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International Last Updated: Jul 25, 2017 - 10:27:29 AM


North Korea Today
By David Kilgour, New Delhi Times, July 24, 2017
Jul 24, 2017 - 9:58:07 AM

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North Korea under three generations of a totalitarian monarchy eerily replicates China as it was under Mao Zedong. Today, it is one of the most misgoverned of the world’s almost 200 independent nations. Ideologically, its Korean Worker’s Party was founded on the same Marxist/Leninist principles that the Chinese Communist Party still espouses for governance but for only some of its economic policies.

Kim Jong-un (Kim 3) strongly appears to have begun his own reign by condoning the murders of his uncle Jang Sung-taek and more recently his half-brother Kim Jong-nam at an airport in Malaysia. Some observers say Jang was killed for advocating closer relations with China and economic reforms akin to those achieved after Mao’s death in 1976.

On July 4th, Kim 3 launched his twelfth rocket test, possibly to provoke the United States into overreacting militarily. His long-term strategy could be to wait for a US administration-possibly that of President Donald Trump- that isn’t fully committed to defending South Korea, and then begin a second Korean War.

The election in May of the conciliatory Moon Jae-in as South Korean president has reduced tensions on the peninsula because, unlike his two predecessors who shut down most contacts with Pyongyang, he has long advocated better relations, including meeting with Kim. If Pyongyang’s nuclear program is to be frozen, Moon could well be the best person to achieve it.

Understandably vague about his North Korean policy, Moon, like Trump, says that he believes in both pressure and dialogue. He made a first attempt to persuade Trump, China’s Xi, Russia’s Putin and Japan’s Abe at the Group of 20 meeting in Germany last week. North Korea remains an appallingly brutal regime, one which a UN commission in 2013 found to commit exterminations and torture with impunity.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide concluded that 100,000-200,000 political prisoners in camps are subject to forced labour. A better outcome is still feasible if the international community pursues hard-headed policies that unite a concern for security and human rights with support for those Koreans who are working for change.

Lord David Alton of Britain, an expert on North Korea, sounded the alarm last week:
“[It] is caught in a time warp which [originated] in the armistice of 1953, designed to put a temporary halt to a war that claimed up to 3 million lives. Sixty years later… we now find ourselves on the edge of a nuclear winter…Miscalculation, rather than design, is capable of triggering a ‘Sarajevo’ moment, and with more than a million troops under arms and some 8,000 artillery pieces located within range of half the South’s population, this is not a moment for sending the wrong signals”.

Alton suggests several focus points:

 

The Kims have flouted numerous nuclear treaties and agreements. They have sold weapons to terrorists, helped Syria employ chemical weapons, engaged in cyberwarfare. Kim 3 will not now negotiate away his nuclear and missile programs.

China and Russia, by increasing business links and trade with Kim 3, seem more interested in harming South Koreans and Americans than in encouraging fundamental change in North Korea.

China should stop laundering Pyongyang money and start applying tough sanctions to bring North Korea to the table and help avert a catastrophic war. The UN commission of inquiry recommended that the Kim regime be held to account through the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. Democratic nations should issue arrest warrants for North Korean officials for complicity in these crimes.

Because it wants Kim to remain as a totalitarian buffer against South Korea’s successful democracy and export economy, China’s party-state will likely continue to refuse to impose sanctions. The U.N. Security Council might therefore attempt to circumvent Beijing’s veto and impose a ban on the regime’s coal and iron ore exports.

Principled governments could also sanction China and other countries that re-export goods received from North Korea.It should be noted that one Chinese company, Hongxiang Industrial Development, is regularly sending aluminum oxide to assist Kim’s nuclear weapons program.

If China blocks the Security Council from engaging the ICC on Kim 3’s regime, the UN General Assembly could set up its own tribunal for North Korea.

The five permanent members of the Security Council might disapprove, but the responsible international community can no longer ignore Beijing’s complicity in the regime’s crimes against humanity.
Doing nothing remains the most dangerous option.


Source:Ocnus.net 2017

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