All sentient beings are delighted to hear of the death of Kim Jong-Il, who made Caligula and Elagabalus seem like amateurs. Trying to extend an “open hand” to the new dictator would be a laughable mistake, though one you could easily see this White House doing.
Likewise, the end of the gangster regime in Pyongyang, whenever it comes, will be a blessing. But it won’t be easy or neat or pleasant; this piece by Robert Kaplan in the Atlantic a few years back is well reading — he explored the possible consequences of the fall of the Communist regime in the North. There’s a reason South Koreans aren’t gung-ho about reunification; reintegrating East Germany was a walk in the park by comparison. And it won’t simply be a matter, as Charlie Szrom suggests below, of the South using its development experience to “help the North Koreans prosper after the fall of dictatorship.” After almost a lifetime under the rule of the Kim Family Regime, North Koreans are broken, morally, psychologically, socially. You can’t just go back to the status quo ante — the society there entered modernity (sort of) under this perverse and demonic system and has been permanently disfigured as a result. The experience of the Czech Republic is irrelevant to North Korea because the Czechs began the process of modernization (urbanization, mass literacy, decreasing role of agriculture, etc.) before the imposition of Soviet rule, and Communism just wasn’t in power long enough to leave the kind of permanent mark you see in North Korea.
Look at the Soviet Union, which lasted about 75 years and whose people, even during Stalin’s rule, didn’t go through what North Koreans have; that experience distorted the development of the former Soviet countries such that 20 years after the formal dissolution of the USSR they are still struggling to create normal societies. Only Pol Pot’s luridly murderous rule in Cambodia is comparable to the Kim regime in North Korea, but that only lasted four years; as traumatic (not to mention bloody) as it was, the Khmer Rouge just didn’t have the time to disfigure the soul of their society the way the Kims have.
Obviously if you’re in North Korea, you’d be delighted just to be able to live like people in Congo or Somalia. But I’m afraid that even after reunification (assuming the Chinese permit it) the northern part of Korea will remain broken for a very, very long time.
"Obviously if you’re in North Korea, you’d be delighted just to be able to live like people in Congo or Somalia."
Well, let's not go nuts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, Mark is correct in stating that. The average NK citizen is several inches shorter and far less healthy than the average SK citizen or of many if not most third world countries due to their starvation diet and privations forced on them by their series of "glorious" leaders.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSocialist countries that -- like our American president -- are more concerned with equality than with overall prosperity invariably wine up with neither. These evil, cretinous, N.K. leaders enjoy the lives of an adolescent's playboy fantasy while starving their people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut, we are going to print lots of money for them, aren't we? You know, for their "infrastructure", so they can buy stuff from Haliburton?
And then, in the cause of political stability, we have to add a few hundred thousand US troops in the South, to "train" and "advise" the ROK troops, until a few of them are killed, then it goes up to full strength "so that those brave boys did not die in vain".
They've learned nothing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHope. Just four letters but it's a big word.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark states: "But I’m afraid that even after reunification (assuming the Chinese permit it)... And there's the rub--assuming the Chinese permit it. It is one thing to have NK on the Chinese border where a Chinese citizen wanting to escape the privations of China cannot better his position in life by illegally immigrating to NK! It would be quite a different situation if the Koreas were reunified and all the amenities available in South Korea spread to NK. Then the impetus for Chinese to sneak across the border would increase dramatically. As Mark accurately points out--it would take some while to fix the North, but it would happen--posing a great risk to the Chinese Communist Dynasty.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat are you talking about? Have you been to China? There are plenty of places to sneak into right there, in China.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Chinese clamp their border shut and do not allow NK citizens in.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou make a historical error in saying that North Korea did not experience modernization before communism took root. Korea was ruled by the Japanese Empire from 1910-45, and dominated since 1905, and from then North and South Korea began experience capitalism, industrialization, etc.
But I agree with your overall thrust and it is a point that is very much overlooked. The North Korean people's habits and thought processes that are adapted to surviving in a vicious pseudo-Marxist society will not be ideal for building a liberal democracy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAn NPR report this morning regurgitated as a fact -- not simply as a government statement -- that Kim had apparently died of "overwork." You can't make it up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think Mark underestimates the energy, dynamism and wealth that South Koreans could very quickly bring to bear on integrating and rebuilding the north, populated as it is by the same people. Thatnis, if China and Russia were to stay out of the way.
It would take time but always remember that what capitalists want most is expanding areas of opportunity for investment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think Mark underestimates the energy, dynamism and wealth that South Koreans could very quickly bring to bear on integrating and rebuilding the north, populated as it is by the same people. Thatnis, if China and Russia were to stay out of the way.
It would take time but always remember that what capitalists want most is expanding areas of opportunity for investment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"But I’m afraid that even after reunification (assuming the Chinese permit it) the northern part of Korea will remain broken for a very, very long time."
Ok, but it is still something to be wished for.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm not sure why you're badmouthing Elagabalus, Mark. Perhaps you consider an excess of testosterone in a teenager with power and authority as a major reason for the decline of the Roman Corporation. But I think Elagabalus' real crime was to let sex get in the way of good old fashioned fighting and killing.
He did upset the traditional religions, it's true. But unlike the next century's religious reformers, he wasn't cruel.
He is the teenage father of the lottery, and he didn't design it to take money from people either. Instead, he conceived it as a method of distributing gifts to people.
He's also the only Roman Emperor I know of who didn't have any citizens killed on his orders, unless you believe Dio Cassius was a reliable reporter on the death of Gannys.
And there you go, mindlessly equating him with Caligula.
It's hard to take the rest of your article seriously after such an introduction.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm not sure why you're badmouthing Elagabalus, Mark. Perhaps you consider an excess of testosterone in a teenager with power and authority as a major reason for the decline of the Roman Corporation. But I think Elagabalus' real crime was to let sex get in the way of good old fashioned fighting and killing.
He did upset the traditional religions, it's true. But unlike the next century's religious reformers, he wasn't cruel.
He is the teenage father of the lottery, and he didn't design it to take money from people either. Instead, he conceived it as a method of distributing gifts to people.
He's also the only Roman Emperor I know of who didn't have any citizens killed on his orders, unless you believe Dio Cassius was a reliable reporter on the death of Gannys.
And there you go, mindlessly equating him with Caligula.
It's hard to take the rest of your article seriously after such an introduction.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse