Kim Jong Il dies
Now comes the news that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il (age variously reported as 69 or 70) has died. It’s been rumored for several years that he’d been gravely ill with a stroke and then pancreatic cancer, but his official cause of death was announced as “exhaustion brought on by a sudden illness while on a domestic train trip.”
Who knows? One thing we do know—and have known for years—is that it most likely will be a case of “the Kim Jong is dead, long live the Kim Jong” for the North Korean government, which is expected to feature the succession of Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un, just as the former succeeded his own father in 1994. The people have been so sequestered from the world that it’s hard to know what they think at this point.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s Kim Jong Un’s Wiki entry. Some interesting facts:
Kim is thought to have been born in 1983 or early 1984. He attended the English-language International School of Berne, Switzerland until 1998 under a pseudonym…An older student chaperoned him all the time. In Liebefeld, he told his friend Joao Micaelo that he was the son of the heir to the North Korea leader, though Micaelo said he didn’t believe him at the time. He was described as a shy child who was uncommunicative with unfamiliar people and was only distinguished for his competitive nature, particularly in sports, and a fascination with the NBA and Michael Jordan. Allegedly, one friend claimed that he had met and even had pictures taken with Kobe Bryant and Toni Kukoc, but was unsure where…
His eldest half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, had been the favorite to succeed, but reportedly fell out of favour after 2001, when he was caught attempting to enter Japan on a fake passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland…Kim Jong-il’s former personal chef, Kenji Fujimoto, revealed details regarding Kim Jong-un, with whom he shared a good relationship, stating that he is favored to be his father’s successor. Fujimoto also claimed that Jong-un is favored by his father over his elder brother, Kim Jong-chul, reasoning that Jong-chul is too feminine in character, while Jong-un is “exactly like his father.”]
The fact that the succession to Kim Jong Un was not firmed up before Kim Jong Il’s death could lead to some real problems on the Korean peninsula. And starved peasants who think this interregnum might be a good time to flee might create problems with neighboring South Korea or China. This bears watching. I’m sure our military is watching closely. I wonder if the White House is?
I wonder if the White House is?
Depends on how many bars are available on Hawaii’s golf courses, I guess.
Kim Jong-un’s biggest threat, presumably, lies in NORK generals who’ve had enough of the clan, and don’t fancy taking orders from a 20-something.
Kim Jong Il dies.
Too bad this didn’t happen on New Year’s Eve….. what a wonderful excuse to drink excessive amounts of Antech Blanquette de Limoux Grande Reserve.
Want to bet on who stabbed him in the back, family or friends?
Okay, got you linked. Kim’s son, Kim Jong Eun, can be seen at the video clip at the post: ‘North Korea’s Kim Jong Il Has Died’.
his official cause of death was announced as “exhaustion brought on by a sudden illness while on a domestic train trip.”
That could be a serious blow to high speed rail.
“attempting to enter Japan on a fake passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland”
How you gonna keep ’em
Down with Kim Jong
After they’ve seen Paree?
If u study these pol systems fromhistory of what has happened before its not unlikely that kims sickness was caused by failed poisoning by close powers
No man no problem – stalin
Often the toxins are not outright poison but something that causes cancer like thorium which was used. In the case of ex kgb it was polonium, and with lukashenko it was dioxin i think.
Unlike the west where there is a limit to ª term and peaceful xfer of power such games are quite normal dating back to way before tiberius and caligula.
The catch is that sometimes they live long w their conditions and u dont get ª second chance
Bodyguards are ª fav to compromise in third world places w some recent spectacular ones
Let’s keep our eyes out for spectacular mourning signs and rituals like those that attended the passing of his father:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zYsUqAYg6c
And who can forget…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=pDOMyNOS4sc
if people could remember the facts and lay them out in one group they would pale
I highly recommend renting the movie “Team America” made by the South Park guys. It features a puppet version of Kim Jong singing a song called “I’m So Lonely” in an Elmer Fudd inspired voice w/Korean accent. Not PC, but guaranteed to make you laugh.
So now North Korea has to deal with a basket-case economy and a bloated government led by an inexperienced half-wit.
It’s just like America now.
North Korea is, indeed, a Stalinist basket case. Their show-place, basically deserted capitol city of Pyongyang, which has its lights turned on occasionally to impress visitors, a starving, brutalized, massively mal-nourished and uneducated (but extremely propagandized) mostly peasant population, a huge extremely brutal gulag–recent reports have surfaced of female prisoners in the gulag who have given birth eating their children so as not to starve–and a well-fed Marxist ruling class and a huge and well fed Army, nuclear weapons, lots of underground military installations, special forces, thousands of tanks, and thousands of artillery tubes focused on and able to hit South Korea’s capitol Seoul, which is only several miles from the border with North Korea. And, the U.S. has 28,000 mostly Army troops stationed in South Korea, there to act–realistically–as a “trip-wire” or as some have said a “speed bump,” there to justify us coming to the South Koreans aid if our troops were to be attacked in the process of a North Korean attack on South Korea and Seoul.
According to the few reports that have occasionally surfaced in the MSM, the North Korean government and their diplomats have been caught in both counterfeiting and drug dealing to bring in hard currency, and the North Korean government, whose Marxist/Stalinist ideology and incompetence have basically destroyed the North Korean agricultural sector, is very adept at playing the guilt card, and annually and routinely extorting food aid from western governments, with the line that, unless such food aid is forthcoming, North Koreans will starve.
This is likely the most secretive, repressive, most brutal, murderous, and bloody regime on the planet, but no one dares/wants to take it down, for fear of what North Korea’s massive, nuclear armed military might due in a meltdown and, moreover, the prospect of having to deal with millions of starving, ill-educated and unskilled North Korean peasants swarming across the borders and into South Korea and Chine if North Korea implodes.
Truly, a horrific mess.
The Daily Caller just ran a story about North Korea farming out their prisoners to be laborers in Russia. I suppose the son won’t be any different from the father or the grandfather.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/16/vice-magazine-sheds-light-on-n-korean-labor-camps-inside-russia-in-new-video/
So now North Korea has to deal with a basket-case economy and a bloated government led by an inexperienced half-wit.
It’s just like America now.
Except their half-wit has enough good breeding to stay and attempt to do his job, rather than making his way to Hawaii at the people’s expense.
Watching the youtube videos I’m struck by the similar views you can see by watching the videos of an early Beatles concert.
Are they mourning or celebrating?
Thankful not to live in a society that imposes such “duties”… yet.
Looking at Kim Jong Il with his expensive, luxurious tastes, with his generals, bodyguards, and retainers, all sitting atop a population barely existing at a subsistence level who are too weak physically, mentally, and spiritually to resist, I can’t help thinking that North Korea is actually the historical norm of human society.
Medieval kings were basically the most ruthless and successful warlords in the area. There was no meaningful difference between them and modern drug cartel kingpins.
When our modern society loses the rule of law–and we are; when we lose our knowledge and respect for the values and traditions of Western Civilization–and we are, our society will crash down to the historical norm, and it will happen with shocking suddenness.
War is now more likely
http://news.yahoo.com/n-korea-test-fires-short-range-missile-report-130006284.html
Did not take long to rattle sabre
Rickl
I pointed out that the lie of socialism is utopia defined as a return to dynastic feudalism
That a NORK-initiated Gotterdammerung did not happen with K-J Il’s fading over the past several years is fortunate. I expect the Korean peninsula’s tensions will now be muted for a while.
But if in South Korea, I would be terrified at any thought of reunification. The NORKS are a nation of children brutalized for sixty years by successive paranoid schizophrenic parents, and no good can come from most of them, ever. They are bent beyond straightening.
If they just keep dying, maybe the regime might run out of dictators.