Wait, that's not mourning, that's just Kim Jong Il's legacy. Meanwhile, the Cuban government declared three days of mourning, presumably because he made them look good. (On the same principle, Nicaragua and Venezuela expressed sincere condolences.) I suppose he gets points, too, for reducing North Korea's carbon footprint, reducing light pollution for stargazers, and all but eliminating income inequality in his country in the only way we know from experience to be possible.I keep looking at that satellite photograph. What would that area of the world have looked like if the U.S. hadn't gotten into the Korean War? On the other hand, why weren't China and North Viet Nam dumb enough to achieve the same fate? They certainly tried hard enough.
The Washington Post (h/t Maggie's Farm) explains it in a succinct chart:
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North Korea is protected by two walls, and the sea. The first wall is the militarized zone with ROK, which keeps the people of the DPRK from interacting with other Koreans. The other wall, with China, is as much an ethnic as a literal wall. The Korean people have a very strong sense of their ethnicity, which the regime's propaganda has only reinforced. China had too big a land border for that kind of isolation, in spite of all Mao's efforts.
Why didn't Vietnam go the same way? I'd guess because the sea is warmer. You can't cut off a country where the water is warm, and every other boy knows how to build a boat. There's going to be enough smuggling and "fishing" to prevent the successful isolation necessary for DPRK-style propaganda.
In other news, NorK-watchers seem to think that Kimmy the Youngest inherited all of Daddy Dearest's instability and quirkitude, but without his redeeming style and grace...
The real question is, what happens when the house of cards does collapse? It may go on for months or decades more, but it will eventually collapse. What then? The ROK is already worried about the idea of re-unification, after seeing the difficulties of reuniting the relatively well off E with W Germany.
They were talking on Ace the other day how celebrities deaths seem to come in threes, but this one rather brought down the tone set by Mr. Havel and Mr. Hitchens. Then someone noted that St. Peter probably gave the Misters H their choice of the third.
Messrs H may have thought, "What comes after 'H'? Hmmmm -- 'I'? 'J'? 'K'? Ohhhh -- 'KJI'..."
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