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When examining the recent actions of North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-un, we can see the pitiable plots of a paranoid regime looking for attention. The regime's troubles and anxiety reflect on its survivability ― external regional developments isolate it. Her state, society and culture don't value democracy and individual freedom. Kim continues to use totalitarian means to cover many problems. Pyongyang's shortages of life, liberty and happiness embarrass it.
Declining powers turn dangerous when faced with their unraveling. I'm sure no prescient diplomat or head of state would want the North to lose face, but it's a declining power. Decline happens gradually, but at times it quickens. North Korea isn't even 100 years old as a state. Its life and destiny appear as a constant ebbing. This poses problems for avoiding loss of life, in North Korea, South Korea, the region, and the world. Why is North Korea in decline?
Resistance to the course of freedom and democracy is futile. The ideology of liberty working throughout much of world civilization warrants this statement in its current world historical expression. I'd argue the advance of liberty is at work in all rising powers and cultures. By "liberty" I mean personal freedom, both in the sense of what Isaiah Berlin would call negative and positive senses of liberty. Some Asian societies grant freedoms on an individual level. Some societies value individual self-development and self-expression. These freedoms have different cultural forms.
In developing liberty, and in other respects, the North Korean people continue to languish, well at least a great many of them. The politically correct multitudes intone their loyalty, but Kim Jong-un looks decidedly nervous. This reflects the main security actions of his state. Acting from the only script he owns, Kim is thrusting and parrying, but it's not buying him much capital, except perhaps domestically in the short-run.
He continues to find some loyalist at fault. He turns out the poor apparatchik in one form or another and shows everyone who is the boss; right? Let's make an American prisoner or Korean dissenter parade around in humiliation. Kim Dong-chul joins this list. What bankrupt state can't arrest a dissenter or create political prisoners?
There's always havoc to sew about national security melodramas, the prop of North Korean state efficacy. South Korea and Japan negotiated an agreement that further isolates his regime. It bodes greater stability on the peninsula instead of greater rivalry between two adjoining powers. Kim and his regime think they must do something. It's a bad sign when an agreement for peace amounts to a threat. Let's show our power to defeat all external enemies, Seoul, Tokyo, Washington, whoever! Let's blow something up!
The claimed hydrogen bomb explosion turns into a public relations disaster. Many reports cast doubts on Pyongyang's claims. Whatever happened up in Punggye-ri requires waves of respect among the domestic populace, all to the rave reporting of Ri Chun-hee on state TV. Outside the North, it looks mostly like a joke.
China grows skeptical of late. South Korean leadership promises responses to provocations. Japan continues to develop plans for a defensive security role in the region. Nothing Kim has done will change these trends. Hastening them only isolates his regime and people further. Of course, that object reinforces his reason for being.
I mean it's sad. Kim appears in various places with various faces to show that all's well and improving, when neither is the case.
North Korea wants vigilant and patient security leadership from South Korea and her allies. We shouldn't overreact to their non-virtual movies about exploding 20th century world-class technology bombs or lone planes or drones probing borders. Neither should we end our readiness and clarity of communications about results for misadventure.
I think the North tries to rely on residuals of insecurity, fear, and regional tensions. Kim's not a part of trade arrangements, the legitimate kind. He's on the sidelines of regional development and progress, except in fomenting insecurity.
I continue to say we shouldn't let the North fool us. We also shouldn't change much because of his lack of prudence.
Bernard Rowan is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University, where he has served for 22 years. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University. Reach him at browan10@yahoo.com.
