Tag: Kim Il-sung

At 93 years old it would be pretty amazing if former President Carter ends up making a trip to Pyongyang to negotiate an end to the latest nuclear crisis:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said he is willing to go on a diplomatic mission to North Korea on behalf of President Donald Trump, saying that China’s influence on the Pyongyang regime is “greatly overestimated.”

“I would go, yes,” Carter, 93, told a New York Times columnist at his home in Plains, Georgia, about whether he would go to Pyongyang for the Republican Trump administration.

According to an article published Saturday, Carter said that he has spoken with H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, whom he called a good friend, and said, “I told him that I was available if they ever need me.”

But so far, he has gotten a negative response.

“I’m afraid, too, of a situation,” Carter said, remarking on the concern in Washington over the bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “I don’t know what they’ll do. Because they want to save their regime,” referring to the North.

He voiced concern that the young leader Kim may try pre-emptive action if he thinks Trump would act against him, and added, “I think he’s now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and Japan,” as well as outlying territories in the Pacific and maybe even parts of the U.S. mainland.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest of the link.

Noted journalist Blaine Harden has a good piece published on the PBS Frontline website that explains why North Korea has such an adversarial relationship with China despite the Kim regime being dependent on their aid:

Kim Il-sung grew up in northeast China, where in the 1930s he became a guerrilla leader and fought alongside Chinese Communist partisans against Japanese occupiers. Without warning, local Communists turned on Kim and his men. Several hundred ethnic Koreans were tortured and murdered in a racist purge based on the party’s paranoid, and false, belief that they were secretly working with the Japanese.

Kim was arrested in China in 1934 and was lucky to survive. He later called the purge “a mad wind … [Koreans] were being slaughtered indiscriminately by [Chinese] with whom they had shared bread and board only yesterday.”

During the Korean War, his bitter memories were compounded by a painfully public loss of face. Kim Il-sung started the war in 1950 by invading South Korea with the backing of Stalin’s Soviet Union. But his army was soon obliterated by an American-led coalition and North Korea all but disappeared — until Chinese forces entered the fight and forced Kim to the sidelines of his own war. China’s top general, Peng Dehuai, chided Kim for his “extremely childish” leadership, telling him, “You are hoping to end this war based on luck.”

Kim Il-sung would never forget how he was treated. After the war, he made sure that China’s role in saving and rebuilding his state was largely erased from official histories. His resentment was compounded in 1980, when China publicly denounced as feudalism his decision to transfer absolute power to his son, Kim Jong Il, a succession that made North Korea the world’s only hereditary Communist kingdom.

Ill feelings between North Korea and China have often been mutual. Mao Zedong regarded Kim Il-sung as rash and doctrinaire — once describing him as “a number-one pain in the butt.” In 1992, China infuriated the Kim family by establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea, the archenemy of the North.  [PBS Frontline]

You can read more at the link, but just like his grandfather Kim Jong-un is being a “pain in the butt” to China.  However, he knows he can be adversarial because the Chinese will likely do nothing to remove the Kim regime because of the alternatives to the “pain in the butt” are worse.  That is why the Chinese will never completely abandon the regime until there is a better alternative offered.

Here is an interesting historical analysis of the Chinese, Russian, and North Korean relationship during the early years of the Kim Il-sung regime.  This historical analysis does have some interesting parallels on why the Chinese government continues to support the Kim Jong-un regime today:

But for all the frustration, North Korea is an important piece on Beijing’s diplomatic board. If played incorrectly, it could backfire on China to the detriment of its bid for global leadership. Bringing Kim to his knees on behalf of the international community does nothing to advance Xi’s vision of a China-centered order in East Asia.

This is not new. Beijing has played this game before—most disastrously in 1956, when then North Korean leader Kim Il Sung brutally purged his political opponents suspected of ties to China and the Soviet Union. Moscow and Beijing intervened on their behalf, but Kim outplayed his allies with Machiavellian guile.

The crisis was also a turning point for China’s relations with North Korea. It was in 1956 that Beijing realized it had to go easy on Pyongyang, despite Kim’s maddening obstinacy, because the alternative was to surrender the country to the Soviet influence. As difficult as Kim was, he kept his distance from Moscow, and he could be an important ally in Beijing’s bid for leadership in the socialist bloc. Overnight, North Korea became an issue in China’s relationship with the Soviet Union, much as today it complicates China’s relationship with the United States.  [China File]

Here is some interesting dialogue between Chinese premier Mao Zedong and the Soviets based off of records released from the Soviet archives:

Mao agreed with Mikoyan that there were serious problems in Pyongyang. Himself a ruthless dictator, Mao claimed Kim, who “still does the Stalin thing,” appalled him. “He brooks no word of disagreement and kills all who tries to oppose him,” Mao said.

But he claimed that China had no influence on the North Koreans. “This time we have to mainly rely on you,” he told Mikoyan. “They won’t listen to China!” Mikoyan retorted that Moscow’s leverage was hardly any better, but Mao disagreed: “They won’t listen to China 100 percent of the time. They won’t listen to you 70 percent of the time.”

Mikoyan said he simply did not understand why Kim was acting this way. Mao knew why: “He is afraid that our two parties are digging under the wall [of his house].”

And Mao, sensing, rightly or wrongly, that Moscow was plotting Kim’s ouster, warned the Soviet envoy they should not try to topple him. The Chinese leader opposed the Soviet practice of overthrowing recalcitrant tyrants. Nor did he think Kim’s regime was as bad as the Soviets claimed. After all, Mao’s own regime was not exactly democratic either. If he helped bring down Kim’s house, he would set a precedent that could one day be used against him.

There was another reason for Mao’s hesitation. He was beginning to challenge Moscow for leadership in the socialist camp. He accused the Soviets of arrogance, and of trying to impose their will on other countries. Much as he feared letting Kim get away with brutalities would lead to North Korea’s collapse, he did not want the Soviets to use him as a proxy.

You look at what is happening today and you see the parallel that the Chinese do not want the Kim regime toppled and have continued to oppose attempts by the US to impose its will on other countries around the world to include North Korea.

It is worth reading the whole article at the link.

With the death of Fidel Castro today I thought this article from a Cuban-American journalist that criticizes San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s support of Castro was worth sharing:

And because Kaepernick apparently doesn’t understand his words apply to him before he can apply them to others, I ask the man who protests oppression why he wore the Castro shirt when the tyrant is demonstrably a star on the world’s All Oppressor team?  (………….)

At this point I hope Kaepernick is starting to realize how untenable his position is relative to the Castros. Even Malcolm X, who met with Castro in New York, for years afterward declined invitations to visit him in Cuba. I’m hoping Kaepernick understands one should not make broad statements about standing up for people’s rights, then slip into a Fidel Castro shirt, suggesting approval for a man who has spent his days on the planet stifling people’s rights.

And that’s exactly the moment Kaepernick shows how lost he truly is. Because in the next breath, Kaepernick, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explains to me, the guy born in Havana, how great Castro really is.

“One thing Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here even though we’re fully capable of doing that,” Kaepernick said.

Is this real life?

First, Cuba does not have the highest literacy rate. Second, don’t be surprised if the same people who report Cuba’s admittedly high literacy rate are related to those who report its election results — the ones in which the Castros get 100 percent of the votes.

Third, could it be Cuba doesn’t have to invest a lot in its prison system because, you know, dungeons and firing squads (El Paredon) are not too expensive to maintain?

Finally, it’s bizarre that Kaepernick is extolling the education system of a country where people believe launching out into shark-infested seas to flee is a better idea than staying there.  [Miami Herald via This Ain’t Hell]

You can read much more at the link, but someone should ask Kaepernick if he would where a Kim Il-sung t-shirt?

He might as well because Kim Il-sung and Fidel Castro have done much of the same things to establish oppressive one party rule in their respective countries.  It just that the leftist ideology that Kaepernick advocates for tends to overlook Castro’s oppression compared to Kim Il-sung.  This just shows what a hypocrite Kaepernick is to be protesting supposed oppression in America, but is happy to be seen wearing a shirt featuring Fidel Castro.

North Korean synchronized swimmers put on a show in Pyongyang on Feb. 15, 2016, to mark the birthday a day later of the country’s former leader Kim Jong-il in this photo released by the North’s state media, the Korean Central News Agency. Kim is the son of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un. (For use in S. Korea only. No redistribution) (Yonhap)

It looks like there is an update to the cult of personality going on in North Korea:

In North Korea, there’s no escaping the Kim family.

“Eternal President” Kim Il Sung continues to reign — according to North Korean lore — 21 years after his death. His son, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, died in 2011 but lies in state with his father in a huge mausoleum the size of Buckingham Palace on the outskirts of Pyongyang. And the grandson, “Great Successor” Kim Jong Un, is making sure none of his subjects forget about the family line — by strengthening the bizarre personality cult that the family has perpetuated during the past 60 years.

The latest outlet for Kimism: new statues. The regime has been tearing down statues of Kim Il Sung around the country — an act that must be require all sorts of hoopla since it’s a treasonous offense to even place a newspaper with a photo of one of the Kims face down — and replacing them with huge new statues of Kim Senior and Kim Junior.

“This looks like part of Kim Jong Un’s plan to solidify his hereditary succession, carry on his father’s mantle,” says Curtis Melvin, a North Korea researcher at the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, Johns Hopkins, who has studied the country’s geography extensively using satellite imagery. He has noted the steady replacement of the statues over time, thanks to his remarkable knowledge of the country through Google Earth.  [Washington Post]

You can read the rest at the link.

Just in case anyone cares it was recently Kim Il-sung Day in North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un paid homage to his late grandfather as the country celebrated his 103rd birthday. Military and party executives and ordinary citizens vowed loyalty to the country and dozens of cannon salutes were unleashed.

At midnight, flowers were laid before the embalmed bodies of national founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun to mark the “Day of the Sun,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

The participants “consolidated their pledge to actively contribute to building as soon as possible a rich, powerful and thriving paradise of the people, an unparalleled strong country,” the agency said.   [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link, but for how long now has the Kim regime been promising to building a powerful and rich country?