Rogue Regime
Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea
by Jasper Becker
Oxford, 300 pp., $28
NORTH KOREA IS DIFFERENT. When I visited in 1992 I found a Potemkin country, an airport without airplanes, streets without cars, and roads without street signs. Today it is a bit more open to the West, but far poorer. Alas, the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea is far worse than a foreign holiday gone bad, and the DPRK is different in a terribly unpleasant way. Journalist Jasper Becker, who wrote about mass famine in Maoist China, has produced a depressing but important read.
Pyongyang may pose America's greatest international challenge. Becker worries that "possession of WMD could free a despot from all restraints," and believes that "the world cannot stand by and let nothing be done." But precisely what "the world" should do isn't obvious.
Becker is at his best reporting on the human cost of an artificial famine that killed as many as three million people. The winter of 1997-98 was the worst, he writes, when "people have described how they would wake up each day and immediately check with their neighbors to see who was still alive." Becker visited China's border with North Korea. Contrary to what many of us might expect, "there was no Iron Curtain of wooden guard towers, minefields, and prowling Alsatian watchdogs." None is needed, since China is complicit in the North's crimes, returning refugees, fining anyone who aids them, and rewarding snitches.
Moreover, reports Becker, Chinese officials "even allowed North Korean agents to operate freely inside China. There they carried out a campaign of murder, intimidation, and abduction both against North Koreans and those who tried to help them."
Becker was interrogated by Chinese police after interviewing desperate and starving refugees.
Becker contends that Kim Jong Il has been lucky to maintain power. After the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, in 1994, he writes, "the internal machinery of terror remained intact and he continued to deter external enemies by claiming North Korea possessed weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them. He obtained enough foreign aid to continue food and goods distribution and maintain the loyalty of core followers."
Becker reviews claims of resistance, mutinies, assassination attempts, and planned coups d'etat, which are fascinating but impossible to verify. The lack of solid sources and corroboration may be the book's most significant flaw, though the fault is North Korea's totalitarian isolation rather than Becker's research.
The most interesting parts may be Becker's discussion of how Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il created a bizarre system of monarchical communism, with power passing within the family. No little attention was devoted to selling the Kims' beatific attributes and manifold accomplishments to the North Korean people. Explains Becker: "The brainwashing starts at two when all children are put in state nurseries" and are taught to "think, speak, and act as Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il."
When I visited 13 years ago, no room was complete without photos of both Kims. The senior Kim was everywhere pictured "giving guidance"--to doctors in the hospital, workers in the factory, and farmers in the countryside. Slogans sat above elevators, adorned buildings, stretched across streets, and even sprouted in fields.
Yet, contends Becker, despite the public image of unity, near the end of Kim Il Sung's life his son isolated the god-king, seeking to preserve his father's position and forestall détente with South Korea. Indeed, Becker alleges that Kim Jong Il may have been responsible for, or contributed to, his father's death. In any case, the many wives, concubines, children, and stepchildren provide a mix more combustible than anything found in the Ottoman Empire. The decadence of Kim Jong Il's court is exceeded only by its thuggishness.
Writes Becker: It is "profoundly wrong that no one can recall the name of a single one of his victims. There are no prisoners of conscience in North Korea. No pictures of graves or executions. No equivalent of Nelson Mandela, no Aung San Suu Kyi. No voice other than that of the ruling party's escapes from behind its impenetrable walls. Even the mere idea of internal opposition to Kim's rule is ridiculed as preposterous."
