Comrades of The People's Cube,

This began under different blog heading, but as Comrade Otis leftly pointed out, took Right turn somewhere along the way and leftly belongs under different blog heading... The Politburo has spoken, and we, the masses, must heed their wisdom... Below, please find series of articles (five in total by end of series), on Glorious North Korea, written by Peter Goodspeed, covert Kapitalist propagandist for Fascist Newspaper. Let this be a lesson to us - there may always be spies among us - but we can always subvert their work, repatriating it for the kollective... Property is theft! Copyright is Theft! All belongs to The People's Cube to use as they see fit!

Sister Massively Opiated.

Comrade Otis wrote:Comrades, as Party members you must be aware that Kim Jong-il is the very best Leader in the history of the world. He is so perfect that he even played a perfect game of golf the very first time he played golf and is recognized and honored as the best golfer in the world! He is also the best author of fiction and non-fiction in the world and is the most important philosopher in the history of the world and also enjoys many other best things in the world. There is a reason why the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's official motto is:

Democratic People's Republic of Korea: Prosperous and Great Country!

and the official Coat of Arms is of industrialized greatness:

Their happy nation's greatness is a reflection of the wise marvelousness of kind, humble Kim Jong-il.

Comrades, your comments border on hooliganism. Hooliganism is always wrong and is very disruptive of civilized discourse. As such there are laws here against Hooliganism. Comrades, character counts, character counts, character counts!

Comrade Otis
Bluenose Communist Busybody for your own Darned Good.

Comrade Otis,

My thanks... You have lifted me from my despair! I only hope that our Glorious Leader will understand how my dismay at earlier comments about Kim Jong-Il's appearance sent me into an emotional tail-spin, causing me to be fractious and perhaps divisive in my comments in You may be guilty of thoughtcrime if... section.

I am going to make fresh pot of kava and think on my behaviour. Must find a way to survive the coming winter. I cannot allow little things like unhappy comments by other members of kollective to throw me off kilter so. I must learn the self-control necessary to keep from sinking into the mire of depression and self-pity. I will focus on the kollective and it's needs to keep me uplifted and forward-marching, and this task will see me through the coming winter.

I cannot begin to thank you, Comrade Otis, and our Glorious Leader, Red Square, for giving this humble Kanadjian peasant reason to hope and look to future... to end of winter... to May Day (when snow miraculously melts all across Kanada in one instant, to be replace for two days by spring, followed closely by season of road repairs)... I feel reborn (and not in the sense of those opiated crucifix worshippers)... I am including an article from our facista/kapitalista newspaper which is doing a series on North Korea... this piece is on the indoktrination of little comrades... second in series. I would send link, but kapitalist swine newspaper requires payment for subscription, and so you would not be able to access it. Kim Jong-Il is indeed a supreme leader - no longer even human, I believe.

Your humble comrade,
Sister Massively Opiated

Adoration 101

Peter Goodspeed
National Post

Monday, November 07, 2005

National Post reporter Peter Goodspeed ventures into secretive, autocratic North Korea as it takes its first steps to end decades of isolationism. In the second of a five-part series, he describes an education system where the deification of a dictator appears to be just as important as reading, writing and arithmetic.
- - -

PYONGYANG - The indoctrination starts early.


At the end of each meal, children stand and chant in unison, "Great Leader, thank you. We ate well."

The 460 children at the Kim Jong Suk kindergarten already regard North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il as both their father and their god.

Deposited by their parents in the state-run nursery at 2 1/2 years of age, the youngsters spend nearly every waking hour of the next two years being immersed in the cult of adoration that surrounds the short, pudgy 63-year-old dictator.

They see their parents only on weekends. During the week, they live at the nursery and undergo a strict system of indoctrination designed to instill a sense of collectivism and an overwhelming awe for their country's leadership.

Instead of nursery rhymes, the pre-schoolers sing and dance together, making identical facial expressions and movements to such tunes as Long Life and Good Health to the Leader and We Sing of His Benevolent Love.

One song performed for visitors includes the verse:

"Who gave us the happiness of today?

It was given us by the party and the Leader

Along the way pointed out by the Great Leader Marshall Kim Il-Sung,

We will march not sparing our lives!"

Before they can even read, children in the school study biographies of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il.

There are special rooms for studying each leader, equipped with large floor models of their birthplaces and pictures depicting their childhoods.

Before a class starts, the children bow to the Great Leaders' portraits and chant "Thank You Marshall Father."

During their lessons, teachers call on students to recite facts about the Great Leaders' lives, and youngsters step forward and solemnly repeat episodes that are now part of North Korean mythology.

In sing-song voices, they tell how Kim Jong Il was born in a log cabin on the slopes of Mount Paektu, North Korea's most sacred spot, on its northern border with China, and the place where the Korean people's divine ancestor, the son of a sky god and a bear, was born. The implication is that Kim Jong Il is the reincarnation of ancient Korea's divine "bear man."

"At the time of his birth there were flashes of lightning and thunder, the iceberg in the pond on Mount Paektu emitted a mysterious sound as it broke, and bright double rainbows rose up," the children say, repeating the official propaganda line.

Even when they eat, the youngsters are told they depend on the Great Leader for their "happy childhood." At the end of each meal, they stand and chant in unison, "Great Leader, thank you. We ate well."

It's not all hard work, though. The pre-schoolers get some regular yard time for practising mass gymnastics and, according to a June, 2005, news report by North Korea's Central TV, occasionally play a special game called "Beat the American Bastard" in which they take turns attacking cardboard cut-outs of a U.S. soldier.

By the time they are 4 1/2, the children are prepared for primary school, where the indoctrination continues but is squeezed into other seemingly apolitical subjects.

A typical math quiz might include the question: "Three soldiers from the Korean People's Army killed 30 American soldiers. How many American soldiers were killed by each of them, if they all killed an equal number of enemy soldiers?"

Forty per cent of the entire content of North Korea's primary-school textbooks is said to be devoted to the two Kims. The figure for senior high school is 43%.

At a higher level, Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang operates six full departments specializing in Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il thought.

By the time they are adults, most North Koreans simply accept propaganda claims that describe Kim Jong Il as the "peerless leader" and "the great successor of the revolutionary cause."

Official biographies, which dominate most bookstores in North Korea, insist Kim Jong Il is a genius who wrote six operas in two years and designed the huge Juche tower that dominates Pyongyang's skyline.

They also describe him as "a theoretician and great master in every field," "a genius of literature, art and military affairs" and "a master of leadership and a man who has performed immortal exploits for mankind."

In the two years before his father died, North Korean authorities published more than 300 poems and 400 songs praising Kim Jong Il.

As if that wasn't enough, North Korean television reinforces the leader's demands for adoration by featuring only one character on its nightly news casts and prime-time documentaries -- the "Great General," "Dear Leader" and "Peerless Patriot" -- Kim Jong Il.

Night after night, television film footage shows him touring factories, visiting farmers in their fields or inspecting troops of the Korean People's Army, while offering a continual stream of "on-the-spot guidance" about how they should act or perform their jobs.

"We're so lucky," the television announcer says, "to be loved by him."

Part two of a five-part series.; Tomorrow: a Taste ofLuxury: National Post reporter Peter Goodspeed is treated to a smallfeast and three hours of patriotic karaoke -- all in the name ofinternational understanding.

© National Post 2005

Comrade Otis,

As requested - the first article in the five part series Peter Goodspeed is doing on North Korea... Sister Massively Opiated will post as they are published, repatriating them for the kollective from the kapitalist swine facist newspaper - am also editing previous post to include repatriated fotos from article - they are glorious images, are they not?!?... Information should be free and available to all!!! F**k copyrights - all work belongs to the kollective!

For The Cube!
Sister Massively Opiated

Megalomania meets Wizard of Oz

Peter Goodspeed
CanWest News Service

Saturday, November 05, 2005


CREDIT: Kagan McLeod, National Post


National Post reporter Peter Goodspeed ventures into secretive, autocratic North Korea as it takes its first steps to end decades of isolationism. In the first of a five-part series, he goes on a strange, compulsory trip to the palace that houses the embalmed body of former leader, now revered as god, Kim Il Sung.

- - -

PYONGYANG - The only splashes of colour in this grim, grey capital come from the propaganda posters that praise North Korea's leaders and promote the country as "paradise on Earth."

There are no street lights, neon signs or store displays, just floodlit monuments and murals that rally people with slogans and utopian visions of a Stalinist state with Korean characteristics.

Loudspeakers on lampposts blare out propaganda messages to gaunt-faced workers waiting in long lineups for the bus. Broad highways, built to carry up to 10 lanes of traffic, are empty, except for the occasional chauffeur-driven government Mercedes and the odd rusting truck.

A famine that killed two million people in the late 1990s has eased, but North Korea is still plagued by chronic malnutrition and carries the scent of a country living close to the edge.

The countryside is bathed in a golden autumnal glow as dump trucks loaded with hundreds of city residents travel daily to nearby farms to harvest rice and grain by hand. Sheaves lie stacked in fields worked with wooden ox carts instead of tractors.

Everywhere, the rhythms of daily life remain plodding, determined, stoic and sullen.

A "Hermit Kingdom," international pariah and charter member of the "Axis of Evil," North Korea remains the world's most secretive and potentially dangerous country.

Yet it is trying to step away from decades of self-imposed isolation.

Ravaged by famine, facing economic collapse and preparing for a crucial round of international negotiations over its nuclear weapons program in November, North Korea has suddenly put out a welcome mat for foreigners.

Busloads of tourists have begun to rumble through this once forbidden city. Businessmen are arriving looking for deals, and journalists and diplomats, who were once discouraged from visiting, are now being allowed in.

What they find is a crumbling state officially ruled over by an 11-year-old corpse.

North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, the "Great Leader" who died in 1994 after ruling the country with a Stalinist grip for 49 years, was officially declared its "Supreme Leader Eternal" when the constitution was revised in 1998.

Visiting foreigners usually have a strictly controlled itinerary and the first thing they must do is pay tribute to Kim Il Sung.

Ordinary tourists are taken to a giant bronze statue of the dead dictator on Mansu Hill.

The largest one-piece statue in the world, it stands 27 metres high and presents a determined Kim Il Sung sweeping an arm out toward the futuristic city he built as a propaganda showcase, with wide, tree-lined avenues, huge public squares, massive monuments and geometric concrete buildings.

Other select groups of foreigners bypass Mansu Hill and are brought to a massive grey granite palace on the edge of Pyongyang to view Kim Il Sung's embalmed corpse.

It's an experience that mixes the theatrics of The Wizard of Oz with the megalomania of ancient Egypt's pharaohs.

Tourists join thousands of silent and solemn North Koreans dressed in dark suits or fluorescent traditional dresses known as hanboks. They've made the pilgrimage to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace with their work units.

The visitors are frisked by security guards, forced to surrender anything made of metal and have their shoes scrubbed by automatic brushes. Then they spend half an hour riding a series of moving sidewalks in enclosed corridors that run parallel to the palace moat before they enter the building's marble halls.

CREDIT: KCNA via Korean News Service, AFP, Getty Images
North Korean People's Army soldiers march at the Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang to mark the 60th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea on Oct. 10.


Inside, they are ushered into a cavernous reception hall dominated by a gigantic white marble statue of Kim Il Sung. It stands alone, smiling and bathed in a dazzling, dawn-like light at the end of the 100-metre-long room. Mournful music swells in the silence.

Pilgrims are expected to pause and bow to the statue before moving into another hall where elevators take them to a second-floor decontamination chamber where they pass through a series of air-locked blow driers.

Finally, suitably purified, they are admitted to a darkened ballroom that has been turned into a mausoleum.

In the centre of the room, Kim Il Sung's embalmed body lies in a crystal casket. He is dressed in a dark blue suit and wrapped in North Korea's red and blue flag from his chest down.

A military honour guard directs mourners in groups of four to six around the tomb. The North Koreans, some of them weeping, bow to the corpse as they pause on each side of the coffin.

Exiting the burial chamber, visitors must pass through other reception rooms that have been turned into museum exhibits depicting Kim Il Sung's greatness.

There is a collection of the international honours bestowed upon the "Great Leader," a room with the train car he used as an office when travelling and his favourite bullet-proof V-12 Mercedes limousine.

In the main lobby of the palace, where Kim Il Sung lay in state after his death, guides remind visitors North Korea's dead leader was "a gifted thinker and theoretician, prominent politician and iron-willed brilliant commander."

"He was a peerless patriot, father of the nation and great sage of revolution who devoted his whole life to the freedom and happiness of the people," says an audio guide handed to visiting foreign dignitaries.

"He is our teacher, our god," one of my two government minders tells me. "He was always thinking of the people's good."

In the same breath, the guides praise Kim Jong Il, North Korea's current leader, for the loyalty and filial devotion he has shown his father by turning the palace into the holiest of North Korea's many political shrines to the world's first Communist dynasty.

On the parade ground in front of the palace, massive red signs in Korean script spell out the slogan: "The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung Will Always Be With Us."

It certainly seems that way.

The two Kims are easily the most idolized men in the world. Their portraits, grim and unsmiling, dominate virtually every public room in North Korea. Hillsides throughout the country are scarred with cement slogans praising the Great Leaders and roadside monuments constantly wish "Long Life and Good Health to the Great Leader."

Huge billboards show Kim Jong Il being cheered by the masses or leading the nation with a wave of his hand, while his father's name is attached to virtually every building and institution in the country.

Universities and hospitals bear Kim Il Sung's name, parks are dedicated to his glorious memory. An Arch of Triumph, larger than Napoleon's in Paris, was erected in his honour in 1982.

Pyongyang's skyline is dominated by a granite torch-like tower to Kim Il Sung's homegrown juche philosophy of self-reliance. It's three times taller than the obelisk commemorating the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Rome.

Once a week, North Korea's workers and peasants attend classes to study the thoughts of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, while all day long, newspapers, radio and television bombard the public with news about the current Great Leader.

North Korea's news media have yet to report in any detail on the Kashmir earthquake, but they have been full of praise for Kim Jong Il and his father as the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.

The government's monopoly on information is supplemented by a grim determination to limit contact with foreigners.

Travellers must surrender their cellphones at the border and inform customs officials of all printed matter and books they intend to bring into the country.

The Internet doesn't exist here and satellite television is virtually unheard of.

Foreign visitors are kept away from contact with ordinary Koreans. Their movements are monitored at all times and two minders accompany them wherever they go. Even the hotel maids work in pairs, just to keep an eye on each other.

One of my minders constantly carried a small digital tape recorder, which she had hidden in a lace handkerchief.

There are only about 300 foreigners living full-time in North Korea, a country of 23 million. They're diplomats and aid workers who have been running the World Food Program's decade-long emergency feeding programs for 6.5 million North Koreans.

According to UNICEF, children may no longer be dying of hunger here, but they are still dying from diseases that are side-effects of malnutrition, a chronic condition that plagues over 40% of the population.

But even as Pyongyang began inviting tourists in to celebrate North Korea's 60th anniversary, government officials have moved to curb foreign influence in their country.

Most foreign aid workers have been told they will have to leave by January. Their projects will be allowed to continue only if they switch their emphasis to development rather than humanitarian aid.

Some aid workers insist the move is an attempt by a repressive regime to reassert itself at home, while trying to shrug off international demands for monitoring aid projects.

Others say it may be a sign of a growing insecurity among North Korea's leaders.

"They are worried for security reasons," says one aid worker. "Some officials believe the [non-governmental organizations] have a political agenda."

The regime is so secretive and unpredictable both assessments could be correct. Even when it reaches out to the world, North Korea remains shrouded in mystery.

© National Post 2005

Comrade Otis,

As promised... Third in series of articles on North Korea, repatriated from Kapitalist newspaper.

Best
S.M.O.

While we dine ...

Peter Goodspeed
CanWest News Service

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

CREDIT: Gerald Bourke, Getty Images
A North Korean worker unloads wheat donated by Russia at a warehouse in Chollima county in South Pyongyang province.

National Post reporter Peter Goodspeed ventures into secretive, autocratic North Korea as it takes its first steps to end decades of isolation. In the third of a five-part series, he describes the sumptuous meals enjoyed by the elite, while starvation and malnutrition threaten the rest of the population.

- - -

PYONGYANG - The Daesong Restaurant is one of North Korea's little secrets.

Tucked discreetly on a hilltop about 10 kilometres from the centre of the capital, it offers private dining and karaoke parties for the country's elite.

Last week, along with my Korean translator, driver and official host from the Foreign Ministry, I was treated to a small feast and three hours of patriotic karaoke -- all in the name of international understanding.

Sitting on low couches in a wood-panelled private room on the second floor, we waded through no fewer than 12 dishes -- barbecued beef, chicken, fried squid, bean curd and noodles among others -- while swilling large quantities of beer and vodka.

Hostesses in pink uniforms delivered the food and lingered to help my hosts operate a large karaoke machine on the opposite side of the room.

Then, with the confidence of professional singers, they joined in performing karaoke renditions of heroic folk songs such as I Want to Be a Satellite of the Sun -- Glorious General Kim Jong Il and Our Dear Leader's Name Is Always With Us.

In song after song after song after song, my hosts expressed their adoration for their country's leader.

As the beer and vodka flowed, the group warbled through such popular hits as General Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Il's Flower and If Our Party Decides, We Do.

A particular favourite seemed to be Our Comrade Kim Jong Il, which contains the lyrics:

"He loves the people passionately.

He devotes his life for the people.

He respects the people as high as the sky.

And the sun in the 'sky' is Comrade Kim Jong Il!"

I'd hesitate to say my hosts were real party animals, but they did enjoy themselves.

I, on the other hand, struggled to reconcile our feast with reports I'd read on North Korea's chronic food shortages.

Three weeks earlier, Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, warned that 125,000 North Korean children are at risk of starving to death because Kim Jong Il has suddenly decided to halt all international humanitarian food aid programs in his country.

Emboldened by a bumper harvest and no-strings-attached rice shipments from China and South Korea, the North Koreans have ordered 11 international relief agencies to wind up their emergency feeding programs by the end of the year.

Foreign aid workers suggest Pyongyang is desperate to reassert its authority by regaining control over the distribution of all essential supplies in the country.

They also think the world's most secretive state wants to stop relief agencies from monitoring food deliveries to ensure they go to people in need instead of feeding party officials and the armed forces.

Mr. Egeland says with 7% of North Korea's 23 million people still starving and 37% chronically malnourished, ending the relief programs this year is "too soon and too abrupt."

In 1995, a series of natural disasters combined with the country's near-economic collapse to create one of the world's worst famines, killing nearly 2.5 million people over three years.

For the past decade, North Korea has been the world's largest recipient of food aid under the World Food Program, as the international community stepped in to feed 6.5 million people, a third of the population.

In spite of US$1.5-billion in emergency aid, reports of families collecting edible grasses, acorns, leaves and wild roots still persist. At the height of the famine, there were several reports of cannibalism.

Chronic malnutrition has also left a permanent mark. Experts say the average seven-year-old North Korean is 17.78 centimetres shorter and nine kilograms lighter than his South Korean counterpart.

Even now, UN officials say, North Korea may be as much as 1.8 million tonnes of food short of what it needs over the next year.

In the meantime, the government-run public distribution system has taken over food deliveries to everyone not receiving international aid. All grain sales in private markets have stopped, and 16 million people are receiving cereal rations averaging just 300 grams a day -- half a survival ration, according to aid workers.

But between courses at the Daesong Restaurant, my hosts didn't really want to discuss North Korea's food shortages. Instead, they grabbed the microphone and sang No Motherland Without You.

"Even if the world changes hundreds of times,

People believe in you, Comrade Kim Jong Il!

We cannot live without you.

Our country cannot exist without you."

Tomorrow: Desperate for cash, North Korea is prepared to risk ideological contamination to allow a limited tourist industry.

© National Post 2005

Comrade Otis,

As promised... Fourth in series of articles on North Korea, repatriated from Kapitalist newspaper.... sorry... no kewl picture today, but think Kanada needs "Sunshine Policy"...

Best
S.M.O.

A tentative welcome

Peter Goodspeed
CanWest News Service

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

National Post reporter Peter Goodspeed ventures into secretive, autocratic North Korea as it takes its first steps to end decades of isolation. In the fourth of a five-part series, he examines the country's growing contacts with the South.

- - -

PYONGYANG - It was like watching two worlds collide. The South Korean tourists, dressed in designer clothes, sporting expensive watches and carrying video cameras, noisily posed for photographs outside the birthplace of North Korea's founder and late president, Kim Il Sung.

Trying to get the perfect picture for the folks back home, they shouted, laughed and jostled in front of the four-room thatched peasant's shack just outside Pyongyang.

Scowling North Korean guards in civilian suits patrolled the perimeter nearby, making sure no one interfered with or approached the South Koreans.

Just down a garden path, a group of about 40 North Koreans stood silent and sullen, herded together like cattle under an ornamental arbour waiting their turn to tour the historic site.

The northerners cautiously eyed their rich southern cousins with fixed stares that gave no hint of what they really thought.

The southerners, visibly bigger, healthier, wealthier, more robust and spontaneous, were indifferent to the North Koreans.

They were here simply to take in the delights of the austere Communist Disneyland built around Kim Il Sung's birthplace, complete with its own midway, swimming pools, picnic spots and landscaped gardens.

The large groups of North Koreans who had "spontaneously" decided to charter a bus to visit yet another shrine to North Korea's "Great Leader" were merely part of the scenery.

It's a scene that is increasingly common as the world's most reclusive Communist state has become something of a Stalinist theme park. Since mid-August, nearly 14,000 South Korean tourists have paid about US$1,000 for a one-night visit to Pyongyang.

They've been drawn by North Korea's staging of a giant gymnastic and artistic performance known as the Arirang Festival of Mass Games,

An intense, 80-minute propaganda event that involves nearly 150,000 performers, who march with lock-step precision or flip coloured cards in a grandstand to create dazzling backdrops, the Arirang Festival is the modern equivalent of a Nuremberg rally.

Arirang is a traditional Korean folk song whose story involves separated lovers. The song of sorrow has come to symbolize the separation of North and South Korea and the peninsula's longing for unification.

In one scene in this year's performance, North Korean soldiers fill the floor of the May Day Stadium with a giant flag of Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il against a backdrop of flash cards that reads "No one can beat us."

At the show's climax, thousands of dancers form a living map of Korea as flash cards in the background suddenly spell the Korean words for "Independence," "Peace" and "Friendship".

This year's performance is themed to praise leader Kim Jong Il, to highlight his "military first" policy and to mark the 60th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan at the end of the Second World War.

The first Arirang show was staged in 2002 to try to steal some of South Korea's thunder from hosting soccer's World Cup.

Then, South Korea barred its citizens from travelling to North Korea, saying it was concerned about the games' political content. This year, Seoul lifted its ban and even waived standard security checks on many of those rushing to attend the festival.

About 850 South Koreans a day have flown directly to Pyongyang from Seoul each day since August.

Before they leave, travellers are briefed on how to behave. They're told not to bring any newspapers or books, not to talk about politics, not to attempt to contact family members or to talk to North Koreans about missing family members, not to give money or gifts, and not to say anything that could be construed as rude.

North Korea has also tried to play the affable host.

Early on in the festival Kim Jong Il ordered Arirang organizers to cut part of the performance in which three North Korean commandos use martial arts skills to destroy a squad of 70 unspecified "enemies" who just happen to be wearing old South Korean army uniforms.

Until two years ago, the only part of North Korea that was accessible to South Korean tourists was a small and isolated enclave around Mount Kumgang on the southeast coast, where an affiliate of the giant Hyundai corporation has been running guided tours to a resort it built as a joint venture with the North Koreans.

The tourist site itself is fenced off from the rest of North Korea. Since 1998 more than one million South Koreans have visited Mount Kumgang by boat.

More recently, under South Korea's "Sunshine Policy" of actively encouraging contacts with North Korea, there have been a growing number of joint ventures and trade across the heavily militarized border.

Hyundai has recently begun running day tours to the North Korean city of Kaesong for up to 500 people a day. The tourists leave Seoul by bus at 6 a.m. and drive two hours to the border, where they cross through the Demilitarized Zone on a new road.

In Kaesong, they visit a museum and a Confucian school and travel to a waterfall just north of the city. They usually return to downtown Seoul by 7 p.m.

The South Koreans hope simple economic interaction will restore a semblance of political trust and rebuild North Korea's shattered economy.

The North Koreans are desperate for cash. Facing possible international sanctions over their nuclear weapons policies, they're willing to risk the danger of ideological contamination to make new, and potentially useful, contacts with South Korea.

Tomorrow: Armed and Dangerous: The Korean People's Army is the most menacing in the world.

© National Post 2005

Comrades...
Please find here final article in five-part series on North Korea. My thanks to Comrade Otis for suggesting that the Kollective might enjoy them. I hope it has been an enlightening look into one of the world's last true communist paradises, and has given us all a new understanding of "The Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong-Il". As Comrade Otis so aptly put it, "Their nation's greatness is a reflection of the wise marvelousness of kind, humble Kim Jong-il." To this I would add that so is their nation's shining happiness, or so I believe. This last article, on North Korea's military capability is particularly interesting, and I am of the opinion that The Armies of The People's Cube would do well to heed its message.

Humbly... from bunker in Kanada (I would write, "my" bunker in Kanada, but all belongs to the Kollective),
Sister Massively Opiated

Armed and ready

Peter Goodspeed
CanWest News Service

Thursday, November 10, 2005

National Post reporter Peter Goodspeed ventures into secretive, autocratic North Korea as it takes its first steps to end decades of isolation. In the last of a five-part series, he examines the menace posed by North Korea's military, the fifth-largest in the world.

- - -

PYONGANG - The threat of war hangs over North Korea's capital like the lingering smoke from its coal-burning power plants.

No matter where you turn, there is a hint of conflict.

Pyongyang's subway system, which is buried more than 100 metres underground, can double as a massive bomb shelter and is equipped with thick blast doors on the station entrances. The capital's empty highways are laid out so they can serve as emergency airfields in a war.

Its museums are full of exhibits commemorating the "immortal exploits the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung performed defeating the aggression of the imperialist Allied forces" during the Korean War. The city's monuments feature heroic statues of soldiers protecting a socialist paradise.

North Korean propaganda constantly calls on people to prepare for war and sacrifice and warns that the outside world, led by the "blood-sucking imperialist Americans," is prepared to pounce and attack them.

One of the capital's top tourist attractions is the rusting hulk of USS Pueblo, an "armed spy ship of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces," which was captured by the North Korean navy as it eavesdropped on North Korean radio signals in January 1968.

The ship now lies moored on the banks of the Taedong River in the heart of Pyongyang, a permanent symbol of both victory and North Korea's need for vigilance.

Even more obvious are the thousands of uniformed soldiers from North Korea's 1.2-million-man army who make up at least 10% of every crowd in Pyongyang.

The Stalinist state has the fifth-largest military in the world, trailing only China, the United States, Russia and India, and it consumes more than a third of the country's gross domestic product.

Despite a decade of famine and growing international isolation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has made "army-centred politics" or "the military first" the core of his leadership. The military get top billing in everything from food distribution to power sharing.

The infrastructure is crumbling and there are severe shortages of food, medicine, energy and raw materials. But the Korean People's Army remains one of the most menacing in the world.

Seventy per cent of its manpower is stationed in offensive positions within 100 kilometres of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea. Its troops are disciplined, motivated and well trained.

Planners in the Pentagon consider war on the Korean peninsula one of the most likely scenarios the U.S. may have to deal with.

They estimate North Korea has 10,600 artillery pieces and 200 multiple rocket launchers hidden in heavily fortified caves and mountain tunnels just north of the DMZ.

Even though this arsenal is ageing and lacks the technological sophistication of U.S. weapons, it can reach anywhere inside South Korea and may be impervious to pre-emptive air strikes.

U.S. studies insist North Korea can produce significant amounts of biological and chemical weapons and say Pyongyang's military doctrine calls for mixing chemical and conventional munitions in an attack.

U.S. Army General Leon LaPorte, commander of Combined Forces Command Korea, has testified that in a surprise North Korean attack, every third round fired could be a chemical weapon, designed to clear U.S. and South Korean troops out of the mountain valleys that form natural invasion routes.

North Korea also boasts the world's largest commando army, with more than 120,000 Special Forces trained to operate behind South Korean lines. In the event of a conflict, they'd be used to attack ammunition dumps and to disrupt communications.

"These are highly trained, well-resourced units that are capable of conducting strategic reconnaissance and direct action," said Gen. LaPorte, noting the commandos would infiltrate South Korea by sea, land and air.

The air force and navy are said to be ageing badly, but the country has the largest submarine force in the world and specializes in deploying mini-subs used for infiltration and mine laying.

The air force has a squadron of Russian-made MiG-29 fighter aircraft, but most of its planes are old Soviet-era craft. Fighter pilots receive only a fraction of the training of U.S. and South Korean pilots, with an average of 15 hours flight time a year compared to the 20 hours U.S. and South Korean pilots log each month.

Nuclear weapons, however, could transform the military balance in Asia. North Korea may already have up to three nuclear weapons and, if fuel from its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon is reprocessed, it could provide material for four or five more weapons.

Combine that with the fact that North Korea has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the developing world and a reputation for roguish behaviour and nuclear blackmail, and you can explain the nervousness that has settled on Asia and the U.S.

"Left unchecked, North Korea could do to Japan what Soviet Russia did to Europe in the 1950s -- create a 'hostage' situation in which the mere threat of missile attacks could hamstring U.S. policy," said Paul Bracken, a professor of management and political science at Yale University.

Last of a series.

© National Post 2005