By Andrew L. Jaffee

Very rarely, but sometimes, can you find truth in the words of dictators — in this case: North Korea:

…we will deliver merciless blows without hesitation to whoever tries to breach our sovereignty and right to survive under the excuse of carrying out the UN Security Council resolution.

Ah ha! In beauty ugliness, there is truth! The nuclear standoff with North Korea is in truth about survival — survival of the privileged few communist leaders who hold their population hostage. N. Korean dictator Kim Jong-il likes scotch, James Bond movies, Daffy Duck, fast cars, and apparently under-age girl sex-slaves. Some “communist.” His people live — well, mostly suffer and die — while he sips his scotch.

Before people go rushing to urge “dialogue” with North Korea — which is exactly what its Stalinist leadership wants by testing nuclear devices — there are several facts to keep in mind:

1) Two to three million North Korean citizens have starved to death because their government spends more money on weapons per capita than any nation on earth (see also here).

2) Democracy blossoms in South Korea. It is the world’s 11th largest economy. A recent nighttime satellite image of the Korean Peninsula showed North Korea totally dark, while South Korea was glowing with light. South Koreans aren’t flocking north, but North Koreans flee to the south by the thousands every year.

3) Previous dialogue (appeasement) between the Clinton administration and North Korea only encouraged its pursuit of nuclear weapons. According to Colin Powell:

Because the last time we had a bilateral negotiation with the North Koreans, it resulted in the Agreed Framework, which bottled Yongbyon so that no weapons came out of Yongbyon for another eight years, but it left the capacity to develop weapons in place at Yongbyon; and while they were doing that and we were watching that, before the ink was dry on the Agreed Framework, the North Koreans had started to move in another direction to develop the same kinds of nuclear weapons that we thought we had capped at Yongbyon. We’re not going to fall into that trap again.

Kim Jong-il’s “survival” means the continued suffering and death of his own people. Hey, at least he’s honest about it.

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Related: Dictator Watch, Communism / Socialism, North Korea, United Nations (UN)

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