KIM JONG EUN: “I’M SMART, NOT LIKE EVERYBODY SAYS, LIKE DUMB. I’M SMART AND I WANT RESPECT!”

4/1/13

The bravado and the shenanigans of North Korean tinpot Kim Jong Eun provide yet another instance in which the conventional wisdom is probably correct.   

Mr. Kim is not bent on a nuclear war, or even a conventional war, with South Korea and the United States.   He does not have the capability for a nuclear attack and probably has neither the authority nor the motivation for a conventional attack on the South.  He knows, or his generals know, that a nuclear strike would be his, and North Korea’s, last act in this mortal coil.  He also knows that a conventional attack on the South would bring similar, though probably slower, results; while North Korea’s military dwarfs that of South Korea, the technological disparity between the two is immense and, more importantly, the U.S.’s 30,000 (or so) troop tripwire would be tripped with consequences that the North Koreans would not want to contemplate.   Even if Mr. Kim is as crazy as he would like us to believe, and even if his generals are unwilling or able to bring a measure of sobriety to his deliberations, both of which are highly unlikely, China, North Korean’s big brother and lifeline, would never go along with a conflict that would potentially engulf at least Northeast Asia in an unpredictable, yet in any case horrible, military conflict.

So why is Mr. Kim doing this?   Largely for the same reasons that his father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, Kim Il-Sung, engaged in similar saber rattling, i.e., doing so brought favorable consequences for North Korea.   Such threats in the past inevitably brought the United States, the South Koreans, and even, in some instances, the Japanese and the Chinese, to the table to negotiate more food and energy aid for North Korea’s cruel excuse for an economy.   Extortion has long been a lucrative racket for organized crime, and North Korea has been described, most recently by Representative Peter King (R., NY), as “an organized crime family running a territory.”  The problem is that Kim Jong Eun is no Carlo Gambino, and neither his father nor his grandfather was a Tony Accardo.   And there was never a North Korean Meyer Lansky or Sidney Korshak, though China has long played a similar role for the North Korean family.   But I digress.

Perhaps a better organized crime analogy than that conjured up by Mr. King would be to the fictional Fredo Corleone, the imbecile middle Corleone brother who wanted nothing more than he wanted the respect that he thought was due him but that he deserved only in his own fantasies.   Mr. Kim’s father had a similar problem.   Both men, and especially the latter, have been portrayed as puerile putzes, and this doubtless hurts.   So, Kim Jong Il rattled the nuclear saber to get some respect and the apple has not fallen far from the tree.   Young Mr. Kim, especially because he is new on the scene, feels the need to impress not only the North Korean in the street and the “international community,” but also the North Korean military who don’t yet know what to make of this young popinjay.

So what we have in Kim Jong Eun’s bluster is both a new chapter in a continuing successful extortion racket and a cry for respect, a respect that he needs more than even his walking, talking caricature father and far more than his grandfather, who did manage to fight the world’s greatest military power to a draw.  The conventional wisdom is correct; we are not on the verge of a nuclear war in the northwest Pacific.

One potential problem though, with the above argument is that Mr. Eun is, after all, probably (It seems no one is quite sure.) not yet 30.  I, like many of you, knew everything when I was in my twenties.   So we are dealing with a very young man with the misplaced confidence of youth who seems to have inherited some peculiar genes; consequently, we can never be entirely sure that the young man is not completely crackers.   Therefore, the B-2 flyover and the F-22 deployment were probably a helpful and inexpensive reminder to this scion of the Kim dynasty of the inadvisability of playing these games with undue vigor and enthusiasm.   On the other hand, a quick admonition that any overly spirited adventure would threaten the supply of Johnny Walker Black and blond, blue-eyed Western women might be equally effective; such realizations always gave Mr. Kim’s father pause when he ramped up the extortion game too steeply.