New Kim Regime
Must Put End to Serial Crimes Against Humanity
"Although
Kim Jong-il said he wanted to protect the country from an American invasion,
the nuclear project was really just a tool to maintain the Kim dynasty. … Kim
was a serial committer of crimes against humanity. … The Korean Peninsula now
has the chance to write a new chapter in its history. Reunification is the only
way."
Kim Jong-il was born in 1941
at a military camp near Khabarovsk
in the former Soviet Union [30 miles from the China border]. Called Yura when he
young, Kim was an extremely shy child. Father Kim Il-sung, founder of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea, asserted that his son was born on North
Korea's highest peak - Mount Baekdu. Kim Jong-il's life began with a false
start, and he was responsible for a deadly famine, and forced his people to
call him "Dear Leader." He appointed his third son Kim Jong Un as
heir to carry on the Kim dynasty into a third generation, but his succession
plans fell short when he died of a heart attack Saturday.
Starting a joint leadership
with his father in 1974, Kim Jong-il emerged as de-facto leader and went on to
commit unspeakable crimes. Over the 37 years he reigned as the "party
core," the Korean Peninsula has experienced a very dark period. The late Hwang Jang-yeop,
architect of the North's founding ideology of "Juche" and once No. 2 man in
the North [former chairman of North Korea's Supreme
People's Assembly]who defected to South
Korea in 1997, said, “Kim Jong-il is a traitor who viciously starved North
Koreans to death and turned the country into a prison.”
In the mid-90s, when the
communist North was on the brink of collapse due to massive flooding and
famine, Kim Jong-il faithfully carried out his father's policy of "Songun (military first),"
seeking to build up his country's nuclear arsenal. Although he said he wanted
to protect the country from a U.S. invasion, the nuclear project was really
just a tool to maintain the Kim dynasty. Chairman of the U.S. House Foreign
Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Don Manzullo, was quoted as
saying, "Kim Jong-il was the epitome of evil."
Immediately after the Korean War, the North had an
edge over South Korea in natural resources and heavy industry. But after the
tragic division of the Korean Peninsula, the Stalinist country became the world's
poorest due to its policy of maintaining an "independent national
economy." The North's economic power is 1/37th of South Korea's, and per
capita income is just 1/20th, which leaves most North Koreans in chronic
poverty. The average North Korean child is about eight inches shorter and 22
pounds lighter than the average child in the South. After decades of having
pledged their loyalty to Kim Jong-il, how differently would North Koreans think
of the world if they only knew of the amazing development of the 21st century?
Kim Jong-il told his people
that they live in an earthly paradise, but the reality is just the opposite. Kim
was a serial committer of crimes against humanity. Among North Korean
defectors, 23,000 have come to South Korea and tens of thousands of others are wandering
around China and Southeast Asia. Kim Jong-il's regime regularly murdered people
caught trying to flee across the China border.
Kim Il-sung's attempt to
communize the Korean Peninsula triggered the Korean War, which took the lives
of 1.22 million people and resulted in the disintegration of 10 million Korean
families. His son Jong-il orchestrated terrorist attacks against South Korea.
In October 1983, Jong-il is known to have masterminded a bombing in Aung San,
Myanmar. The blast targeted South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan, killing
17 people. In November 1987, he ordered the bombing of Korean Air flight 858
which killed all 115 people aboard. Last year he oversaw military provocations,
including the sinking of South Korean naval corvette Cheonan and the shelling of
Yeonpyeong Island.
Kim Jong-il left a legacy of
nuclear weapons that now threaten Northeast Asia with mass destruction. Only by
abandoning its nuclear program, reforming and opening up can North Korea
survive. Recall that it wasn't for lack of nuclear arms that the Soviet Union
declined and eventually collapsed.
For the sake of maintaining
his own safety, Kim Jong-il traveled in exclusive bullet-proof trains. He
insisted on this even on state visits to Russia and China - and so perhaps it
isn't surprising that he may have died on a train. His death should mark the
end of Pyongyang's inhumanity. If the North maintains its late leader's
oppressive dictatorship, there will be no future. A country living under
dictatorship is bound to collapse.
The revolution that began to
spread this last year across the Middle East and North Africa is an
inevitability of history. The Korean Peninsula now has the chance to write a
new chapter in its history. Reunification is the only way to lessen the burden
on the North Korean people and secure peace for Northeast Asia.
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