Dennis Rodman made an ass of himself as an NBA player.  Now he’s playing diplomat—rather, Kim Jong Il’s favorite pal—and continuing to make an ass of himself.  There have been articles in our enlightened media on how this “basketball diplomacy” just might work.  BS!  That  theoretical flatulence has been quieted a bit after Rodman’s trip because the boy wonder of North Korea postures and threatens the West, testing missiles as a way to threaten South Korea and the U.S. in general and in their joint defense exercises.

Rodman must have had one too many blows to the head as other NBA players returned the hits from his flaying elbows.  He’s now certifiably crazy.  Or, completely naïve.  In any case, the North Korean dictator, in a fascistic variation of North Korea’s “three generation rule,” learned from granddaddy mostly because daddy was a moronic recluse.  Garcia-Marquez in his Autumn of the Patriarch painted a picture of the archetypical South American dictator.  Kim Jong Il makes Gabo’s dictator look like a choir boy.

This North Korean child-dictator is a monster—and that’s a polite description.  He leads a monstrous, brutal country, where most of the population is comprised of malnourished zombies not daring to say one word against the government.  If they do, they and all their relatives are banished to a prison camp.  Every sentence is a life sentence.  Moreover, three generations are sentenced.  The idea is a new take on political cleansing, a variation on “the final solution.”  The theory is that if you stamp out dissidence for three generations, the race is purified to become completely obedient to the Korean leader, who is your god.

There are several of these camps.  I’ve known about them for a while and possessed knowledge of the internal workings of the North Korean state, but I was still intrigued when Sunday night on CBS’ Sixty Minutes we heard about Kwan-li-so (penal labor camp) # 14, also known as Kaechon Prison Camp.  With an area of about 155 sq-km (60 sq-mi), it contains about 15,000 people, many born under the “three generations of punishment rule.”  Sixty Minutes interviewed Shin Dong-hyuk who escaped the prison camp at twenty-three, the only prisoner to do so.  His description of the brutal life at the camp sent chills up my spine.  And, mind you, I expected it to be bad!

Only the Nazi concentration camps can compare with what’s going on in North Korea, and the Nazis only concentrated on one generation (of course, the Nazis exterminated millions).  If you want to see the face of evil in the modern world, look to North Korea.  It makes anything going on in Iran or China look like a happy party by comparison.  In North Korea, we see absolute evil, that monstrous gleam of Hitler reborn, an evil that Orwell and other dystopian authors could never imagine.

We have here a country whose leaders are dedicated to brutally subjugating every North Korean citizen, to turn them into unthinking robot-servants of the fascist state.  Absolutely no words or action against the state are tolerated.  The people who do so are lucky if they are simply shot or hung.  The unlucky ones go to places like Kwan-li-so #14, together with the rest of their family.

Those who don’t obey the rules of the camp become lucky—again, they’re shot or hung.  The second and third generations don’t know the outside world.  Shin Dong-hyuk had never heard of the U.S. and no idea of family loyalty or values.  He was so much a slave to the prison’s rules that he turned his own mother and sister in to be killed.  We’re talking about a system here that hammers home the mantras of subservience to the state—no deviance permitted.  Dong-hyuk reported that a little girl was hung because she dared to hoard a few kernels of corn.  To call the prisoners’ treatment inhumane can’t begin to describe it.

How Dennis Rodman can be pals with a monster who allows these atrocities is beyond me.  He has completely lost his mind.  Either that, or he is an ignorant lout who can’t read or listen to news.  Is he completely unaware of world history since the Korean War?  Maybe you can talk to the North Korean leader about basketball, Mr. Rodman, but you are no diplomat if you have no idea of world history.  And I certainly don’t want you representing me with a monster the likes of Kim Jong Il.  Please, exit the diplomatic stage, taking your multi-colored hair, rings, and body ink with you.  ‘Nough said.

And so it goes….

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 at 4:00 am and is filed under Nuclear Proliferation, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.