From an English-language dispatch from North Korea's KCNA news agency, dated 16 November 2005 (sorry, "Juche 94"):
American-style "democracy" is the most reactionary and anti-popular ruling system that mercilessly tramples down the people's desire and demand for freedom and democracy and a tool of aggression and interference. …under American-style "democracy" misanthropy and the jungle law are predominant, extreme racial discrimination, maltreatment of women and children, crimes of terrible violence, slavish flesh traffic and corrupted gangster culture are prevailing and the people live always under the threat of lives.
That's not a line from Team America: World Police, but the kind of rhetoric the "People's Democratic Republic" of Korea wants the world to see. So the very first line in William Triplett's Rogue State, allegedly a North Korean diplomat's response to American allegations that it was building nuclear weapons, certainly sounds plausible. The diplomat reportedly huffed, "not only YES, but HELL YES, and you tell that to your president!"
Few people doubt that North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program, and the horrific human-rights abuses of Kim Jong-Il's regime are well documented. But William Triplett's Rogue State, one of many recently-published books about the hermit kingdom, goes even further, detailing North Korea's role in weapons proliferation, support for international terrorism, and even drug trafficking. Most provocatively, Triplett accuses Communist China, the closest thing North Korea has to an ally, of quietly backing Kim's most dangerous adventures.
Right from the start, explains Triplett, North Korea — until 1994, under the strict control of Kim's father, Kim Il-Sung — has been a catastrophe for human rights and democracy. Thousands were slaughtered and dumped into mass graves by Mao-backed North Korean troops following the invasion of South Korea in 1950. North Korean agents murdered its Southern neighbor's popular First Lady in 1974, killed 17 South Korean cabinet ministers in a 1983 bombing, and blew up a Korean Air jetliner in 1987 — killing 115 people — for no reason except to protest the Seoul Olympics. (One wonders what the victims' relatives must think, when they see North and South Korea fielding "united" Olympic teams.) They have kidnaped Japanese civilians to train their spies, sold missile technology and weapons to anyone who wants it, and, according to Triplett, are working on missiles capable of reaching American soil.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
PICK OF THE WEEK ::: A section editor pointed your way as a pick of the 11-19/11-25 week. Click HERE to find out why.
Cheers. Temple