A Match for a Hundred
We had a crackling podcast this morn, even if Rob was piped in from a phone in an airport and I was hoarse and sleep-deprived, but Peter was fresh and our guest, Amb. John Bolton, proved to be particularly timely and useful. Of course, Nork shenanigans were top of the list of topics, and did some background before the show; when war flares on the Korean Peninsula, any savvy student of the conflict’s history goes right to the source for up-to-date info: the North Korean news agency’s home page.
Prominent today: a piece on the “Thrice Honored Red Flag School,” and a story about praise from Vietnam (“President Kim Il Sung devoted his all to the liberation of the country and its prosperity and the happiness of people. His life was a brilliant one of great man.”) There’s vast tracts of totalitarian boilerplate, prose with the grace of tank treads rolling over the wheels:
Rodong Sinmun says: The formation of Pomminryon helped the pro-reunification patriotic forces at home and abroad unite close under the banner of national reunification and the reunification movement which had been waged in the north and the south and overseas separately develop into a nationwide joint movement on an organized basis.
If you say so. There’s utterly creepy stories about Dear Leader visiting the Internal Security Forces meeting for another communal atta-boy. Take a deep breath now:
Saying that the socialist country of Juche is impregnable as the heroic KPA which has grown to be a-match-for-a hundred army are firmly standing guard at the defence line of the country and the Internal Security Forces intensely loyal to the Party, the leader, the country and the people are reliably defending the security of the country and the people, he highly praised the servicepersons of the Internal Security Forces for having creditably discharged their honorable mission as the first-line unit devotedly defending the leader and the Internal Security Forces of the Party over the past 60 odd years.
The phrase “a-match-for-a-hundred,” as far as I can tell after a quick harvest of google search results, appears to be one of those official state slogans used in propaganda for a few years. One solider is a match for a 100 on the other side. We probably can’t imagine what it’s like when one of these phrases is announced as national policy - after years of trying not to get imprisoned or shot for our failure to live up to the last slogan (“Strive for the Army-First Thunderbolting Enemy-Smash!”) you have to retool everything to manifest the new concept.
This is where the smirking sophisticate says “yes, just like here, except we have slogans about Coke.” Yes. Just like that. Exactly the same. Except that Coke controls everything and half your family disappeared when the Internal Security Forces found a can of Pepsi in your trash.
Oh, news on the Nork website about the attack? Not a word.
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Aug '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
Looked at from a distance, as a phenomenon, this brand of mass psychosis is fascinating and surreal, even funny at times. But when you think of human beings having to endure it, just because they were unlucky enough to be born there, is horrifying. Too bad it's not some Petri dish in a laboratory. Come to think of it, it is like a broken Petri dish leaking a virulent and deadly virus that's about to escape into the world.
Isn't it bizarre how paranoid they are about invasion? As though somebody would want to take from them a barren and ugly country, with starving and pitifully backward peasants in it.
They're like a some hideous Gorgon afraid of being raped.
China is the real villain in this, isn't it? The Norks wouldn't have any weapons or be able to lift a finger to do anything if the ChiComs weren't backing them.
What does China gain? We know they're scared of South Korea, but how does the Norks protect China from the South?
Jun '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
They missed a real opportunity to lose a war with the US in 1953 -- the single best guarantee of future prosperity in an uncertain world. You have to wonder if they aren't hoping for a second chance at winning the Pottery Barn Prize: untold billions from the US "reconstructing" what was never "constructed" in the first place.
May '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
In the past we have used the phrase "failure of the imagination" to describe an inability to forsee just how very clever an enemy can be. In this case, however, the phrase could be employed to describe an inability to imagine that an entire country could behave so senselessly, or act through such simple and almost childish motives.
Attempts to uncover the clever strategy of North Korean, and grasp the rational basis for their actions come up empty, perhaps for the simplest of reasons; they have no rational basis. Perhaps we'd be better off looking at the "Norks" as we would a clique of 5th graders. All ego and insecurity along with a short fuse. Raging emotion in reaction to trivialities, with little thought to the future or larger perspective.
Much the same could be said for Burma/Myanmar and others as well. Of course, as River says above, the Chinese are another matter and are not above exploiting their foolish neighbor.
Re: A Match for a Hundred
At least Burma has some money, and doesn't have the insane "Juche" ideology - that stuff out-Ingsocs everything.
Nov '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
Ah, sunny North Korea. A wretched Marxist hellhole of famine and poverty, run by a family of murderous, narcissistic lunatics at the head of a criminal regime that apparently generates most of its revenue by smuggling drugs in diplomatic pouches and counterfeiting American currency. And they have nuclear weapons.
Whatever the future holds for North Korea, it will not include a happy ending.
Feb '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
No kidding. If there ever were a place that looks like 1984, it's North Korea. I hear there are state radios in every home, and you cannot turn them off-- you can only turn them down.
Who knows if they don't also have microphones in the radios going the other way?
The only problem with that is that it would take too much effort to monitor it all. And that's one of the reasons that statism, totalitarianism, socialism, etc. is mathematically bound to fail.
In a free economy and society, at any given time there are N*N potential transactions (or communications) that can occur between N people. If a centralized government is going to attempt to regulate, control or monitor everything, it quickly becomes infeasible, because the number of things to control or monitor grows exponentially as the population grows linearly.
They may be able to hang onto control, as they have in North Korea, but a nation under such a system can never thrive.
Edited on Nov 23, 2010 at 2:23pmAug '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
It's more instructive to think about North Korea as a cult. It behaves very much like Scientology, for example. Has there ever been a country so profoundly pathetic and depraved at the same time? The populace cannot even seem to muster any significant number of dissidents. They are all either brainwashed or resigned. A few years ago, I saw a video from someone who was able to visit the country. The roadsides were rife with billboards containing the most violent, disturbing, anti-American images you could imagine.
Jul '10
Re: A Match for a Hundred
“a-match-for-a-hundred.... "
If those are the odds, I surely wouldn't be publicizing it.