Ruled from the Grave
I enjoyed this opinion piece by Oliver Kamm which appeared in the Times recently and it struck me that the same things is happening in Venezuela where the creation of a personality cult around the former President, Hugo Chavez, is in full swing.
But I suspect the Chavez cult will be less successful because, unlike North Korea, Venezuela is not shut off from the rest of the world.
Nightmare of a necrocracy that refuses to die
By Oliver Kamm
While other regimes fall, a nuclear North Korea survives with unrelenting tyranny
Even experienced analysts of North Korea are confounded by the purging of Chang Sung Taek, the country’s second most powerful official. It may indicate instability in the regime or it may cement the monolith. Nobody knows, for the absoluteness of North Korea’s tyranny is its defining characteristic.
It’s also the key to its survival long after other communist autocracies have collapsed. The tell-tale heart of the world’s most secretive state was exposed in a National Geographic documentary called Inside North Korea (2007). A Nepalese eye doctor entered the country and operated on hundreds of patients blinded by cataracts. When their bandages were removed and the patients emerged from darkness, every one of them gave effusive, weeping thanks — not to the surgeon but to Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader, and Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader.
The personality cult of the leader isn’t just extreme: it’s unlimited, and it’s the only culture North Korea’s people have. The regime has survived for 65 years — through war, famine and economic collapse — not by skill in statecraft but by enslaving its subjects in mind as well as body. Only a people without access to books, films, news, the internet and travel would find unremarkable the institution of necrocracy, rule by the dead. That is literally what North Korea has. Despite having been a corpse for 19 years, Kim Il Sung remains the country’s “eternal president”.
The regime’s longevity is in part fortuitous. North Korea’s 900-mile border with China gives Beijing an intense interest in ensuring that the regime does not collapse and spark a refugee crisis. The closeness of China, diplomatically and geographically, also preserves the regime from external intervention.
North Korea’s main support, however, is internal: terror plus nukes. On the evidence of their unrestrained adulation of the country’s dynastic tyranny, North Koreans are psychologically broken. There is no samizdat literature. Few accounts of those who have escaped have been published overseas. Long Road Home by Kim Yong, a former senior army officer who was consigned to a hellish prison camp in Hamgyong, tells of inmates who practise cannibalism in order to live. In a country where famine killed a reputed three million people in the 1990s, the struggle for survival is formidable outside the camps too. The few who make it to South Korea have found their lives still blighted by being physically stunted through poor diet and emotionally drained. There are credible reports that whole families in the prison camps have been gassed to death in glass chambers.
Why would such a state be treated as a negotiating partner by Western governments? Because it has conducted three nuclear tests. Neither punishment nor incentive has dissuaded the regime from its pursuit of a nuclear capability. It violated the 1994 Agreed Framework negotiated with the US under which it agreed to suspend work on graphite nuclear reactors. It has ignored sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council in 2006 after its first nuclear test.
It would be fanciful for Western governments to imagine that North Korea is capable of abandoning its nuclear ambitions. South Korea’s Sunshine Policy of unconditional aid has likewise not deflected its neighbour. Pyongyang ploughs on because it cannot be other than what it is: an outlaw regime whose sole claim to legitimacy is an implicit nuclear threat.
What can the West do to defuse it? Very little, except wait. North Korea’s autocracy may crack when its subjects can no longer be completely insulated from the outside world. Some 70,000 mobile phones entered the country in 2009 — for the elite, and without the ability to call outside the country, but the technology may one day enable younger North Koreans to become proficient in texting and the internet. Sanctions on luxury goods may deplete the resources with which Kim Jong Un can buy the loyalty of his senior cadres. And Western nations can make human rights in North Korea central to their diplomacy in the region.
Symbolism is not nothing; the Helsinki Final Agreement with the USSR in 1975, with its declaratory commitment to human rights, gave heart to dissidents in the communist bloc. When, one day, North Koreans’ long nightmare is lifted, we will find one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history. Planning on how to meet it can’t begin too soon.
While other regimes fall, a nuclear North Korea survives with unrelenting tyranny
Even experienced analysts of North Korea are confounded by the purging of Chang Sung Taek, the country’s second most powerful official. It may indicate instability in the regime or it may cement the monolith. Nobody knows, for the absoluteness of North Korea’s tyranny is its defining characteristic.
It’s also the key to its survival long after other communist autocracies have collapsed. The tell-tale heart of the world’s most secretive state was exposed in a National Geographic documentary called Inside North Korea (2007). A Nepalese eye doctor entered the country and operated on hundreds of patients blinded by cataracts. When their bandages were removed and the patients emerged from darkness, every one of them gave effusive, weeping thanks — not to the surgeon but to Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader, and Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader.
The personality cult of the leader isn’t just extreme: it’s unlimited, and it’s the only culture North Korea’s people have. The regime has survived for 65 years — through war, famine and economic collapse — not by skill in statecraft but by enslaving its subjects in mind as well as body. Only a people without access to books, films, news, the internet and travel would find unremarkable the institution of necrocracy, rule by the dead. That is literally what North Korea has. Despite having been a corpse for 19 years, Kim Il Sung remains the country’s “eternal president”.
The regime’s longevity is in part fortuitous. North Korea’s 900-mile border with China gives Beijing an intense interest in ensuring that the regime does not collapse and spark a refugee crisis. The closeness of China, diplomatically and geographically, also preserves the regime from external intervention.
North Korea’s main support, however, is internal: terror plus nukes. On the evidence of their unrestrained adulation of the country’s dynastic tyranny, North Koreans are psychologically broken. There is no samizdat literature. Few accounts of those who have escaped have been published overseas. Long Road Home by Kim Yong, a former senior army officer who was consigned to a hellish prison camp in Hamgyong, tells of inmates who practise cannibalism in order to live. In a country where famine killed a reputed three million people in the 1990s, the struggle for survival is formidable outside the camps too. The few who make it to South Korea have found their lives still blighted by being physically stunted through poor diet and emotionally drained. There are credible reports that whole families in the prison camps have been gassed to death in glass chambers.
Why would such a state be treated as a negotiating partner by Western governments? Because it has conducted three nuclear tests. Neither punishment nor incentive has dissuaded the regime from its pursuit of a nuclear capability. It violated the 1994 Agreed Framework negotiated with the US under which it agreed to suspend work on graphite nuclear reactors. It has ignored sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council in 2006 after its first nuclear test.
It would be fanciful for Western governments to imagine that North Korea is capable of abandoning its nuclear ambitions. South Korea’s Sunshine Policy of unconditional aid has likewise not deflected its neighbour. Pyongyang ploughs on because it cannot be other than what it is: an outlaw regime whose sole claim to legitimacy is an implicit nuclear threat.
What can the West do to defuse it? Very little, except wait. North Korea’s autocracy may crack when its subjects can no longer be completely insulated from the outside world. Some 70,000 mobile phones entered the country in 2009 — for the elite, and without the ability to call outside the country, but the technology may one day enable younger North Koreans to become proficient in texting and the internet. Sanctions on luxury goods may deplete the resources with which Kim Jong Un can buy the loyalty of his senior cadres. And Western nations can make human rights in North Korea central to their diplomacy in the region.
Symbolism is not nothing; the Helsinki Final Agreement with the USSR in 1975, with its declaratory commitment to human rights, gave heart to dissidents in the communist bloc. When, one day, North Koreans’ long nightmare is lifted, we will find one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history. Planning on how to meet it can’t begin too soon.
