Kim Jong-Un and North Korean generals, in a photograph from a month before his father’s death.The epic failure of North Korea is known by most - most of us have seen the photos of the Korean peninsula at night where the south is alit in millions of lights and the north is just this darkened mass....and we've witnessed winter after winter when the North Korean people barely make it through on the food they have. And so, many of us have wondered how these people have refrained from a total uprising and revolution....and many of us simply couldn't fathom the sight of hundreds of North Koreans sobbing at the death of their leader, Kim Jung Il.
Well, this story at Family Security Matters ventures down the dark path of just how this huge population of people simply continue to take the abuse of a totalitarian Communist government. And when you read this story, just consider how dramatic it has been in the past when countries actually have risen up against the same set up - one has to shake his head and marvel how some individuals in Poland and Czechoslavakia and Hungary were able to break free from the iron fist of Communism.
And finally, after reading this...it does make one even more mystified why some in America view this as the path that America should go down.
Why North Koreans Fail to Bite The Hand Not Feeding Them
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address, querying whether a nation established "four score and seven years" ago and built upon the principles of liberty and equality, then fighting a "great civil war," could "long endure."
The United States did endure and this year celebrates the 236th anniversary of its birth.
In 2012, we see a nation -- North Korea -- established "three score and three years" ago and so committed to the bondage and inequality of its people, we are left to wonder how it can so "long endure."
With the death of Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17 and the accession to the "throne" of a third generation of the Kim dynasty -- the deceased leader's 28-year-old son Kim Jong Un -- the outside world remains baffled how an enslaved people, subjected to 63 years of brutal, autocratic rule, exhibits no signs of rising up against their master.
Factor into the equation of life in the North the famines regularly devastating the country, leaving thousands dead. Tragically, these famines could be eradicated by a leadership more concerned about the welfare of its people than its own survivability.
How is it that a starving population, so abused for so long, still refuses to bite the hand that fails to feed it?
Under the Kim dynasty, the country has been turned into a laboratory experiment in mind control. By keeping their people in total isolation from the rest of the world, controlling the flow of information, deifying its leadership and imposing fear where these other factors fail to achieve the desired result, the Kim leadership has been able to maintain control.
What is the main contributing factor to this control? Is it the product of a population's mind so denied information access and otherwise isolated from the world community that people really believe, as they have been programmed to believe, no matter how bad things are in their country, things are far worse outside of it? Is it simply fear? Or is it a combination?
The North Koreans' situation brings to mind an earlier generation's plight in choosing between inaction driven by fear or taking action in spite of it.
It was World War II. Thousands of British Royal Air Force prisoners of war were housed at the Germans' notorious Stalag Luft III camp -- immortalized by the 1963 movie "The Great Escape" -- where escape was deemed impossible. Up to the challenge, prisoners dug a hundred foot escape tunnel. On the evening of March 24, 1944, one of the biggest prisoner escapes of the war was attempted.
For some, freedom was short-lived; for most, fatal. Only three escapees reached safety. Seventy-three others were recaptured -- of which 23 were returned to the camp. The remaining 50 were lined up alongside a road and shot in the back of the head, executed as an example to others. The Germans' message was clear -- escape carried a death sentence.
Fear obviously is an effective weapon in molding group conduct. But for these prisoners, it proved otherwise. Despite the fear of death looming overhead, they began construction on another tunnel -- but for a different purpose. Not an escape tunnel, it sought to take the fight to a brutal enemy by accessing an armory inside the camp to access weapons and fight their way out.
The POWs had weighed their fear of death against their loss of freedom -- with the scales tilting in favor of the latter. Although there was risk in pursuing it, life without freedom was worse than the risk of death fighting for it.
While the Stalag Luft III story is one of courageous men able to overcome their fear of death to fight for their freedom, it involves a critical element missing from the North Korea situation -- one missing precisely because Pyongyang's leadership has effectively denied it to them.
The POWs at Stalag Luft III had a taste of something no North Korean ever has. Born and bred in a free society, the POWs were fully aware of its benefits. They had enjoyed those freedoms to the extent they were willing to fight those withholding them.
The average North Korean has no idea what treasures a free society provides. They are unable to comprehend the joys of freedom of choice to do what one wishes to do, free of governmental interference. Having never experienced freedom, they lack man's natural instinct to lay down their life to fight for it.
An empty stomach can do much to cause one not so inclined to fight for a better life to overcome the fear of death to do so. Whether the North Korean people are capable of reaching that point remains to be seen. But, even so, their leadership denies them the basic tools of communication to the extent necessary to effectively organize anti-government protests. Accordingly, such an effort might well prove fatal before a popular revolution can be mounted.
Unfortunately for the people, the Kim dynasty has fully mastered the principles of the art of slavery. And, accordingly, it is highly doubtful the Arab Spring will ever see daylight in North Korea.
The tunnel by which the British sought to launch an attack against their German guards was never completed as the war ended before work on the tunnel could -- but they never forgot the 50 fellow prisoners who sacrificed their lives.
Freedom will prove a much greater challenge for, and extract a much larger toll from, North Koreans who, sadly, may not even yet know what it is they wish to fight for.
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