Posted on 03/24/2010 8:46:47 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
The Men Who Die for Kim Jong-il's Criminal Stupidity
Kang Chol-hwan
North Korea's former deputy prime minister and National Planning Committee chairman, Kim Tal-hyon, who visited Seoul in 1992 leading an economic team, was a member of nation founder Kim Il-sung's family and an economics expert who enjoyed Kim's confidence. Returning home from Seoul, he realized that reform and market opening were the only way for the North to survive. He endeavored to revive the North Korean economy but committed suicide in 2000.
He fell out of favor with leader Kim Jong-il while attempting to turn around the Hungnam fertilizer plant which he saw as the key to resolving the North's food problem. The plant, built by the Japanese colonialists, was a sort of lifeline for the North's agriculture, producing over 1.6 million tons of fertilizer a year. But production plummeted due to obsolete equipment. Convinced that improved fertilizer production would help, Kim Tal-hyon staked his fate on building it up.
He reportedly urged Kim Jong-il to invest US$100 million in the latest equipment. A short while later, the Organization and Guidance Department of the Workers' Party held a rally of engineers and laborers at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang. Kim went along and was dumbfounded to find himself denounced by participants. They reportedly shouted, "Kim Tal-hyon is a turncoat" and "betrayed the revolutionary classes." Relegated to nominally managing the February 8 Vinalon Complex in 1993, he committed suicide in August 2000 upon hearing a word that the State Security Agency were coming to arrest him. Workers at the Hungnam fertilizer plant reportedly wept when they heard the news.
Had the Hungnam fertilizer plant been renovated as planned, the North might have been able to reduce the scope of the mass starvation of tens of thousands of people in the 1990s. Kim Jong-il, while pouring $870 million into the construction of the bombastic Kumsusan Memorial Palace for Kim Il-sung, left the fertilizer plant to turn into a pile of scrap metal.
In 1997, another party leader was publicly executed in Pyongyang. So Kwan-hi, the then party secretary for agricultural affairs, had also been close to Kim Il-sung. Charged with minor graft, he was made a scapegoat by Kim Jong-il for the mass starvation. He was denounced as a spy for the U.S. imperialist and shot in front of tens of thousands of people. The State Security Agency claimed the starvation was all So Kwan-hi's fault, and North Koreans believed that, unable to credit that their "dear leader" himself could be to blame.
When the Lee Myung-bak government took office in 2008, Pyongyang started setting up another scapegoat. Choi Sung-chol, the former deputy director of the party's United Front Department, was thrown in a concentration camp because Kim Jong-il was angry about the unexpected election result in the South, where he had thought the Left would win.
Now reports say that Pak Nam-gi, the former director of the Planning and Finance Department, was executed by firing squad for the botched currency reform of late last year. Nobody thinks that Pak Nam-gi, who was in his late 70s, played the leading role in such an enormous task. The disastrous currency reform and its fallout are shaking the regime to its core, and North Koreans have to fear execution without having committed any serious crimes. The people know that they are dying in place of someone else.
By Kang Chol-hwan from the Chosun Ilbo's News Desk
This should be unsettling to those in Kim's inner circle. They are all one misstep away from facing firing squad. After all, things are pretty bad now, and there is no easy option for turning things around. The only available ones are long shots and they are all likely to be highly risky. So if they try hard to change things around, they ended up becoming fall guys and meet the fate of Pak.
So everybody in the inner circle would play safe and pass the buck. Nobody will do anything bold or decisive. This would lead to slow but irreversible systemic meltdown. Then the collapse will follow.
And I thought my office politics were bad.
You know, I’ve often wondered if normal economics dealing with very basic stuff like “the law of supply and demand” is even taught in a place like North Korea. I mean, their economy runs absolutely contrary to anything close to efficiency, productive effectiveness, etc, etc.
Do they even teach normal things that we all take for granted in North Korea? I mean sure, we have lots of economists in the west that attempt to reject these basic theories, but they are still available to be learned.
You gotta wonder if North Korean economists and planners even know how a real economy would work.
Ordinary N. Koreans had to learn it from scratch out of pure necessity to escape the death by starvation, after millions were starved death in mid 90's while waiting for food ration from state which never came. Those survived paid a heavy price to wake up to the basics of market and business, however rudimentary it looks to us. Now the state tries to take it away again.
Leftists in this country would be wise to consider this fact. When the “revolution” is complete, they might just find themselves on the wrong side of the fence. After the Nov elections, do the dems who are ousted really believe that the White House will still return their phone calls?
North Koreans have to fear execution without having committed any serious crimes. The people know that they are dying in place of someone else. <<<
How sad that people still live like that, maybe some how the N.K. leader will reap what he has sown.
But then communist leaders never get locked in the padded cells, only the good guys die young.
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