Score One for the ‘Barrel of a Gun’ Theory

Look what the Partei is telling the proles:

At a people’s meeting in Hoiryeong, citizens were educated on the justice of North Korea’s nuke experiment and the economic aftereffects of the nuke experiment. An organizer of the people’s meeting in Hoiryeong said “The nuclear experiment has broken all of U.S. North Korea pressure policies and we have successfully shown the whole world that our socialism is good. Now, beginning from the nations of the six-party talks, countries around the world are in fear of our nuclear armaments.

Background here; the general idea is that Kim Jong Il’s otherwise inexplicable missile and nuke tests, for which he paid a severe diplomatic and economic price, were done to show his own people and military that his weapons programs were an effective way to extort goodies from the rest of the world — to disguise the world’s charity as protection money.
I suspect that the North Korean people will buy about half of this.  Deprived of much individual pride or self-esteem, they might be tempted to affix themselves to national pride.  People have an inexhaustible appetite for nationalism; it just never goes out of style.  Ditto anti-Americanism, which is based on something else that has timeless appeal:  envy.  But I also think that they simultaneously blame their government for their suffering, and many of those who would valiantly resist a U.S. invasion (as if) under some circumstances  would just as valiantly resist their own government if given a chance, and that  many or most  would leap at the opportunity to live in America.  And dissent is obviously spreading, or the regime would not make this tacit admission:

Furthermore, on two occasions Sept 29th and Oct 4th, the leader of the unit announced a declaration in accordance to the “General (Kim Jong Il)’s policy” around the districts of the border to “abolish anti-socialist trends” such as aiding undercover border-crossing, smuggling, secretly listening or importing radios and circulating illegal recorded materials.

Not to be missed:  the  loyalty oaths that include preemptive acceptance of punishment for the aforementioned.