When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently watched a concert that included Disney figures like Mickey Mouse, it was big news. Foreign analysts rushed to the conclusion that the young leader was presiding over a shift in Pyongyang’s attitudes about the West. After all, Mickey Mouse is a symbol of American imperialism and Western penetration almost as potent as McDonald’s.
But the worlds of Walt Disney and Kim Il Sung are actually not that far apart.
To be accused of a political crime in North Korea is a life sentence for not just the accused, but family members as well.
South Korea is at the cutting edge of global technology. It is one of the most wired countries, and its biggest cities have the fastest Internet connections in the world. Whether it’s cell phones or genetic engineering, Korean scientists and companies set the pace. Korean culture, too, is thoroughly up to date, from K-pop sensations like Rain to blockbuster movies like “Old Boy.” In many ways, South Korea has replaced Japan as the face of the future: wired, fast-paced, dynamic. If Hollywood remakes “Blade Runner”, the characters will navigate an urban landscape that looks more like Seoul than Tokyo.
If North Koreans simply knew more about the world outside – or received more accurate information about their own society – they would transform their country. This is an operating assumption behind much of the policy thinking in Washington and Seoul. Both governments pour money into radio stations that beam information into North Korea. Civil society activists, perhaps impatient with the incremental pace of government policy, try to get information into the notoriously isolated country by any means possible, from floating balloons over the border to crossing into the country to proselytize in person.
In North Korea’s Camp 14, where Shin Dong-hyuk was born, the first of the Ten Commandments that formed the rules of the camp states: “Anyone caught escaping will be shot immediately.” Everyone in the camp is obliged to witness these executions, for they serve as warnings to anyone who contemplates escape. Shin saw his first execution at the age of four.
It started out as a routine briefing at a conference in Florida on U.S. special operations. One of the panelists, Army Brigadier General Neil Tolley, was talking about the importance of human intelligence in North Korea. A reporter, David Axe, dutifully wrote down Tolley’s comments and published his article in late May in The Diplomat, a foreign policy publication based in Tokyo. The article, quoting Tolley, claimed that U.S. Special Forces were already gathering human intelligence in North Korea.
A classified Pentagon document leaked to me in 1984 may shed some light on a U.S. general’s outlandish claim last week that U.S. Special Forces, along with their South Korean counterparts, have parachuted into North Korea in search of human intelligence on the country’s nuclear weapons programs. The revelation was made by Brigadier General Neil Tolley, the commander of U.S. Special Forces in Korea, at a “Special Operations Force Industry Conference” in Florida organized by defense contractors. His remarks were relayed by David Axe, a prominent military writer who has reported on Africa and the Middle East but has little experience in Korea.
In early February, Iran launched its third successful commercial satellite in three years. The Barack Obama administration, the United Nations, and the news media barely acknowledged the accomplishment. North Korea, on the other hand, has created a furor each of the three times its satellites failed to reach orbit.
The threat of a North Korean ballistic missile attack on the American mainland is even further off than it was several hours ago.
The bully came to Washington. The American president told him in no uncertain terms that the United States would not support a military attack on Iran at this moment. The bully met with 13,000 of his U.S. supporters in an effort to pressure the White House. It didn’t work. The bully went home empty-handed.
This story of Obama the diplomat standing up to Netanyahu the bully omitss some important information.