Tuesday, December 20, 2011
North Korean Grief Over Death of Kim Jong Il
In an article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education (link here but password required), Tom Bartlett ask this question:
In the wake of the announcement of Kim Jong Il’s demise, the above [I've inserted it below] video of hysterically grieving North Koreans has been making the rounds. Why are the people of North Korea so upset over the death of the horrible despot who has starved and enslaved them?
Most people in the world, including South Koreans and Americans, are stunned by this out-pouring of apparently genuine grief by the North Korean people (or at least those pictured by state-run television). After all, we all know about the abject poverty and ruthless daily control experienced by the North Korean people, imposed by the tyrannical Kim dynasty. We also know of the cold calculation of the North Korean leadership in regularly committing acts of violence and terrorism against others in the world, and especially in South Korea, to gain internal political advantage and demonstrate their supposed leadership strengths.
There is much we could say about how ineffably sad this misplaced sorrow strikes us, how it illustrates the folly of assuming that human beings with their faults can create a perfect society through totalitarian systems, and how substituting a human being for God and worshipping the creature rather than the Creator is tragic and hollow.
For the moment, let's hold up our North Korean brothers and sisters in prayer. We might pray that this shock to the North Korean system, together with the installation of a new dynastic ruler who is not yet engraved into the minds of the North Korean people, might crack the facade. We know that God is at work in human hearts during times of uncertainty.
Because what we observe in North Korea under this dictatorial regime is so unnatural and inhuman, and because the plight of the ordinary person in that country is so dire (especially as compared with the economic strength and comparative well-being of South Korean), the North Korean cult of personality and dictatorship almost certainly cannot survive forever. Such a system is inherently unstable (which of course also makes it so very dangerous).
When the fall comes, whether soon or after more years of misery, we will likely see an entire nation of 24 million people suffering a psychologically traumatic encounter with a reality to which they have been blinded. We know that God is with us in a time of need. When that day of liberation comes, let us pray for God to be there (as we know He already is) and to prepare persons of faith in South Korean, Americas, and throughout the world to minister to this suffering people when the walls finally come down.
Greg Sisk
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/12/north-korean-grief-over-death-of-kim-jong-il.html
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I'm not sure which theory seems better: (1) that the North Koreans featured are so melodramatic because they fear violent consequences if they act anything less than such*, or (2) it shows everybody so pathetic and childish, that the video is the perfect picture of what a dictatorship does to people.
* It reminds me of the famous story from Solzhenitsyn's
At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). The small hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising to an ovation.”
For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause rising to an ovation” continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.
However, who would dare be the first to stop? The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform and it was he who had called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD [an early form of the KGB] men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first.
And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks. At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly—but up there with the presidium, where everyone could see them?
The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter …
Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a business-like expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.
That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested.