Doesn't sound too good for those who want to roll over and deal with NK. Actually, doesn't sound too good for anyone. Defector: N. Korea's Kim Is World Problem By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The only way to combat North Korea (news - web sites)'s dictator is for the world to unite against him as it has against terrorism, North Korean's top-ranking defector said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday. On his first trip to the United States, Hwang Jang Yop also said he believes North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is fully prepared to start a war and that there's no telling whether Kim will ever give up his nuclear program. "It's like ... asking whether a venomous snake will bite or not," Hwang said in the interview. The 81-year-old Hwang is a former chief of North Korea's parliament who once mentored Kim and then became the country's highest-ranking defector in 1997. He was in Washington this week to share his views about the regime with the Pentagon (news - web sites), State Department and other U.S. officials in an administration that has been trying to negotiate to bring an end to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. A senior administration official said Thursday that sessions with Hwang were "very productive." North Korea has frustrated U.S. officials with repeated shifts on whether it is interested in continuing the six-nation talks started in August on its nuclear program. The North Koreans have at times indicated they were willing to consider a proposal in which they would disarm in exchange for a U.S. nonaggression agreement. On Friday, China's second-highest leader returned from North Korea with an agreement "in principle" from Pyongyang to rejoin talks. President Bush (news - web sites) has said the United States would consider some type of security guarantee by all six parties, short of a formal treaty. But Hwang said Friday that he's personally disinterested in the outcome of such talks, which also include South Korea (news - web sites), China, Japan and Russia. "What I am most interested in is elimination of the dictatorship in North Korea and changing that regime to a more democratic system," said Hwang, also a former chief ideologue and head of propaganda operations in Pyongyang. "The dictatorship of North Korea is not a problem that is limited to the Korean peninsula, but ... a problem that all the people in the world must deal with," he said. Unfortunately, Pyongyang still has international support, he said. Even nations the United States has assembled for the talks are not united enough against the communist regime, he believes. "For example, China continues to be a major ally ... and there are people in Russia, South Korea, Japan and even the United States who are supporting the position of the dictatorship," he said. By that, he said he meant they support the status quo or the idea of slowly reforming the regime rather than eliminating it. Hwang has been living in South Korea under tight security and has written books and given lectures condemning Kim's regime as totalitarian. But until now, South Korea has kept him from visiting the United States out of concern for his security, according to officials in Seoul. Another possible reason, cited by U.S. officials, is that former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites) feared that a visit to the United States would set back Kim's efforts to reach out to North Korea. After Kim finished his term in February, South Korea became more amenable to a Washington visit by Hwang. Many things about Pyongyang leader Kim have mystified official Washington since he took office nine years ago after the death of his father. Officials viewed their meetings with Hwang as a way to "add to our understanding of the situation on the peninsula," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. Hwang disagrees with those who say the North's Kim would never start a conflict because he knows the U.S. and South Korean military response would end his regime. "Kim Jong Il has sacrificed a lot — the economy, the people," Hwang said, referring to a famine that has killed estimated millions. "And all the sacrifices were for the expansion of his military. I don't believe he was (just) trying to display them and brag about the fact that he has these things. He really intends to start a war," Hwang said. Still, he added, he doesn't think Kim would start a war unless he felt he could prevail.
There was an article about this dude in slate yesterday, where he was portrayed as the North Korean Ahmed Chalabi, so who knows what to think about what he says, you know?
I hate to say it, but we will have to negotiate with these gargoyles rather than go north and giving them the ass-whipping those Commie slimes deserve. They have more tanks than Hitler had when he invaded Poland and they'd be invading a country whose capital is within artillery range of the border. The NK military has more artillery pieces than a leopard has spots and most of these are heavy-duty, 155 mike-mikes that can shoot nuclear-tipped shells in addition to conventional ones. And since the war would be fought in winter (so the rice paddies freeze up and give the NK tanks avenues of invasion), much of our airpower advantage would be negated by the horrible winter weather, especially going up North for strategic targets where they have more triple-A and SAM's than North Vietnam had during the Vietnam War and they have dug tons of caves where they can hide their supplies and WMD without us being able to find them. Not a good situation, especially since we'd be fighting a military whose fanaticism would make human wave attacks a grim and horrifying reality and most of our military would either be in CONUS or deployed elsewhere in the world, taking months to be sent to the Korean theater.
I don't see anything that we didn't already know in those statements. 1) We're dealing with a leader that's a bit unstable - we already knew this. 2) He's just a regular old power-hungry dictator: doesn't care about his people, just power. He's open to war if it helps increase his power, but won't start a war he can't win. In other words, he's not likely to actually attack us. Nukes are a way to hold on to power. 3) We know separately that he's terrified of being attacked for whatever bizarre reasons. We see again that the only time they've considered negotiating is when the non-agression agreement is brought up. This fits right into what we know - he wants nukes to protect himself. If we give him a guarantee that he won't get attacked, he's pretty likely to give up the nukes, IMO. 4) We attack, he'll use the nukes that he has. I don't think there's any doubt about this. Here's the difference between him and Hussein. All the talk about Hussein using chem/bio weapons on us (if he had them) was a bunch of hoopla - he didn't use them in 1991 and wasn't likely to use them in 2002. Not so with North Korea. This guy is more interested in democratizing NK, and his views are clearly in that direction. Attacking is the only way to quickly democratize the nation - there's no doubt about that. It's also extremely unrealistic at this point. The nukes can be handled in other ways. The way to accomplish both goals is to include opening up NK to trade as a part of the negotiations on nukes. It helps them, but it actually helps us more by opening up their society to outside influences. From my research, I'm not sure they'd be open to trade with the US, but they likely would with China, South Korea, and Japan. Western influence would be preferred, but eastern influence is better than nothing. That also makes them see "what can be" and makes them economically dependent on other countries, meaning it reduces the chances of them provoking others.
Yeah, let's just invade them and occupy them. What !? no oil? Well forget it, then. Better to negotiate them and just act like a peace loving member of the community of nations.
NK has enough chemical and biological weapons to turn S Korea into a sterile wasteland of horrors that will make every image of hell you've ever seen look like the garden of eden. i swear that is one scary, f***ed-up regime. how the world continues to cowardly look the other way, i guess is both immensely tragic and yet all too understandable... in a sense, it is almost like pre-WW2 Germany. A crazy 800lb gorilla no one was willing to take on. but eventually, someone is gonna have to...
"What I am most interested in is elimination of the dictatorship in North Korea and changing that regime to a more democratic system," said Hwang, also a former chief ideologue and head of propaganda operations in Pyongyang. Yeah, he sounds most unreasonable. Don't listen to a word he says.
I was thinking the same thing. Is this guy basically that above-board Deep Throat like Chalabi was for Iraq? Which got us into such a mess in that country? Also be careful of the Associated Propaganda. The CIA uses them to get their stories out. We can ill afford a war with NK. Our hardliners are pressing for something of the sort, and our envoy, John Bolton, yet another religious fundamentalist who sees everything in terms of U.S. = God and Everyone Else = Satan, was kicked out of negotiations with NK for trying to stir up the silt. NK needs a democracy but it isn't going to happen anytime soon, and we won't be able to ram democracy down their throats. But hopefully no one pushes too far and we can get a decent dialogue going. By the way, read "Red Phoenix," by, uh, Larry Bond. It gives a pretty decent fictionalized account of a Second Korean War.
Whether Hwang is or isn't reliable, doesn't change the fact that Il is out of his mind. His dictatorship is definitely the most secretive in the world. We can't really know all of the horrific practices that are going on there. We do know that Il is way more of a threat to his neighbors than Saddam was. He's kidnapped Japanese officials, assassinated Korean govt. members, kidnapped and imprisoned various other folk from different countries. People in villages in N. Korea have actually been reduced to cannibalism. They are starving. The govt. was so poor it looted it's own factories and sold the equipment. They have no legitimate means of supporting themelves. They deal with terrorists, force farmers to get rid of legitimate crops and grow drug crops which the govt. sells to get money. Of course the money all goes to their military, thus the people in the country are starving. He's been bargained with before, and broken his agreements. International aide groups have left, because Il has stolen the food meant for the people and taken it for his military. The guy is a legitimate threat to everyone, but especially his neighbors. So whether Hwang is reliable or not, doesn't matter. Il needs to go as the N. Korean leader.
That's exactly what I said. Actually, it wasn't but good comeback. You should have used the to really drive home your point, that would have been effective.
Didn't rate a ' '. Too easy. You threw out that an article in the press compares him to Chalabi, claiming that Chalabi was somehow solely responsible for our belief that Hussein had WMD. ( Now I'll give you a ) There is really nothing damning in the slate article. http://slate.msn.com/id/2090497/ There are some questions about what he's done, but he lived in NK for how many years? Here's a quote from slate: ..."A look at Hwang's history reveals many motives for his views, philosophical and personal. Some of these motives are laudable; most of them are understandable; but that doesn't mean they should be adopted as U.S. policy, especially to the degree they affect U.S. security interests—chief of which should be to prevent Pyongyang from building a nuclear arsenal, and to do so peacefully if possible."... They don't really roast the guy at the stake, do they?
Yes, I remember making that claim. It was when I was riding the loch ness monster along the way to atlantis this morning, and I said: "It's all on Chalabi, beyyotch!", to the flying unicorn that you were riding next to me.
A big part of the reason our options are limited with North Korea is because some clowns have committed the vast majority of our ground forces to occupy a country without any WMD for a long ass time.
