My "career" in the State Department has permitted me to become (I say modestly) a "China Hand" (diplomatic talk for a China expert...the Chinese actually have a corresponding word for it as well), a "Soviet Hand" (meaning all the Soviet and post-Soviet space), and a Korea Hand (I "watched" North Korea while in Shenyang, and went to Seoul to attend a North Korea Watchers Conference). I continue to follow these three communist/post-communist areas of the world very closely.
Here is a recent news article about North Korea that you might find interesting. Please note the iconic picture of the Father of the Korean Nation, Eternal President Kim Il-Sung, still revered (literally) to this day....Imagine Mao's status in China when China was undergoing the Cultural Revolution, and you have a sense of his position. The depiction is very communist, borrowed from the Soviet and Chinese Communist style...large heroic dramatic poses focused on a cult of personality. The way the people hold the books in their hands...revered teachings of Chairman Kim Il-Sung...is exactly the way the Red Guard Chinese held Mao's famous Red Book in Chinese depictions during the Cultural Revolution…just as exaggerated, pointing forward bravely to a glorious future.
I cannot get enough of this. It's like a drug for me. North Korea is the last authentic Stalinist state in existence. As sad as its history is, and as cruel and harsh the life of its people, when it finally collapses, we will have lost a relic of living history.
North Korean scientists have, without warning, solved the problem of nuclear fusion. So reported the official daily Rodong Sinmun the other day, prompting bafflement worldwide. The Korean Central News Agency (North Korean) has this story:
DPRK Succeeds in Nuclear Fusion
Now obviously this is nonsense, but what kind of nonsense is it?
To all appearances, it's not about actual technological progress. Nor it is a cloaked allusion to weapon capabilities. It's sheer mystical nonsense. As the BBC and Reuters point out, the Day of the Sun, observed in mid-April, is nothing less than the anniversary of Eternal President Kim Il-Sung, founder of the Kim dynasty, and “sun of our nation.” (Actually a nom de guerre, the founder's name means “Become the Sun.”)
To put this claim in context, recall that North Korea has promised to use science and technology to “open the gate to a great, prosperous and powerful country” by 2012, Kim Il-Sung's centenary.
It doesn't always pay to take North Korean statements too literally. Back in 2002, facing American accusations about uranium enrichment, senior North Korean diplomat Kang Sok Ju declared that Pyongyang was bound to produce or entitled to possess nuclear weapons and weapons even more powerful than that! (My emphasis.) Which apparently refers not to boosted weapons, a layer-cake design, or hydrogen bombs, but to the “wholehearted unity of the party, the army and the people around General Kim Jong Il.
