The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea isn’t.
That is, it isn’t democratic and it is not “the people’s” in any republican sense.
But it does exist … as the world’s most totalitarian dictatorship. A tyranny that would make the Pharaohs, Caesars, and Grand Poobahs of the ancient world wince in distaste.
Once dubbed The Land of the Morning Calm, North Korea is today the darkest place on Earth. Agitated, terrified — not calm.
In Pyongyang, the Seventh Worker’s Party Congress is going on, and Kim Jong Un, the nation’s tyrant, has laid out a blustery, challenging barrage of threats to the outside world, particularly South Korea and the United States, with 30,000 soldiers stationed on the peninsula.
Kim Jong Un has a new “five-year plan,” and his foreign policy, though backed by nukes, doesn’t seem so much Stalinesque as Husseinish.
He threatens offensive action, raining down destruction against his enemies.
But he also says he’d only use nukes in defense. Plus, his capabilities are much doubted.
No wonder many analysts dismiss his talk as a cover to keep his people in line. And to worship him. The subject North Koreans are weak in the face of such monstrous tyranny, and the more Un “challenges” the world, the bigger and more impregnable he seems.
And yet, when one individual rides herd so cruelly on so many, there’s a certain … frangibility about the whole system.
I hope.
Like the late Saddam Hussein, Un’s braggadocio is a sign of weakness, likely designed to discourage more powerful nations — China, South Korea, and our country — from intervention.
And we shouldn’t intervene.
But neither should we make any more stupid deals to provide him oil.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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