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A note by Maynard

President Obama is making a mess of just about everything he touches, but I’ve got to concede that North Korea is a difficult problem. This is due to two facts that are connected in a negative way, as I’ll explain:

1. With China and South Korea sitting on the borders and facing direct fallout from whatever goes down in Korea, unilateral action would risk creating a conflict with China that would be as big as mess as North Korea itself.
2. The North Koreans are clinically insane. Tens of millions of people have been brought up in a total immersion of state propaganda and an environment straight out of a B-grade horror film. Paranoid delusion is the totality of their reality.

A few words about the relevance of the insanity factor. Here’s an interesting Economist article about tourism in North Korea. Yes, it is possible to visit, under very restricted conditions.

Where in the free world can one see 10,000 children dancing in synchronization, dressed as eggs? Such weirdness makes North Korea, a basket-case state, a must for a certain sort of backpacker…

…Many travelers harp on the propaganda: blocks of flats are topped with neon exhortations to “turn a corner in the economy” and suchlike, and murals depict hearty workers striding forward, perhaps trampling a star-spangled banner or two as they go. At Pyongyang’s “Kaeson Youth Funfair”–home of the world’s most genuinely frightening rollercoaster–the crossbow stall’s painted targets are of big-nosed American soldiers and glowering Japanese. It seems that the tourist board realizes the ironic appeal of such things: painted replicas of some of the most over-the-top bits of propaganda are for sale, and a post office does a roaring trade in stamps depicting mighty fists crushing Western imperialist aggressors. (Oddly, there is also a Princess Diana commemoration set.)

The patriotic propaganda mainly seems to be in earnest, however, especially where the country’s leaders are concerned. Portraits of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, and Kim Jong Il, his son and the current leader, still beam down from every street corner. One must not fold one’s Pyongyang Times if a Kim is on the front page, as is invariably the case. Even at the “flower show”, a regular stop for tourists, the entire plant nursery is dedicated to Kimjongilia and Kimilsungia, the leaders’ respective blooms.

Every North Korean citizen sports a plastic lapel badge bearing the face of one or other of the Kims. A few years ago it was reported that production of Kim Jong Il badges was to cease, and factories were to churn out only the Kim Il Sung variety. Now hardly anyone wears a Kim junior badge. Similarly, paintings of Kim senior outnumber those of his son by two to one, and there are no statues of the latter. Kim the younger is instead often depicted by the blood-red Kimjongilia begonia. The official explanation is that he is simply a modest sort of chap. His unfortunate looks may have something to do with it (though many North Korean men diligently copy his exotic bouffant hairstyle)…

So here’s the problem: North Korea stands on the perpetual verge of collapse. It’s easy to say its government will eventually fail and it will be assimilated by South Korea, with maybe some self-serving help from China. But what exactly do you do with a failed state and a nation full of starving lunatics? These people do not have the mindset suitable for existing anywhere else or doing anything else. Certainly a democracy like South Korea can’t assimilate them as free, voting citizens; even a heavy-handed police state like China shudders at the thought of North Korea bursting its seams.

Just as our own idiot politicians of steer us toward next year’s disaster in order to get through the day unscathed, so do South Korea and China prefer to keep North Korea in its present state for another day rather than have to deal with the unthinkable mess of its collapse. So if they go easy on North Korea, it’s not necessarily out of sheer nastiness; they may not know what else to do. And of course North Korea’s leaders, as insane as they are, understands this.

On the global scheme of things, obviously North Korea is a festering wound. Their development of nuclear and missile technology is a huge threat. And yet, as bad as it is, the North Korean fuse is at a slower burn than the Iranian one. That is to say, for the short term, a war involving Iran seems more likely and more threatening than a war with Korea.

All of this adds up to a lot of pussyfooting around North Korea. The local players figure the situation is better contained and delayed than confronted head-on. If America were to act with force, we would need something of a “coalition of the willing”. We might get Japan on board — which would only push South Korea and China (who are still mad at Japan for WWII) in the opposite direction. So the foot-dragging will prevail, at least until things get a lot worse. I doubt any American president, however hawkish, could change that.

As a footnote, I think it’s worth mentioning that Jimmy Carter had a big hand in creating the problem in Iran and perpetuating the problem in North Korea. He shoved the Shah of Iran under the bus and welcomed in the current crop of warmongering lunatics. And he was the man that “solved” the North Korean debacle on behalf of Bill Clinton. (For the humorous portion of this post, here’s a link to a book that fawns all over the great man: A Moment of Crisis: Jimmy Carter, The Power of a Peacemaker, and North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions. The book boldly “tells the story of Jimmy Carter’s dramatic intervention in the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis and shows how Carter prevented what he had determined was an almost certain war.” Good job, Jimmy. I don’t think I can fairly say you’re back in the White House. But I’m not sure the new kids understand you to be the perfect lesson in what not to do that you obviously are.)