North Korea, Once Again

The North Koreans are apparently in a state of euphoria these days (perhaps, extreme hunger brought on an hallucinatory state?) as they celebrate the 98th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the late founder of their Stalinist country and father of the current dictator, Kim Jong-il.

While an untold number of its people were dying of hunger and malnutrition, the impoverished country spent 5.4 million dollars to import 60 tons of fireworks and lit up the usually dark skies over its electricity-starved capital, Pyongyang, in celebration on the eve of Kim Il-sung’s birthday, April 15.

It was also reported to have bought some 200 expensive foreign cars in order, no doubt, to present them to the military brass and Kim Jong-il’s lackeys in the party and government who keep Kim’s cruel regime going.

According to the latest information reaching South Korea from the North, which is, for all intent and purposes, one huge gulag, North Koreans were also elated by the news that one of South Korea’s navy ships had exploded and sank in the West Sea, just south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), or the maritime border separating the North and South.

The South Korean navy ship, patrolling the area, sank more than a month ago, killing 44 sailors and marines. And South Korea, with the help of experts from the U.S. and other foreign countries, has been investigating the cause of the incident.

Pyongyang’s official press ridiculed the South by saying that South Korea which many North Koreans thought was scientifically advanced, has turned out to be an inept nation, unable to figure out what happened to one of its own navy ships.

However, as mounting evidence began to point to an external attack, possibly (who else?) from North Korea, Pyongyang pulled out its time-honored and well-known trick of blaming its adversaries. Even al-Qaeda claims responsibility whenever its members launch terrorist attacks. But not the North Koreans.

Whenever they have been caught red handed in the wake of so many terrorist attacks, they have invariably turned the tables on Seoul, claiming that it was the South Korean themselves who committed the heinous acts against their own people.

Thus, after launching the fratricidal Korean War (1950-53) in order to communize the South, they claimed that it was the South that started the conflict that killed more than two million people. After they bombed the Martyr’s Mausoleum in Burma in October 1981, killing 18 ranking South Korean government officials; and after they blew up the Korean Air plane over Burma in December 1987, killing 115 innocent South Koreans, they insisted that the bombings were the work of South Koreans themselves, even though North Korean agents were subsequently caught and confessed.

But who, in their right mind, would believe such an absurd claim? Yet, North Korean leaders have continued to play this kind of childish game whenever they were cornered with clear and glaring evidence against them.

And this time, I am sure, won’t be an exception. The North Korean leaders were said to have already launched a propaganda barrage saying that the sinking of the navy ship was of the South’s own doing. They probably think that the rest of the world is as crazy as themselves and as gullible as their cowed and frightened people.

The North Koreans are obviously counting on the fact that Seoul won’t be able to do anything much against them even if it finds out for sure that the attack was perpetrated by the North. They must know that the South as well as the United States will not be able to take even limited, punitive action against them as it could very well escalate into a full-scale conflict.

Besides, they seem to believe that they are an invincible nation that can put up a fight against any country in the world. Why, they are now a military power with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction!

Indeed, there are very limited military options that the South can take even if it is convinced that 44 of its young men were the victims of a cowardly and unprovoked attack.

All South Korea can do is to strengthen military preparedness against further attacks while re-educating and heightening the morale of the officers and men and women of its armed forces for future attacks which the North now seems to launch with impunity.

Let’s face it, the South Korean military has been lax since all its members were born long after the Korean War and grew up in the 1980s and 90s when their country was governed by leftist presidents—Kim Dae-jung and Roh Mu-hyun—who had taken a pro-North Korean policy of appeasing Kim Jong-il’s regime in Pyongyang.

Many of the South Korean young people were taught by so-called “progressive” teachers, politicians and civic leaders to regard North Koreans as their brothers and sisters first, not as enemies who are out to destroy South Korea. As a result, there was a time when a majority of university students said in an opinion poll that they would fight side by side with the North Korean army against the United States if war were to break out between the United States and North Korea.

There also was a false sense of superiority among the South Korean populace that somehow their country is stronger militarily and otherwise than the North, perhaps because they had been used to reading the reports that South Korea has far outstripped the North economically.
But we must all realize that in addition to its nuclear bombs, North Korea is possibly stronger than the South militarily and South Korea could easily sustain a crippling, if not decisive, blow if North Korea’s one-million strong armed forces decide to launch an all-out attack as they did in 1950.

In this respect, I hope that the latest naval skirmish will be a wakeup call for all the democracy loving South Koreans.
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