5, 2002.) The DPRK had hoped for a process that might be to its advantage, and Washington had hoped for a broader dialogue; both were disappointed as a discordant element intervened. In the summer of 2002, the U.S. intelligence community obtained information, still not fully released but highly convincing to U.S. officials of all backgrounds, that North Korea was pursuing a secret uranium enrichment program. There had been prior indications of a modest research effort, presumably as a budding alternative to its diplomatically frozen plutonium program, but the new data indicated something much larger afoot.

Funabashi describes in detail the October 2002 meetings in Pyongyang that launched the second nuclear crisis, and in the main he does so accurately. The talks, which I led, sought to convince North Korea that its core interests would be served by an agreed process of denuclearization, which would bring Pyongyang an entirely new relationship with Washington. But the crucial meeting between the U.S. delegation and North Korean Vice Minister Kang Sokju hit an impasse. As a result, the fuel shipments to North Korea mandated under the 1994 Agreed Framework ended in December 2002, in part because the Administration could not in good faith certify to Congress, as mandated by law, that North Korea was in compliance with its obligations—a detail that Funabashi neglects to mention. Pyongyang then expelled international inspectors and began reprocessing spent fuel rods to produce new plutonium supplies.

>>211952
Wait people do that where you come from ?
and they're not ferriners?

In some ways, The Peninsula Question is like the old story of the blind men and the elephant. Funabashi’s interviews with Chinese, South Korean, Russian, Japanese and American participants about what North Korea is up to, and why it acts as it does, offer many examples of the same observers coming away with wildly different assessments. This is one reason why the problem is still not solved after so many years, as Funabashi understands—and as he enables his readers to understand.

For all its merits, The Peninsula Question has its limitations. It treats the forty-year history of North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons too briefly, and it is uncertain about how to weigh the possible reasons it has tried so hard to acquire such weapons. In this light, more background on how the 1992–94 crisis evolved would have been helpful. Funabashi reports, with details supplied by former South Korean President Kim Yong Sam, on how close to hostilities the United States and DPRK may have been during the 1994 crisis, and on what Kim did to save the peninsula from war. But while contingency preparations were indeed underway, such a momentous decision was not that imminent. (Most American participants also credit Kim with less vigorous heroics than he has claimed in recent years.)

Funabashi also gives rather short shrift to South Korea’s Sunshine Policy and President Kim Dae Jung’s June 2000 visit to Pyongyang. I have never questioned President Kim’s sincerity, but Funabashi might have paid more attention to the real meaning of the hundreds of millions of dollars tendered by the Sunshine South to the North in what looks to have been a quid pro quo: lots of money in return for less scary behavior.

Beyond these modest sins of omission, The Peninsula Question is awkwardly structured. Instead of weaving an integrated chronological narrative of the second Korean nuclear crisis, Funabashi arrays his account by chapters focused on each of the Six-Party participants in turn. This is logical in a way, but it forces the reader to integrate interrelated events unfolding over time in several countries. Also, while Funabashi is remarkably thorough, he misses some important details. For example, the Bush-Koizumi meeting in Crawford, Texas in May 2003 was critical to setting a joint U.S.-Japanese agenda of “dialogue and pressure” toward North Korea. The Peninsula Question does not mention this meeting at all.

Perhaps its greatest limitation is that The Peninsula Question is descriptive much more than it is analytical. Funabashi devotes a few pages near the end to each party’s “lost opportunities”, but here the author loses the sure footing evident in his descriptive narrative. He seems unable to assess the relative importance or even the validity of these “lost opportunities.”

I certainly agree that U.S. tactics could have been shrewder; blustering public messages confused the process and often had counterproductive effects. But did these tactical shortcomings make a serious strategic difference in the result? Only if one starts with optimistic assumptions about North Korea and its leaders’ goals, but the evidence Funabashi himself has proffered calls such assumptions into question. North Korea’s songun, or “military first”, policy appeared in about 1998 and has essentially replaced juche as the crucial ideology by which Kim Jong-il rules. Funabashi provides only a brief discussion of this dogma and its negative implications for successful economic reform.

He sheds little light, too, on how, if an alleged U.S. threat drives so much of North Korean activity and mandates first call on all resources for the army, Kim Jong-il could ever even consider negoiating away the military’s premier weapon without first changing the official view of the threat and reversing the “military first” policy. This remains an internal North Korean step of practical necessity for implementation of the February 2007 agreement, and there is still no sign of it.

On the “lost opportunity” of October 2002 in the U.S. mission to Pyongyang, Funabashi states that “the administration could have refrained from having Kelly read the talking points on the highly enriched uranium . . . [and] lured North Korea into diplomatic negotiations toward dismantling ‘all the nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs’ which would have included HEU.” Perhaps, but not likely. The uranium enrichment problem could not have been so easily finessed. It is too important to sweep under a diplomatic carpet, and to this day it represents a major obstacle to resolution.

The Peninsula Question is perhaps the perfect book for those intent on understanding how things work in and around the Korean dilemma. For those more interested in why they do or do not work, a reader will have to look elsewhere. In the Korean case, moreover, they will have to be very patient. Perhaps North Korea will accept the deal it has been offered and to which it has formally signed on. Or perhaps it will experience drastic internal change before it makes up its mind, for any system so rigid cannot flex, only shatter. But when might it decide, and when might it shatter? No book can answer that question.

>>212012

> any system so rigid cannot flex

Very good assessment of North Korea, and totalitarian governments in general.

>>211977
People do it in Ohio, although I am definitely not from here. It seems that all the people who do it are from super-rural parts of the state. This makes me curious as to whether it's just something rural people around here do, or if it happens in other rural parts of the country.

But yeah, that was my reaction, too, along with everyone else from civilized parts of the country who have witnessed it or heard about it from me.

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