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Parallels North of the 38th
Parallel
NEWS ANALYSIS by Ian Schwartz
The recent deadly train explosion in North Korea that killed more than 150
people and injured over a thousand only serves to illustrate the degree of
secrecy and obfuscation with which the isolated communist country deals with
the outside world.
The powerful blast took place on April 22. The North Korean news agency
claimed was caused by “carelessness due to the electrical contact caused by
carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate
fertilizer and tank wagons.”
No more information is available on the cause of the conflagration, which
reportedly has resulted in at least 161 killed and 1,300 wounds. Children
comprise more than 60 percent of the casualties and blindness afflicts more
than 500 of the wounded.
In a conflicting report out of South Korea, a TV network claimed that the
train was on fire for 40 minutes before exploding. A crowd of onlookers was
allowed to gather, which would substantiate the inordinate amount of people
blinded by the explosion.
While the majority of the world immediately learned of the disaster at
Ryongchon Railway Station, the North Korean government waited two days before
informing its own citizens of the incident.
The North Koreans did waste little time in setting the wheels of their
propaganda machine turning. The Korean Central News Agency approvingly
reported that amidst the inferno that engulfed the town surrounding the
railway station, people ran into homes and burning buildings in attempts to
save portraits of leader Kim Jong Il. Some did not emerge from the collapsing
structures.
Given the North Korean government’s mania for secrecy, it’s likely that if
this were a pre-Internet occurrence, the world would know little of what
happened, and the country’s own citizens probably nothing.
But how can a country with more than 22 million people maintain such a shroud
of secrecy?
While the entire world knows that the communist north and democratic south,
the latter supported by the United States, have been involved in an
unblinkingly tense border standoff for more than 50 years, what’s really known
about what goes on inside the communist nation?
Tucked neatly between the bustling south and monolithic China in the north,
this tiny insular country about size of Mississippi has become arguably the
most stubbornly dangerous communist nation in the world.
In October of 2002, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which is
North Korea’s official name, revealed that it was working on making nuclear
weapons, in violation of international agreement.
This knowledge has led to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s recent agreement
to meet with representatives from the United States and four other nations on
May 12 to discuss its nuclear program. It is widely believed that the U.S.
will demand total dismantling and the DPRK will ask for rewards in exchange
for any action. An international “cash for guns” so to speak.
But while the DPRK has erected an internationally troubling nuclear program
and continues to maintain an army of about a million soldiers, its people are
literally starving. Only a massive and constant international food aid has
kept the country from starvation since 1994.
The U.S., South Korea and a handful of other countries have given aid
following last week’s disaster.
Part of North Korea’s isolation comes from it having had only two leaders
since its inception, the current head and his father. Coincidentally, Kim is
believed to have passed through the town where the explosion occurred two
hours earlier. He was returning from Beijing.
Kim, who does not like to fly, is perhaps the most secretive citizen of his
clandestine society. He is not known to have given a public speech in his 10
years as supreme leader, nor does the North Korean media give hints as to his
whereabouts. Ironically, in a society more under state control than any in the
world, Kim fears assassination.
Korea owes its modern-day society to its roots as the world’s warmest Cold War
battlefield. It is where the communist North, supplied by the Soviet Union and
joined in combat by China’s Red Army, fought the South and its United Nations
allies to a bitter stalemate.
The originally internecine war of polar ideologies is still being waged in the
bifurcated Korea. But this time, the south is the clear winner.
But can victory be claimed if the majority of other side is unaware it has
lost? North Korea’s leadership has even perverted the communist ideal,
maintaining an army to keep themselves comfortably ensconced in power at the
cost of their citizens’ well being.
Judging from the mystery still surrounding last week’s railway tragedy, it is
unlikely that Kim and North Korea will abandon their policy of isolationism
anytime in the near future.
With the fall of communist Russia and the economic stimulation in China, it is
likely that North Korea will one day be the final communist redoubt. And that
would suit Kim and his cronies just fine. |
