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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Profitable Business of Kidnapping

I followed former President Clinton’s visit to North Korea and the release of two American woman journalists by Dear Leader Kim Jong-il on television last week. I thought the whole thing was like watching one of those absurd dramas by Eugene Ionesco.

Here is this pseudo-Communist regime run by a son of the country’s founder and deified leader and his thuggish lackeys and cruel henchmen who turn the whole country into one huge prison and rule 24 million meek and fearful people in complete isolation.

In order to survive as a nation, they have been reportedly selling illegal drugs overseas, printing counterfeit dollars, kidnapping people of other countries for ransom and, above all, producing nuclear bombs and missiles to threaten and blackmail its peaceful neighbors.

What is amazing is that while committing all these things, it masquerades as a legitimate government and acts like a proud member of the international community.

In their latest mischief, they apparently lured the two young, naïve American journalists only a few inches into their territory across the Chinese border, arrested them and tried them on trumped-up charges of espionage. They sentenced the frightened women to 12 years of imprisonment and hard labor.

Then, using them as bait, they forced the United States to send no less a prominent leader than the former President to Pyongyang for a pre-planned show in which the Dear Leader, out of the “goodness of his heart,” ordered the release of the journalists so that they could return home with Mr. Clinton.

What a cynical show! What an absurd and contrived drama! We know that the poor journalists were kidnapped for all intent and purposes and used like a pair of pawns in a crude and disgusting game of politics.

As expected, their propaganda organs touted the whole affair to their people as a visit by President Clinton to their country to “apologize” for the journalists, emphasizing that the Dear Leader had granted a “special pardon.”

Before the world forgets how generous and magnanimous Kim Jong-il has been, however, North Koreans were reported to have said last Sunday that the issue of the American journalists was, in fact, handled “so wisely” by “General” Kim Jung-un, the third son, who has been designated the heir-apparent by his ailing dad. So, the Dear Leader had to share the credit for the brilliant feat of kidnapping and then releasing the Americans with his rising son.

I don’t know when the 26-year-old heir became a general, but he is apparently mastering the ways of dictatorship already.

Anyway, if there was anyone who was really generous and who acted like a humanitarian, it surely was President Clinton who voluntarily carried out the dubious and difficult task of meeting the North Korean leader in order to obtain freedom for the two Americans.

After the journalists returned home, though, many Americans were wondering out loud how much the United States had paid or promised to pay as ransom as there has not been any mention of the conditions for their release.

We all know that virtually nothing moves in North Korea unless and until money moves into the pocket, so to speak, of the Dear Leader.

Later in the week, Pyongyang’s official press came out telling Seoul to learn from the United States how to make an “under-the-surface contact” with North Korea, if it hopes to obtain the release of its citizens being held in the North.

The broadcast could only be a thinly veiled suggestion that Seoul pay for the release of the South Korean hostages.

And, indeed, the chairwoman of South Korea’s Hyundai Group, visited the North last Monday to negotiate with the North Koreans to obtain the release of a company engineer who had been detained for 136 days on charges of denouncing the North’s political system and urging a North Korean female worker to defect to the South. The 44-year-old engineer had been working in the industrial complex built by the Hyundai Group just north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as part of the South’s economic aid to North Korea. And on Thursday evening (KST), the North did in fact free the man and allow him to return to the South.

It is not immediately known whether the Hyundai group agreed to pay for the release and, if so, how much.

In the meantime, indefatigable and ever optimistic groups of people, both in the United States and South Korea, seem to believe the Dear Leader’s “gestures of goodwill” could be an indication that North Korea is willing to return to the Six-Party Talks for the denuclearization of North Korea, or is seeking bilateral contacts for the establishment of relations with Washington.

But how many more times do the members of the international community have to experience a letdown before they realize that negotiations with North Koreans will get us nowhere? We have seen time and again that such talks, which usually drag on for years, only give them time to keep working on their mischief such, for instance, as miniaturizing nuclear warheads and developing long-range missiles to deliver them

But then, they ask, what else can we do with the North Koreans? What is the alternative?

The only answer, I believe, lies in our resolution to keep enforcing the U.N. sanctions against them until the Kim Dynasty collapses. We know the sanctions will bring further suffering and misery to many innocent North Koreans but concerted action by the international community is necessary if we are to put an end to one of the most ruthless dictatorships in the world.
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