Nuclear Showdown North Korea Takes on the World

Chapter 1 KU KLUX KOREA America Creates a Renegade Nation People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history. Dan Quayle, former American vice president North Korea insults us. Its very existence is an affront to our sense of decency, perhaps even to the idea of human progress. At a fundamental level it challenges our notions of politics, economics, and social theory. The Democratic People's Republic of Koreaor DPRK as it calls itselfis not only different, but abhorrent. We abhor something we do not understand. The nation ruled from Pyongyang is seemingly impenetrable; natural and artificial barriers wall it off. Yet the biggest impediment to comprehending North Korea is its very nature: the country defies conventional characterization. We call it communistbut it hardly resembles the other four nations sharing that label. After all, communism, which claims to be the wave of the future, implies modernity. North Korea, on the other hand, is not just backward, it is essentially feudal, even medieval. Many say that the nation is Stalinist, but that's true only in the broadest sense of the term. Joseph Stalin himself would have been uncomfortable had he ever visited Pyongyang. The regime founded by Kim Il Sung is a cult possessing instruments of a nation-state, a militant clan with embassies and weapons of mass destruction. Kim, unrestrained by normal standards of conduct, created an aberrant society of almost unimaginable cruelty. North Korea is in a category by itself. It is, from almost any perspective, the worst country in the world. The University of Chicago's Bruce Cumings, known for nuanced views, calls the nation "repellent," and American analyst Selig Harrison, always sympathetic toward Pyongyang, admits it's "Orwellian." Even leftist Noam Chomsky notes the country is "a pretty crazy place." How could any nation go so wrong? The Unfortunate Peninsula It took centuries of tragedy to produce today's Koreans, who have endured five major occupations and about nine hundred invasions during their history. Unfortunately for them, the Korean peninsula is where China, Japan, and Russia meet, and so their nation has historically been a prize for powerful neighbors. Yet as painful as its story has been, the last century and a half has been particularly harsh for "the shrimp among whales," as the people of Korea call their homeland. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this is also the period since the United States became involved in Korean affairs. America's first contact with the Hermit Kingdom was a memorable occasion, at least for the hermits. In 1866 the General Sherman, a steam schooner, chugged up the Taedong River toward Pyongyang. After ignoring warnings to turn back from the locals, who were not interested in either American trade or Christian religion, the ship was torched and the crew killed and dismembered. Despite the unpleasantness in the Taedong River, the Koreans eventually found some use for Americans. In 1882 they signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Washington. This pact, their first with a Western nation, was intended as a defensive measure to ward off Korea's more immediately threatening neighbors. The Korean king danced with joy on the arrival of the first American envoy, but that was premature: in a few years Washington would sell out their newfound Korean friends. The Japanese and the Russians were both interested in controlling Korea, and Tokyo proposed dividing the peninsula into spheres of influence along the 38th parallel. The tsar refused. These two powers could noChang, Gordon G. is the author of 'Nuclear Showdown North Korea Takes on the World', published 2006 under ISBN 9781400062942 and ISBN 1400062942.