Saturday, July 29, 2017

Why North Korea needs and enemy like America to Survive

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Why North Korea Needs an Enemy Like America to Survive | History ...

www.smithsonianmag.com/.../why-north-korea-needs-enemy-america-survive-18096...
1 day ago - Why North Korea Needs an Enemy Like America to Survive. The nation's complicated history hinges on three words that explain the totalitarian ...

North Korea isn't crazy. It's insecure, poor, and extremely dangerous ...

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/5/15922446/north-korea-nuclear-war-casualties
Jul 5, 2017 - While Americans were busy enjoying the July Fourth holiday, news broke that ... North Korean regime is deeply insecure, so worried about its own survival that it is ... To understand why North Korea is so unstable, we need to start with ... The North will do something that it knows will infuriate its enemies, like ...

How to Deal With North Korea - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-worst...on.../528717/
Jul 20, 2017 - For his part, Trump has also tweeted that North Korea is “looking for trouble” ... on the promise of standing up to a powerful and menacing foreign enemy. ... Like his father, Kim Jong Il, and grandfather Kim Il Sung before him, Kim is the .... Resisting the American threat—surviving a first strike with the ability to ...
 
 

Why North Korea Needs an Enemy Like America to Survive

The nation’s complicated history hinges on three words that explain the totalitarian regime’s behavior

image: https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/3RR-vNY35Z3TJz8qU06QFA-hhr0=/800x600/filters:no_upscale():focal(546x265:547x266)/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/ff/71/ff71bcd7-8552-4e08-94ad-82395e1bd5d2/ap_17105216192402.jpg
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North Korean soldiers carry flags and a photo of late leader Kim Il-sung during a military parade on Saturday, April 15, 2017, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (AP Photo)
smithsonian.com
All summer long, North Korea has tested one weapon after another, the most recent being a ballistic missile this Friday. And with each new act of belligerence, experts and the media have scrambled to make sense of what comes next. “What is North Korea Trying to Hit?” asked the Washington Post, while Bloomberg went straight for the gut-punch with “Scared About North Korea? You Aren’t Scared Enough.” For the more levelheaded readers (like Alaskans, the Americans who live within closest range of a North Korean missle, but are more concerned about bears and moose), the real question might be, why do North Koreans hate us so much? After all, the Korean War—as horrifically destructive as it was—ended more than 60 years ago. The United States hasn’t attacked North Korea once since that armistice was signed, but the little country has remained a belligerent—and since 2006, nuclear-armed—thorn in the world’s side.
Part of this perpetual aggression has to do with the personal experiences of North Korea’s founding father, dictator Kim Il-sung. Born in Japanese-occupied Korea in 1912, Kim Il-sung spent most of his childhood in China, eventually joining the Chinese Communist Party and leading a renowned band of guerrilla fighters that took on Japanese forces in northeast China and Korea (a region then called Manchuria). But when other members of the Chinese Communist Party accused Kim of conspiring with the Japanese, he learned that loyalty wasn’t always returned. In the 1930s, Kim also knew the Soviet Union was deporting ethnic Koreans from the Soviet Far East back to Korea, because the Soviets, too, feared Koreans would support Japan in the latter’s expansion across Asia. Even the countries that should have ostensibly been Kim’s allies from the start of his military career didn’t seem to have his home nation’s best interests at heart.
From there, things only got worse. Having joined the Soviet Red Army in 1940, Kim Il-sung was perfectly positioned for a fortuitous appointment—Stalin made him the head of the North Korean Temporary People’s Committee in 1946, and when North Korea officially became a country in 1948, Kim was declared its prime minister (at that point Russia and the U.S. had succeeded in defeating Japan and divided the Korean peninsula into two countries, with the border drawn so that the U.S. would administer over Seoul).
In 1950, Kim Il-sung convinced Soviet Premier Josef Stalin to provide tanks for a war that would reunify North and South Korea. Kim nearly succeeded, advancing his troops down to the southern edge of the peninsula to take almost the entirety of South Korea. But then American forces led by General Douglas MacArthur pushed the North Koreans all the way back up to their shared border with China. When Kim begged Stalin for help, the Soviet dictator said no. And Chairman Mao Zedong of China waited two days before agreeing to assist the North Koreans.
“Imagine how one would feel knowing that you lost your country for those two days,” says James Person, director of the Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Center. “The historical experience and Kim’s own personal experience shaped the way that the Korean leadership saw the world”—as a hostile place with no reliable allies.
After three years of fighting, the war ended in 1953. Even then only an armistice was signed—not a formal peace agreement. A new border was drawn that gave South Korea slightly more territory and created the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between the two nations. The U.S. continued assisting South Korea in its development, and China and the Soviet Union remained nominal allies of North Korea.
North Korea’s idiosyncratic foreign policy since then can be traced in the history of three words: juche, songun and byungjin. Each has taken its turn as a central tenant for every new Kim in the North Korean dynasty. Each has colored the totalitarian regime’s reaction to the rest of the world—and especially its relationship to the U.S.
Juche (Going It Alone)

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-north-korea-needs-enemy-america-survive-180964168/#hZQb2vXagC0YZDd7.99
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