I’m glad Aijalon Gomes is coming home, and I’m bracing myself for all of the addlebrained things Carter will now have an excuse to say on CNN between now and Sunday night. For now, I’ll just note the ingratitude of Kim Jong Il’s calculated snub by choosing this occasion to visit China. I predicted the other day that North Korea wouldn’t snub such a valuable enabler. I regret the error, as this was obviously an intentional snub. No doubt, the domestic propaganda will characterize Carter as a groveling supplicant spurned by a leader of greater stature, and for once, the propaganda will be right on the mark. I say “ingratitude” because if Kim Il Sung was the father of North Korea’s nuclear program, Carter was its godfather.
I can’t resist making one more observation, and it is this: who else has noticed that the ex-“human rights president,” one who was so concerned about Park Chong Hee’s authoritarianism that he almost pulled U.S. forces out of Korea, never quite summons the principle to call for the closure of North Korea’s peace forests? Or that Carter’s ostentatious and smug brand of religious faith never translates into a call to end North Korea’s persecution of Christians?
Succession Watch: North Korea is now said to be producing millions of portraits, badges, and other icons portraying Kim Jong Eun’s royal visage. And since fuel obviously isn’t needed for flood relief or bringing in the harvest, they’re gassing up the tanks for a colossal military parade. You can read a good summary of succession developments and speculation here, at the Wall Street Journal.
Good question: “What is Facebook without friends?” Also on this topic, I believe it’s obligatory of me to point out that at one point, North Korea’s Facebook page listed itself as male-seeking-male.
North Korean pilots still live better than the wretches who surround them, but the North’s economic collapse has damaged their material privileges, too.
Our friends, the ChiComs, Part I: “North Korea smuggled state-of-the-art measuring equipment used in long-range rockets and missile launchers from China in April. Citing an unnamed source, a Seoul-based daily said a Chinese company forged documents to illegally export the machinery to North Korea, an activity banned under UN Security Council Resolution 1874.”
Our friends, the ChiComs, Part II: “China is keeping up its barrage of words directed at the U.S., this time with a fiery editorial written by a general in the country’s state-run military newspaper, which calls for the country to be prepared to respond if it is attacked by the U.S. ‘If someone does not harm me, I won’t harm him,’ said Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan in Thursday’s Liberation Army Daily. ‘If someone harms me, I must harm him.'” By this unassailable logic, the Chinese entities that fund Kim Jong Il and Ahmedinejad and enable their terrorism and proliferation are long overdue to have their assets blocked.
I wrote about Gomes Gomes here.
Realizing that you come from the distaff side of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, Joshua, but are you alluding to Luke 24:47 here, by way of stuff like Amazing Grace? If so, “poor wretch” carries the meaning more strongly.
I quite liked this quote from a State Department spokesperson in the CNN article:
“The U.S. and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations and as the case of Mr. Gomes illustrates, travel to North Korea is not routine or risk-free,”
I wonder if this spokesperson even had a grasp of the basic facts behind Mr. Gomes “travels”.
I don’t think it was an intentional snub, because the PR value of a photo-op with Jimmah is too great. It must represent a difficult, but inevitable, choice. What was the choice?
There are reports that two combat infantry divisions have been moved to the vicinity of Pyongyang, and there will be a Workers’Party Congress to anoint Baby Kim as King and to make his uncle Regent. These are not inherently compatible reports. Given the recent announcement to modify the “military first” policy and to bring back political control, there are likely to be Army opponents to a family/Party succession. The Army, two years ago, staged a very strange TV appearance to protect its nuclear deterrent — and the Cheonan and Fishbed incidents suggest there are independent operatives in the military who are not accountable to the Party. They could take over — except that China has given limited support to any succession so long as it is peaceful.
I think the only thing that could’ve torn Little Kim away from a Carter photo-op was the imperative need for either (1) sanctuary because of an actual coup, or (2) explicit approval of Baby Kim from Big Brother to face down the opposing military faction.
I’m not so sure Jimmah believed much in human rights for South Korea, either (i.e. Gwangju).
I was wondering why NK didn’t accept my FB friend request! I thought I was being snubbed. Turns out Facebook shut them down. Oh well….
I’ll friend you, Theresa. I’m not as old, follicly-challenged, short, fat, or disease-addled as KJI, but I hope you’d accept me anyway.
I’m with David. Not only would a meeting with Jimmy have been completely compatible with the current messages coming from Pyongyang, but also the man is himself held in somewhat high regard in North Korea for various reasons that OFK is fundamentally opposed to, and there would also have been domestic value in a photo op with him at this point, especially since the photos he took with Kim Young Nam show clearly that he didn’t have nearly the same level of “don’t smile for God’s sake” training as Bill Clinton evidently received.
Furthermore, if you check in with the Korean language KCNA piece on Gomes pardon, it was heavy on the, well, whatever, I’ll quote it;
I will say, though, this; the only effective message this “snub” sent was to China, and it read; we know which side our bread is buttered. But given that the Chinese acquiesced in print to the succession long prior to Jimmy boarding the plane to Pyongyang, or the Kim(s) trundling north for that matter, and agreed to give flood aid a day or so before his arrival, too, I just don’t think that message was important enough to be worth it.
I had a dream last night about Kim Jong-il. I need a girlfriend.
I do not find Mr. Carter’s liberal Christianity either ostentatious nor smug (more like unhistorical and Modernist), but you have hit this one out of the park with that observation. Hear, hear! More!
Fixed your post. 🙂
I don’t know if he’s made such comments, but it seems his ability to make them is hamstrung by the political realities of having to make nice with Pyongyang in order to go and fish out members of the Messiah Complex Club.
Very well said, kushibo.
I have another theory.
My speculation is that the only goal of the China trip was to snub Carter, while everything else was tangential.
1) KJI had plenty of time to meet Carter. The two were in Pyongyang together for at least 12 hours (IIRC). Why not meet him and then go to Dongbei?
2) If he needed flood aid, he could have sent a high ranking emissary (Choe Young-rim, Jang Song-taek, Kim Young-nam…any of them would have fit the bill). China would certainly oblige in these circumstances, regarldess of who was sent.
3) There is no evidence that KJU was on the trip, so we can’t say it had anything to do with succession, unless there is evidence that he was in fact on the trip. It is also very un-North Korean to pay tribute to Beijing.
4) If KJI had stayed in Pyongyang to snub Carter, it only would have fueled international speculation about KJI’s health. By going to China and being seen in public, KJI sent a dual message: he is snubbing Carter and the America and relatively healthy and still in charge.
milton, I like a lot of your comments at The Marmot’s Hole, but I think you are wrong that the trip to China was only meant as a snub of Carter.
Simply put, the value of having foreign presidents coming to Pyongyang in maintaining this myth of world leaders recognizing the superiority of Juche is too great to pass up. Snubbing Carter would mean giving up that prestige.
And it wouldn’t make sense anyway: Why require a trip by a former head-of-state when you aren’t planning to take advantage of it in some way? Sure, Mr Clinton probably enjoyed the distraction, but Mr Carter has houses to build.
(All right, I’ll admit I’m still bitter that I couldn’t post a picture of KJI and Carter embracing with the caption, “Welcome back, Carter.”)
Sheeb– if you truly are on FB, yes add me. Are you under Kushibo?
Alec– THAT IS SCARY.
Thanks Kushibo. I should also mention here that I am a big fan of your blog.
I agree that it doesn’t make sense that Kim would snub Carter, especially given Carter’s relationship with KIS, and KJI’s supposed strong Confucian values. I even remember an editorial in the KCNA a few months ago praising Carter and reminiscing on his few days with KIS.
But how else can we explain the fact that the two were in the same city and the same time, but yet didn’t meet? The fact that KJI could have had a short audience with Carter but chose not to is very curious.
Another theory (hypothesis, really) I have is that Hu Jintao intentionally ordered KJI to come to China (which might explain why Hu was willing to make the unusual trek out to Changchun) in order to prevent KJI from meeting Carter. Perhaps with growing American involvement in Vietnam and a renewed push into the rest of Southeast Asia, the CCP is worried about losing it’s buffer state and thus is trying to prevent NK-US rapprochement.
Another possibility (as per Dr. Lankov) is that KJI’s mental faculties aren’t that great anymore and this highly unusual and untimely trip is just another manifestation of that.
What’s your take on it?
Though I like reporting on things as they happen, I am not a big fan of instant punditry and I fear for our world as trying to be the first to say something in the media so often trumps being the first to get things right.
Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of Kim Jong-il’s visit, except that I don’t know if it was really intended to be a snub. Something was going on that we don’t know about — maybe the visit to China had been planned all along, but Mr Gomes had problems that meant he needed to be repatriated fast but they didn’t want to give him away cheap (you know, for next time).
But then that begs the question, why the sudden visit? The obvious (and most popular) answer is “Get Beijing’s okay for a dynastic transition.” Fine if we’re playing “Family Feud” but not if we’re playing something more serious.
After busily trying to read between the lines of KCNA reports on Kim Jong-il’s visit, which reported on KJI praising the economic progress of China’s northeast, I’m wondering if the real purpose of the visit was perhaps to get China’s sanction (the permission kind, not the punishment variety) for Chinese-style reforms in North Korea. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got a Nork nunchi gut feeling.
(The above comment was meant to be a response to milton’s question to me, just above it.)
milton also wrote:
So you’re the one.
Kushibo “didn’t know what to make of Kim Jong-il’s visit.” Maybe the Chinese have decided that pretending to support sanctions against North Korea is a waste of time. They may be preparing instead for a new cold war against the United States, with North Korea firmly on their side. They probably hope that Russia will lean more toward themselves than toward us.
Glans wrote:
Perhaps, but that would explain the alliance, not the visit.
I think we are already seeing evidence of a new cold war, with Beijing and Moscow sort of aligned on one side, and Washington on the other.
I think Beijing may be getting ready to draw a few lines in the sand and tell various neighbors to decide which side of their bread they want buttered. (Mixed metaphors are the best ones!)
Kushibo sees evidence of a new cold war. Good luck to the Russians! In 1939, they aligned with a power that wanted their western territories. Now they may be aligning with a power that wants their eastern territories.
You could be onto something there. China may be looking for an outlet to the East Sea (Sea of Japan). That means taking something from North Korea and/or Russia.