{"id":40950,"date":"2014-01-03T11:09:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T17:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=40950"},"modified":"2014-01-04T10:55:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-04T16:55:29","slug":"kim-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=40950","title":{"rendered":"Kim Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bring me the Baha Men<\/a> and the dogs they helped escape!<\/p><\/div>\n

Are the Kims just crazy or crazy as a fox?<\/p>\n

If there’s any regime on the planet that’s been only a Turkish Angoran cat and a monocle away from being a James Bond villain<\/a>, it’s been the Kim dynasty of North Korea. \u00a0From the regime’s nuclear weapons program, to attacking the South Korean navy<\/a>, shelling a South Korean island<\/a>, and even declaring a “state of war”<\/a> with their southern neighbors last March, North Korea has created a reputation as a teetering, despotic dynasty constantly on the verge of either collapse or thermonuclear genocide. \u00a0Or perhaps both.<\/p>\n

Such an image has been cultivated, in large part, by the cult of personalty surrounding the Kims – and nourished by the reputation of them engaging in downright theatrically outlandish acts of evil. \u00a0So it is any wonder that news reports have surfaced that Kim Jong Un didn’t merely executed his purged uncle\u00a0Jang Song Thaek, the number 2 North Korean official, but fed him alive to 120 dogs?<\/a> (skip ahead if you’re squeamish):<\/p>\n

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\u201cThen 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called \u2018quan jue\u2019, or execution by dogs,\u201d\u00a0according to the Straits Times of Singapore<\/a>. The daily relied on a description of the execution in a Hong Kong newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece of China\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire process lasted for an hour, with Mr. Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader in North Korea, supervising it along with 300 senior officials,\u201d the Straits Times said in a piece published Dec. 24, 2013, but only now getting traction in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s no report yet if when\u00a0Jang Song Thaek\u00a0asked Dear Leader if he expected him to talk, Kim Jong Un replied “no, Mr. Thaek, I expect you to die.”<\/a><\/p>\n

All terrible Bond jokes aside, if the accusations sounds far fetched, it’s because they likely are<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The source is questionable, too. If the Chinese knew about how Kim’s uncle died, why didn’t they talk about it sooner and why did the story only leak out through a Hong Kong news outlet? The incident was first reported by the\u00a0Wen Wei Po newspaper on December 12, yet it’s only now that The Straits Times has commented upon it \u2013 and only now that the Western media has started to take notice. The Straits Times is a respectable and widely read publication, but it’s often been accused of being the mouthpiece of Singapore’s ruling party and is staunchly anti-communist \u2013 so political bias is possible. Finally, we can’t dismiss the possibility that China itself has fabricated or at least encouraged the story to send a message to Pyongyang. Kim’s uncle was the architect of closer economic ties between the China and North Korea and there is thought to be a lot of anger about his death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story exists because it serves the purposes of all parties involved. \u00a0Kim Jong Un needs to maintain the aura of “crazy” that his grandfather and father created, for both foreign and domestic opponents. \u00a0Kim was reportedly the target of an assassination attempt last March<\/a> by rival factions, perhaps being the impetus for Kim’s declaration of “war” later that month as an effort to put the country on a heightened security footing without exposing the weakness of his grip on power.<\/p>\n

China loves the story because it gives them a further excuse to distant themselves from the hermit state after having lost their greatest internal political champion in\u00a0Jang Song Thaek. \u00a0The South Koreans love the story because Pres.\u00a0Park Geun-hye has taken a much harder line against the North, abandoning the “Sunshine Policy” of the 2000s in favor of a more Reaganesquse “trust but verify” approach (billed as “trustpolitik<\/em>“<\/a> by some foreign policy pundits).<\/p>\n

The “Kims-as-crazy” story angle ensures no sizable shift in policy on the Korean peninsula, even though there has been a massive shift away from the reconciliation that the Sunshine Policy (1998-2008\/9) attempted. \u00a0In an effort to extort South Korea and drive a wedge between them and the U.S., the Kims’ reckless behavior accomplished the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

So perhaps the Kims are simply crazy after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are the Kims just crazy or crazy as a fox? If there’s any regime on the planet that’s been only a Turkish Angoran cat and a monocle away from being a James Bond villain, it’s been the Kim dynasty of North Korea. \u00a0From the regime’s nuclear weapons program, to attacking the South Korean navy, shelling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,122,131,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-oh-the-humanity","category-war-and-peace","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40969,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40950\/revisions\/40969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}