Some years back, before making my first trip to Korea, I received a briefing by the CIA at their headquarters in Langley, Virginia. One of the things that I was shown, which was classified at the time but is no longer classified (so I can talk about it now) was a photograph taken by one of our spy satellites over Korea. The photo was taken at night, and South Korea was lit up like a Christmas tree, especially over cities like Seoul. It was very easy to tell North Korea from South Korea – because North Korea, unlike the South, was dark as a piece of coal.
Why? It’s the difference between civilization, and the lack thereof. South Korea is democratic, and free, and prosperous. It is one of the four so-called Asian “tiger” economies. For the most part, life there is good.
North Korea, communist, totalitarian, and un-free is an economic and human basket case. Unless you are a member of the military, or the small elite ruling class, life for all intents and purposes is a living hell (except that it’s usually cold.)
It wasn’t always like this. Before Korea split into the communist North and the capitalist South (around 1950) North and South were at about parity, and the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was essentially the same. In fact, the North of 1950 actually had slightly more of an industrial base than the South. Today, 60 years later, the per capita GDP for South Korea is about $30,000 per year. For North Korea it is less than $2,000 per year per capita. 1/15th as well off.
Why? Because whereas the South is a market based, free enterprise, capitalist democracy, the North has been ruled for the last 60 years by one of the most repressive totalitarian regimes on earth. First by dictator Kim Il Sung until 1994, then by his son Kim Jong Il who ruled with an iron fist until he died last week, and next most likely by Kim Jong Il’s 27-year-old untested, inexperienced son Kim Jong Eun.
Before we get to the grandson and what his reign might look like, let’s make a quick review of the reigns of his father and grandfather. I think it’s quite fair to say that they were both despicable, murdererous, evil, soulless, tyrannical, depraved, corrupt, loathsome, malevolent, repugnant, wicked, vicious, and vile so-called leaders of a so-called country.
Other than the military and the upper echelon political crony class who kept this family of vipers in power, the rest of North Korea’s citizens were basically enslaved. It was the harshest of police states – Saddam Hussein’s Iraq seemed liberal (in the classic sense) by comparison. Millions of people literally starved to death due to state-enforced, insane economic and agricultural policies, while the military and the cronies feasted.
A gulag, or a system of concentration camps, controlled, tortured, and executed tens of thousands every year. The bottom line is – North Korea has become a hell on earth.
So what can be expected of this third generation in the form of 27-year-old Kim Jong Eun? No one knows for sure, but I fear that the expression “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is what we are likely to get. And all the sanctions (or enticements of food aid) by the United States and our allies, and all the U.N. resolutions (with strong letters to follow) aren’t likely to have much impact on how North Korea will be ruled or how its miserable people will be enslaved. Only China, North Korea’s de-facto sponsor and mentor, could have any realistic chance of changing North Korea’s behavior – if it chose to act, and unless China believes it is in China’s own best interest to intervene, it won’t.
So unfortunately, North Korea’s past is likely to be its future.
(If you’d like to read a powerful first-hand account of a man who suffered through the horrors of the North Korean gulag, escaped, and thus lived to tell the story, I’d highly recommend a book entitled The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan.)
