North Korea: Forever Flying under the Radar?

What is up with North Korea?

Frankly, I’m so shocked that the American media is not in a frenzy over North Korea’s recent threats against the United States that I can’t even be bothered to write a serious post. If sarcasm is dripping from my pen (don’t slip) it’s because apparently, if the US government isn’t too bothered about the North Koreans, why should I take the threats so seriously? For a country that jumps at the word ‘terrorist’ or ‘Muslim,’ we don’t seem to care if a longtime enemy is threatening us with nuclear warfare.

You have to do a Google search to find any talk of NK–and even that’s difficult. I am not one of those crazies that feel that all the news is 100% controlled by the government, that we only hear what the government wants yadda yadda yadda (there’s a lot of those where I work) but I know all too well that much of the news is selective. Something similiar happened recently in Paris: 3 members of the Kurdish resistance (all female) were shot in cold blood, execution-style, in their secret (and guarded) offices. Le Monde’s first article on the execution appeared not on l’une or even as a bonafied article, but as a blog. 3 people are murdered in Paris, where these types of things don’t happen, and no one gives to write about it? Yeah, there’s something wrong with that.

So, for those of you who haven’t heard the news, NK has announced that they are preparing to do some nuclear warfare ‘tests,’ which means testing out some long-range missiles as ‘part of their plan of confrontation against the USA.’ Uh, say what? You’ve got rhetoric up to here about Iran and it’s nuclear site-which, according to the Iranians is supposed to NOT be about making weapons, which even if you think it’s an outrageous lie, we’re supposed to believe them, right?-but yet here we have a country blatantly saying that they want to use missiles against us, and it’s considered a Slow News piece. Perhaps the White House doesn’t want everyone freaking out. That’s the reason they don’t tell the general public most things in the first place. But I had to laugh at the U.S. envoy to NK’s comment reported on CNN, which was

“We will judge North Korea by its actions, not its words.”

Pardon me, but I feel that the US government prefers to judge people based on presumptions and tends to take “preventative measures” to ensure safety and democracy (see: Afghanistan, Iraq). But this time around, when confronted clearly with the threat of nuclear warfare, we just sit back and wait around for words? We let the United Nations impose new sanctions and hope that’ll do the trick?

I’m not advocating war. I hate war, and I hate the damn fool who created nuclear weapons. But I think the US ought to puff itself up a little, if just for show, n’est-pas? Of course, many feel that that’s what the North Koreans are doing: puffing and bluffing with little substance to back it all up. My question is,

What does North Korea have against the United States?

Yoo-hoo, NK, the Cold War has been over since 1989 (side note: I believe that the Cold War never really finished, and is in fact back in full swing, given NK’s new actions and Russia’s increasingly cold stance). NK even took out references to Communism and such from it’s constitution. Is this really about a bunch of sanctions, NK, because I kind of feel like you might just deserve them. For being called a “People’s Democracy” you sure are the most undemocratic country possibly ever. Everything is controlled by your dictatorship-cum-kingdom, the Kim Jong dynasty. If you’re depending on China for most of your food and aid, that doesn’t really make you “self-sufficient,” as your motto goes, either. Maybe you should think about playing nice and then some of those sanctions might be lifted.

I also find their (relatively) new leader quite disturbing. Kim Jong-un, you are what, 29 years old, possibly 30? (Note: is birth-date  like everything else, remains unclear). What are you possibly so angry about? You lived a spoiled life, going to school (somewhere; they can’t verify between two possible boarding schools) in posh, international Switzerland, where you met other people, aka non-North Koreans. You are already married (and purported to already have another hier, I mean child) to a woman who is younger than you, and hey, you’re a world leader! The youngest in the entire world, in fact. That’s a pretty impressive resume, so what are you trying to do? Your father, Kim Jong-il, although a human rights violator and dictator, at least kept things calm and peaceful towards the outside world during his reign. You shouldn’t copy most things your father did, but in this case, why don’t you give it a try?

It’s hard to believe that the once-sister country to the birthplace of “Gagnam Style” and the infectious, Barbie-doll-fake but cutesy K-Pop, is such a land of evil. Perhaps they need to send Psy over to the North Koreans to show them how to have a laugh, since there are never any smiles on the faces of the NK leaders, except for, of course, this one on Jong-un’s face when talking about the launch of an Unha-3 rocket:

(sourced from globalpost.com)

Troubling, isn’t it, the one time they’e caught smiling is over nuclear missiles?

Links:

1. http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/25/world/asia/north-korea-threat-south/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

2. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/130127/kim-jong-un-vows-retaliation-us-un-sanctions

3. http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/world/asia/north-korea-leader-married/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

4. wikipedia.org