Tag Archives: Korean Peninsula

Leadership Matters

Posted on by

We have known for some time that North Korea is an awful place to live. It is a prison camp run by a heartless tyrant. Looking at a nighttime satellite photo of the Korean peninsula shows South Korea lit up and North Korea dark. That is a true picture of the total lack of nearly everything in North Korea. Recently a video was posted on the Internet showing a North Korean soldier escaping North Korea. He was shot five times as he fled to the safety of South Korea–but that is not the whole story.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line reported yesterday:

In treating the North Korean, doctors discovered that he was malnourished and had a severe parasitic infection they hadn’t seen before except in medical textbooks. The tapeworms they found in the man hadn’t been seen in South Korea since the 1970s. Uncooked corn was in the soldier’s stomach.

These discoveries shocked South Korean, given that the soldier came from an elite military unit. If the regime can’t feed its best soldiers, it is probably in more trouble than we have assumed.

Would a malnourished army fight for the regime against South Koreans? If so, how effective would it be?

Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un does not look as if he is starving. Even if the North Koreans wanted to rebel against their leadership, would they be physically able to do it?

 

What Kind Of People Are We Dealing With?

Posted on by

Reuters is now claiming that the story below is not true. It may or may not be, but it is worrisome that the world community’s opinion of Kim Jong Un is such that the story was believed.

Last week a Singapore Newspaper reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed his uncle Jang Song Thaek, the No. 2 man in North Korea, by throwing him and his five top aides into a cage with 120 starving dogs. That is barbaric.

Aside from that, the execution is a problem for relations between North Korea and China.

The article reports:

First, China’s own security is at risk. The erratic and ruthless behaviour of Mr Kim Jong Un suggests that China should not underrate the likelihood of a nuclear threat from Pyongyang.

The Internet version of the Global Times carried an article last Monday by Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang, former deputy commander of Nanjing Greater Military Region, saying that the recent incident showed North Korea had become increasingly provocative and was getting out of (Chinese) control. He urged a complete reassessment of security threats originating from that direction.

Second, China’s political and strategic influence on the Korean peninsula has been drastically reduced. China was widely considered to be able to rein in the unruly Kim regime, thus acting as a force for peace in the region. But it now appears China’s influence over its neighbour is close to zero.

China needs to learn an important lesson from this–when you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas!

Enhanced by Zemanta