By Bernard Rowan
Finally, the United States and China should act like allies. There's nothing in the end that's not in the beginning, or so goes an old view of logic and truth. Why?
North Korean politics continues its weird ways. Recently, North Korea has tested another missile and, so it seems, orchestrated killing the leading international "rival" of its leader, creating continuing international news and intrigue. The planned Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises have already stirred Pyongyang's endless on-edginess.
Despite the political turmoil in South Korea about the failed Park presidency and what comes next, relative security remains. Despite a new president in the United States, who had offered to meet Kim Jong-un, but now petulantly denies the proposed dalliance because of the missile launch, relative security remains. I mean there's no final security with two conventional (and nuclear?) forces arrayed across the DMZ. When did we last know such peace?
All that China has been willing to apply in this constant morass is to stop prospective and recent import orders of North Korean coal. I don't think that's much more than a slap on the wrist. It's seemingly tailored to appease Trumpian pressures for China to display more burden-sharing over the naughty North. Why do the Chinese resort to symbolic politics?
Why does Kim Jong-un trade in melodramas of futility? I wonder how hard it would've been to order, allow or see one's brother killed. I don't suppose they knew each other well, from what I've read. They didn't grow up together, and Kim Jong-nam was a critic of his country and government. But still, they were family. Of course, Kim Jong-un hasn't shown much aversion to killing relatives and close confidants or their kinfolk. Is he so cold that he's frozen?
I enjoyed but found surprising a discussion of Kim Jong-un's personality, summarized on personality-politics.org, the website of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics. It describes Kim's personality as a combination of congeniality and cooperativeness. This benign description stands in only seeming contradiction to another appraisal by Mark Bowden in Vanity Fair. Kim comes across there as a more pleasure-seeking if present-day autocrat in style than some of his 20th century counterparts. He's no less lost in this farcical family succession to lead a nation of totalitarian evil.
Kim runs a program, and the program begins to run him. The latter tragedy counterbalances the former comedy, but the rub is much injustice and death, among other crimes. Within the context of the North Korean state and political culture, the program condemns Kim to a life of realities that frustrate his inner child, shall we say. I can't see how the grandiosity of his presumed identification with the people works. Idealizing North Korea as the height of resistance to global pariahs can't compensate enough. The daily negative feedback of reality for his country and her people overwhelms.
The tragicomedy of killing his older brother puts the Kim bureaucracy in the same league as any number of fratricidal polities and leaders, past and present. Kim's a poor soul, and North Korea amounts to purgatory _ at best.
Nonetheless, the current group of global powers can't dislodge Kim, since the costs of forcibly doing so run too great. Besides that, China and the United States prefer a divided Korea, I'm sorry to suggest, since they want footholds and bases to oppose and hem in each other's regional and global pretensions and projects. I suggest that any efforts to mimic an Arab Spring offensive in the North would carry monstrous effects.
At one time, the North's progress outpaced the South's. Those days are long gone. The North's basic delusion is a religion of denial trumped up as self-reliance. How can a rebalancing of sympathies and reality promote the change to see the North past her apostasy? Can the world awaken a critical mass of the North Korean people from Kim's dreamscape?
Finally, the United States and China should act like allies. There's likely no better grand project for Northeast Asian civilization, politics, and culture in the 21st century. I hope the Korean presidential selection to come will focus on the South's efforts to hasten this result too.
Bernard Rowan is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University. Reach him at browan10@yahoo.com
.jpg/dims/resize/740/optimize) |
North Korean politics continues its weird ways. Recently, North Korea has tested another missile and, so it seems, orchestrated killing the leading international "rival" of its leader, creating continuing international news and intrigue. The planned Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises have already stirred Pyongyang's endless on-edginess.
Despite the political turmoil in South Korea about the failed Park presidency and what comes next, relative security remains. Despite a new president in the United States, who had offered to meet Kim Jong-un, but now petulantly denies the proposed dalliance because of the missile launch, relative security remains. I mean there's no final security with two conventional (and nuclear?) forces arrayed across the DMZ. When did we last know such peace?
All that China has been willing to apply in this constant morass is to stop prospective and recent import orders of North Korean coal. I don't think that's much more than a slap on the wrist. It's seemingly tailored to appease Trumpian pressures for China to display more burden-sharing over the naughty North. Why do the Chinese resort to symbolic politics?
Why does Kim Jong-un trade in melodramas of futility? I wonder how hard it would've been to order, allow or see one's brother killed. I don't suppose they knew each other well, from what I've read. They didn't grow up together, and Kim Jong-nam was a critic of his country and government. But still, they were family. Of course, Kim Jong-un hasn't shown much aversion to killing relatives and close confidants or their kinfolk. Is he so cold that he's frozen?
I enjoyed but found surprising a discussion of Kim Jong-un's personality, summarized on personality-politics.org, the website of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics. It describes Kim's personality as a combination of congeniality and cooperativeness. This benign description stands in only seeming contradiction to another appraisal by Mark Bowden in Vanity Fair. Kim comes across there as a more pleasure-seeking if present-day autocrat in style than some of his 20th century counterparts. He's no less lost in this farcical family succession to lead a nation of totalitarian evil.
Kim runs a program, and the program begins to run him. The latter tragedy counterbalances the former comedy, but the rub is much injustice and death, among other crimes. Within the context of the North Korean state and political culture, the program condemns Kim to a life of realities that frustrate his inner child, shall we say. I can't see how the grandiosity of his presumed identification with the people works. Idealizing North Korea as the height of resistance to global pariahs can't compensate enough. The daily negative feedback of reality for his country and her people overwhelms.
The tragicomedy of killing his older brother puts the Kim bureaucracy in the same league as any number of fratricidal polities and leaders, past and present. Kim's a poor soul, and North Korea amounts to purgatory _ at best.
Nonetheless, the current group of global powers can't dislodge Kim, since the costs of forcibly doing so run too great. Besides that, China and the United States prefer a divided Korea, I'm sorry to suggest, since they want footholds and bases to oppose and hem in each other's regional and global pretensions and projects. I suggest that any efforts to mimic an Arab Spring offensive in the North would carry monstrous effects.
At one time, the North's progress outpaced the South's. Those days are long gone. The North's basic delusion is a religion of denial trumped up as self-reliance. How can a rebalancing of sympathies and reality promote the change to see the North past her apostasy? Can the world awaken a critical mass of the North Korean people from Kim's dreamscape?
Finally, the United States and China should act like allies. There's likely no better grand project for Northeast Asian civilization, politics, and culture in the 21st century. I hope the Korean presidential selection to come will focus on the South's efforts to hasten this result too.
Bernard Rowan is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University. Reach him at browan10@yahoo.com
![[ANALYSIS] China's ban on Micron tests Washington-Seoul alliance](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/1785a57b07ae45a7b7db49fdf4acd720.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] Long-awaited extension of Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale to be pushed forward](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/d8d5090875824ce08a90bb2c5a8f8c05.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
