Celebrating North Korea

North Koreans, in their celebration of the 101st birthday of the country's founder, are dancing in the streets. All well and good. Who doesn't approve of dancing and celebrating and having a good time partying, in the streets or in private? That these little ceremonies take place in public is downright disarming. Charming beyond belief. We would much prefer to see these demonstrations of humanity that have to cower under the buckshot belligerence of Kim Jong-un, blistering Western sensibilities.

Now, if the world community could succeed in persuading North Korea that it could win a popularity contest if it succumbed to the recommendations of the United Nations, the IAEA and the general international expectations of the restoration of relations by completely disarming, the world would be a far better and certainly more relaxed place. More of it would like to go out dancing in the streets, and might, under those circumstances.

REUTER
If the North Koreans are happy, exuberant about their anniversary celebrations, why then we are too, for them. They actually look relieved and care-free, as though they know little and care less about the threats that their war-mongering military have unleashed on their neighbours to reduce them all to cinders in response to the threats implicit, as they conceive it, in the war-mongering of the United States and South Korea.

One might suppose this is because, living in a closed society, news of the outside world and the incendiary behaviour of their Dear Leader has not reached them. Ignorance, we are famously advised, is conducive to bliss, and that dancing looks pretty blissed-out. In fact the people look attractive, well-fed and decidedly well-clad. Do they represent a select few, with the North's publicity machine in overdrive?

The population size of South Korea positively dwarfs that of the North; comparing the capital cities alone is telling: Pyongyang with 3,255,288 souls, and Seoul with 25,600,000. As in the classic tale of the tail wagging the dog, Pyongyang dictates to Seoul, and the South acts out the tolerant, big-brother role as much as is feasible, until blatant and errant stupidity rules the day and the South sighs its exasperation.

Should matters ever come to the point where an actual military face-off occurs, the antiquated conventional weaponry owned by the North cannot compare in efficacy and reliability to the advanced arsenals that the South is in possession of. North Korea, a penurious state, spends roughly $5-billion on its military, while South Korea spends $27-billion at last count in 2009.

But while the South has 657,000 military personnel with 2,900,000 reserves, the North boasts 1,350,000 with 4,700,000 paramilitaries. Dwarfed in size to its southern counterpart in ethnicity, but not in social culture, it bristles its devotion to militarization, and will not permit anyone to overlook that little fact of its existence.

The North can count as its support both China and Russia. The United States, and Japan line up with South Korea. It is precisely those incidental supporters of each that are concerning on the world scale, all four of them reasonably responsible and rational and capable of pulling back when standing well before the brink.

Whereas no one can claim any such assurances for North Korea, peacock-proud of its missiles, particularly the Taepodong-2, and its miniaturization of a nuclear device.