Kim Jong Il not threatened from below.
Based on interviews with North Korean refugees in China, Nicholas Kristof reports that there is little thought of revolution from within or opposition to the regime of Kim Jong Il. (*) North Koreans are cut off from the rest of the world. They have no sense of how other countries are different. They hear only the state propaganda of how North Korea is a rich country.
Bush’s advisors base US North Korea policy on regime destabilization. Unless North Korea literally starves to death, Kim Jong Il’s regime appears quite stable.
Recently, an American non-governmental group received an official tour of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development plant. (†)
There is no reason to believe North Korea is going the route of Libya—toward giving up its nuclear weapons program. There is every reason to believe that North Korea offered the tour to make it fully apparent to the US that North Korea has nuclear weapons. This indicates their bravado. Their bravado indicates that Bush’s North Korea policy is failing.
January 12th, 2004 at 08:45
kim jong il is doing his best to frighten the u.s. with his game of brinksmanship. i do not think that the u.s. is failing. n korean exhibitions of ‘bravado’ prove that time is on the american side (after all, kim jong il hardly manages to feed his own troops at this stage, and things are not gonna get better any time soon). the bush administration has shown a great deal of patience and commitment to its demands. i would be much more worried if, say, jimmy carter were dispatched to handle the negotiations.