Kim Impossible

Bring me the Baha Men and the dogs they helped escape!

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.  From the regime’s nuclear weapons program, to attacking the South Korean navy, shelling a South Korean island, and even declaring a “state of war” 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.  Or perhaps both.

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.  So it is any wonder that news reports have surfaced that Kim Jong Un didn’t merely executed his purged uncle Jang Song Thaek, the number 2 North Korean official, but fed him alive to 120 dogs? (skip ahead if you’re squeamish):

“Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called ‘quan jue’, or execution by dogs,” according to the Straits Times of Singapore. The daily relied on a description of the execution in a Hong Kong newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece of China’s government.

“The entire process lasted for an hour, with Mr. Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader in North Korea, supervising it along with 300 senior officials,” the Straits Times said in a piece published Dec. 24, 2013, but only now getting traction in the United States.

There’s no report yet if when Jang Song Thaek asked Dear Leader if he expected him to talk, Kim Jong Un replied “no, Mr. Thaek, I expect you to die.”

All terrible Bond jokes aside, if the accusations sounds far fetched, it’s because they likely are:

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 Wen Wei Po newspaper on December 12, yet it’s only now that The Straits Times has commented upon it – 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 – 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.

The story exists because it serves the purposes of all parties involved.  Kim Jong Un needs to maintain the aura of “crazy” that his grandfather and father created, for both foreign and domestic opponents.  Kim was reportedly the target of an assassination attempt last March 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.

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 Jang Song Thaek.  The South Koreans love the story because Pres. Park 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 astrustpolitik by some foreign policy pundits).

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.  In an effort to extort South Korea and drive a wedge between them and the U.S., the Kims’ reckless behavior accomplished the exact opposite.

So perhaps the Kims are simply crazy after all.

5 thoughts on “Kim Impossible

  1. OK, barbaric cruelty to dogs to be followed by barbaric cruelty to people. Well, I guess we’ve seen “barbaric cruelty to people” followed by the same with their execution of a number of people for the heinous crimes of owning a Bible, or looking theoretically at dirty pictures, no? Sounds plausible.

    What is certain, of course, is that if we send Dennis Rodman or John F’ing Kerry over there, these people will be TOTALLY reasonable and come over to our way of thinking, by which of course I mean taking a case to the Supreme Court in order to force elderly nuns to buy insurance with contraceptive coverage.

  2. I’m not so sure this story should be written off. It’s hard to read about what goes on in the Nork labor camp system and believe that the cruelty of the regime is held back by any international ideas about norms of behavior.
    I’ve heard from an unreliable source that Uncle Jang’s fate was sealed when Kim ordered his generals to do something — combine two divisions or whatever — and the generals responded that they would do that as soon as they ran it by Jang.
    The closest historical analog to Dear Leader may be Caligula.

  3. The way Angryclown looks at it, Kim loses an annoying uncle, the rest of us get to imagine the scene as depicted in “Team America: World Police 2.” Everybody wins!

  4. Easy Kim, easy go.
    This particular purge by Kim Jong Un gives new meaning to the phrase: “Crying Uncle”…

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