Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea

325 Pages·2005·1.678 MB·English

by  Jasper Becker

Rogue Regime:
Kim Jong Il and the Looming
Threat of North Korea
JASPER BECKER
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
ROGUE REGIME
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ROGUE REGIME
Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of
North Korea
J A S P E R B E C K E R
2005
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that
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Copyright © 2005 by Jasper Becker
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Becker, Jasper.
Rogue regime : Kim Jong Il and the looming threat of North Korea by Jasper Becker.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-517044-3
ISBN-10: 0-19-517044-X
1. Korea (North)—History.
2. Korea (North)—Politics and government.
3. Kim, Chæong-il, 1942- I. Title.
DS935.B43 2004
951.9304’3—dc22
2004012967
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To the children of North Korea
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Contents
Preface: Rogue State ix
Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1 Famine and Flight 20
CHAPTER 2 The Kim Dynasty 40
CHAPTER 3 The Making of a God King 64
CHAPTER 4 Slave State 85
CHAPTER 5 North Korea’s Economic Collapse 101
CHAPTER 6 Kim Jong Il’s Court 124
CHAPTER 7 Kim Jong Il—The Terrorist Master 146
CHAPTER 8 Nuclear Warlord 165
CHAPTER 9 Kim Jong Il—The Reformer 190
CHAPTER 10 The United Nations and Genocide 209
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER 11 Kim Dae Jung and the South Korean Way 228
CHAPTER 12 Grappling with a Rogue State 249
Afterword 266
Notes 275
Bibliography 287
Acknowledgments 293
Index 295
Preface: Rogue State
North Korea is the quintessential rogue regime, and its end may only come
after a terrifying war. The term “rogue state” is reserved only for the most
incorrigible in the international system. Rogue states engage in rash behav-
ior, subjugate their populations, are hostile to the ideologies and interests
of the free world, and, most troublingly, breach established international
rules in many areas: diplomacy, trade, terrorism, human rights, dangerous
weapons, narcotics, and so on. In particular these states’ active pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction qualifies them for the label “rogue,” a certifi-
cate of dangerous insanity in the diplomatic world. If, like North Korea,
there is also a record of sponsoring terrorism around the world, they are
bound to attract concern.
North Korea answers to this description but it is also a failed state: the
ruling family, founded by Kim Il Sung, has brutalized its own population
for half a century, murdering or starving to death some four million people.
The Kims have squandered precious resources on a religious cult devoted
to their own worship while they have built palaces, swilled imported French
cognac, and gifted their concubines with Swiss watches. Any such regime
must be rated as highly unstable and combustible.
In recent years, foreign troops have arrived on humanitarian peacekeep-
ing missions in Haiti, Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Congo, all states which tend to be described
as failed rather than rogue states. It is conceivable that North Korea may
ix