OPINION — Editorial

Lil' Kim

A big threat

". . . . North Korea's regime is bizarre in the extreme, a hermit kingdom run by a weird, utterly ruthless and highly erratic god-king. You can't count on Caligula. The regime is savage and cultlike; its people, robotic. Karen Elliott House once noted that while Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a prison, North Korea was an ant colony. Ant colonies do not have good checks and balances."

--Charles Krauthammer

Every day there appears to be another reason to worry about North Korea, specifically its leadership and its war-making capabilities. For a small country, it causes the rest of the world the most fear per capita. At least the world could count on the old Soviet Union to be somewhat put off by MAD--mutually assured destruction. But what does an ant colony know about such logic?

Word came down late last week from various sources that Kim Jong Un, the current pudgy little dictator from Pyongyang, is keeping the elite around him from raising their cheek through new and more brutal methods of execution. For years there have been rumors of public executions in North Korea using anti-aircraft artillery, flamethrowers and mortar rounds. Now the preferred method may be a more primitive one: wild and hungry dogs. Those in South Korea who watch these things now believe Lil' Kim sicced starving dogs on his uncle when the old man fell out of favor.

Lil' Kim's reach isn't confined to the borders of his hermit kingdom. Gentle Reader will remember his half-brother was killed earlier this year when a couple of assassins sprayed nerve gas in his face in Malaysia. North Korea's leader isn't much on family ties.

Also, according to a white paper by South Korea's Institute for National Security Strategy, a body can find himself in front of the dogs or the artillery for "bad sitting posture during a meeting" or "half-hearted clapping." The paper also says that the number of military and government purges since Mr. Kim took over in 2011 has increased every year.

It's said that Otto Warmbier, the American college student who was sent home to die earlier this month, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trying to steal a poster. His family buried him last week.

Things get more disturbing, if you can imagine. According to the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, Mr. Kim is a drinking man. Dispatches say he likes to get drunk, then comes up with the orders for execution. And the methods used.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but North Korea is now a nuclear-armed ant colony with somebody at the top who may or may not be sober as you read this.

This week, President Trump will hold his first summit with South Korea's new president. The two have had their differences lately; it's been in the papers. President Moon Jae-in hasn't been in favor of new missile systems that the U.S. has begun to put on his peninsula.

But the two leaders must realize the clock is ticking. Every week the North gets closer to not only threatening Seoul with destruction, but perhaps San Francisco or Seattle, too.

These two major allies--the United States and South Korea--must show Pyongyang the alliance is strong. Now is no time to go wobbly. Or to send mixed signals to Lil' Kim.

Editorial on 06/26/2017

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