Jong Quotes
The great famine of 1994-98 was to a large extent the inviolable result of the policies that Kim Il Sung had pursued for decades. The famine was brought about by Kim Il Sung's fanatical belief in a hyper-centralized, state-managed agriculture, as well as an excessive reliance on (unacknowledged) foreign aid, not to mention militarization run amok. However, if the mine was planted (unintentionally, of course) by Kim Il Sung, it went off under the rule of his son. Hence, most North Koreans blame Kim Jong Il, rather than his father, for the economic disasters of the 1990s.
Andrei Lankov
While Kim Jong Un has already long had the tools to destroy South Korea effectively, he also believes it is necessary to drive American forces out of the peninsula. And this can be done, he believes, by being able to credibly threaten the continental United States with nuclear weapons. On top of the thousands of artillery pieces and short-range missile capabilities long held on the North Korean side, the potential deployment of battle-ready nuclear ICBMs means the threat is not only towards South Korea, but also towards America.
Thae Yong-ho
[S]ent this piece the other day to a few friends, I have decided to make it public in response to questions that journalists have been emailing me. Not that they will pay attention. Getting asked how Kim Jong Un is now going to sell denuclearization to the North Korean public - and asked in the tone of someone who expects it to happen - reminds me how futile it is to talk to a guild with no interest in ideological matters.
Brian Reynolds Myers
[R]elative lack of popularity is not as important as the lack of popularity of a president in South Korea, where there is no bedrock state support to keep people patriotic even when they dislike a leader. But we Americans are more like the North Koreans in that regard. Does our patriotism rise and fall depending on who is in the White House? If we don't like a president, do we start finding America's enemies more likeable? No. We should therefore not assume that Kim Jong Un's relative lack of stature means that support for the state is weakening.
Brian Reynolds Myers
Were Kim Jong Il to abandon his ideology of paranoid, race-based nationalism and normalize relations with Washington, his personality cult would lose all justification, while his impoverished country would lose all reason to exist as a separate Korean state. The problem for U. S. negotiators is therefore not one of sticks versus carrots; the regime in Pyongyang will neither be bullied nor sweet-talked into committing political suicide.
Brian Reynolds Myers
If Kim Jong Un is Chosun, as the slogan goes, then his decline in popularity must be the state's too? But it doesn't work that way. We all need to give our lives a sense of significance, of a meaning that lives on after our deaths. The North Koreans get that from their nationalism, which is one with their patriotism. If they lose that, what do they have?
Brian Reynolds Myers
