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Kim Jong Il Dies

LuckyDan said:
It may or may not be safer, but the death of any evil SOB makes it better. And not all the villains are dead.
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You're right. The US is still living large and starting wars left and right after all.

I wouldn't rejoice on Kim Il's death just yet. This could mean disaster in more ways than one. The NK's will NEVER, EVER agree to cooperate with SK's because they see them as traitors. The US is an evil manipulator in their eyes. Would you trade your dignity and patriotism and join up with traitors to your country for some food? Probably not and neither would they. That's the way they see it and any force would only result in lots of death and suffering which I don't want to see on either side.

There will likely not be any reform in NK until their own people are ready. Any outside force will only bring them closer together.
 
It's good he's gone. He was a crazy bastard, that's for sure. It would be great if his successor was a bit more compassionate and stable, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
 
solletica said:
10 is too high a score. On a scale of 1 - 10, China is a 2 and the US is 2.5 in terms of individual freedoms.
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Let's stay on topic. How great was Lil' Kim?
 
molten_dragon said:
It's good he's gone. He was a crazy bastard, that's for sure. It would be great if his successor was a bit more compassionate and stable, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
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I'm simply not convinced he actually had as much say as we thought.

North Korea is the most isolated country on the planet. Most of what we do know is pretty sketchy at best.

Basically given what is visible, that his father built such a powerful cult of personality it's simply too difficult to dismantle, I think some kind of a military council handles the day to day running of the country, leaving Kim Jong Il as more of a figurehead that they can't simply do away with, for fear of losing control of the country.

Can't tell people their whole lives that these guys are gods then all of a sudden say we don't need them anymore.

It's like telling kids Santa doesn't exist, except instead of kids we're talking millions of brainwashed citizens many of whom have guns, a break in the status quo in the armed forces would lead to a catastrophic civil war between rival generals.
 
Kim Jong-un will likely take over. Given his lack of senior leadership experience, he will likely rely heavily on the military and others whom assisted his father. He will probably maintain commitment to Juche (self-reliance) and Songun (military centered society) imposed by Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-il respectively. Given Songun, the military is not likely to accept a path that would dramatically lessen its role, authority, and influence. Hence, the opportunity for meaningful political change is likely small. The best one can hope for is some Chinese-style economic liberalization, but that approach would need to be reconciled with Juche, which has been used as an ideological means to rationalize North Korea's self-imposed isolation. That means, perhaps North Korea could attempt some economic "half measures" in the near-term and, such limited efforts could lack the scale to make a significant difference. At the same time, the military and senior leadership have both the means and will to thwart any uprising before it reaches a level necessary to threaten the political establishment. Such an uprising is probably a low probability event and a transition to Kim Jong-un's leadership will take place.

In sum, at least through the near-term, one can expect strong continuity with earlier North Korean policies (economic, military, and foreign policy). Any unique approach will take time to evolve and it will have to be reconciled more or less with Juche and Songun (easier task once Kim Jong-un has gained sufficient experience and clout, but very difficult at this point in time).
 
Here's hoping that Jong Un brings the Hermit Kingdom back into the world. It'll probably have to happen slowly as DonSutherland says, but any movement forward is a good thing.
 
I think his son will be just as nutty.
 
He probably started stinking so they had to let it out about him.​
 
Another foreign policy victory for the Obama administration...
 
It will be interesting to see who replaces him and what kind of sense that person has. the smart soon to be dictator would play this to the hilt dangling the promise of democracy in order to maximum foreign food aid.
 
double post
 
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So Il is dead, and the son takes over....IMHO, it has one of two possible outcomes. either things stay the same, or the young leader now calls for aggression, the west hopes for a free NK, the same as they did when Castro turned over Cuba to his brother, what has changed there? Nah, I don't see things changing anytime soon.


j-mac
 
About the transition:
Right now it's too early to tell whether the transition will be smooth or rough.
From about 2009, there was an internal power struggle in North Korea that many detected. Many power players were assassinated or died under mysterious circumstances.
One of the most leading factions in the power struggle is Kim-Jong-Il's brother-in-law, Chang-Sung-Taek. He is reputed to have been the second most powerful man in North Korea (after Kim-Jong-Il himself), and is holding several powerful positions.
Another faction is lead by Oh-Keok-Ryul, a general who was formerly the number second in North Korea, but had recently fallen out of favor by Kim-Jong-Il in favor of Chang-Sung-Taek. He still remains very powerful, still commanding respect in the North Korean military.
There are of course, many competing interests and characters, and a power struggle, even a minor one, seems likely to happen.

There's one thing that some people don't seems to grasp. It's that Kim-Jong-Uen's succession will/is very different from Kim-Jong-Il's smooth one. Kim-Jong Il was prepared for many years to succeed Kim-Il-Sung, and held military command and such important positions for many years before his father's death. He also probably engineered the 1983 Yangon bombing in Burma which almost killed the Korean president Bak-Chung-Hee, and the Korean Air Flight 858 bombing, which killed all 115 people in the airplane.

However, Kim-Jong-Uen only had less than a decade to prepare, and the rapid weakening of Kim-Jong-Il's health sped it up. He's very young, much younger and inexperienced than Kim-Jong-Il was when he succeeded, and although appears to be very smart, is still yet very much young and inexperienced.

It will be a very rough transition. I wouldn't be surprised if many key people in North Korea are killed or likewise eliminated
 
Anyone have any good information about how exactly things were structured under him? Anyone who might be in a position to make a power play while the son isn't established?

First thing people have to realize is that this place isn't anything like any other so called communist states (but i don't want to argue over ideology). They have completely renounced even their lip service to communism in favor of the religion-in-disguise Juche. The old soviet states were run by atheist bureaucratic hacks, this place could be run by military religious/nationalist fanatics. Those two types of systems will not disintegrate in the same way as those who ran them have entirely different interests.

It will be interesting to see if this 20th century monarchy will live on. They have no sort of long standing tradition to justify a hereditary line, but they have the state power and propaganda tactics that the old monarchs could only have dreamed of. The question be which has sunk in more, the fear of repression by the state or actual cult leader/juche fanaticism. Christopher Hitchens once said that he entered NK promising himself that he wouldn't compare it to 1984. He found that to be more impossible the more he saw the people themselves. Scary stuff.
 
Saw Robin Meade of HLN announce this story at about 6:30 today. They were showing footage of people crying in NK over it, including their state-run media outlets.

She appeared either moved by the crying or very confused, and I'm hoping for the later, because if any news person buys into the crying as genuine sadness, then they are on crack.
 
Samhain said:
Saw Robin Meade of HLN announce this story at about 6:30 today. They were showing footage of people crying in NK over it, including their state-run media outlets.

She appeared either moved by the crying or very confused, and I'm hoping for the later, because if any news person buys into the crying as genuine sadness, then they are on crack.
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I don't know about that. I'm quite sure that a lot of North Koreans are, in fact, genuinely sad that he's dead. A lot of them have a VERY different perception of him than we do.
 
theplaydrive said:
I don't know about that. I'm quite sure that a lot of North Koreans are, in fact, genuinely sad that he's dead. A lot of them have a VERY different perception of him than we do.
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Your right, they've been manufactured a different reality to look at him with.
 
ı wonder what will happen now there.is there a raul castro of north koreans? if not we can see so exciting actions.. :)
 
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theplaydrive said:
I don't know about that. I'm quite sure that a lot of North Koreans are, in fact, genuinely sad that he's dead. A lot of them have a VERY different perception of him than we do.
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Basically this, that whole country is brainwashed.

Have you seen the National Geographic doc with Lisa Ling? Fascinating look inside that messed up place.
 
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