Day by day the world brims with threats. Some you notice, like that shifty character skulking down the street, others you can't- like the safari of brain eating germs hiding on your favorite toy. They may hurt you today, they may hurt you tomorrow, but always they lay in wait. North Korea is such a threat, rushing to build nuclear weapons.
North Korea is often in the headlines, usually due to some outrageous threat, claim, or military disturbance on their part. Many people don't think about North Korea in any way, other than comparing them to a crazy next door neighbor. Most don't consider them a threat but they're wrong, North Korea represents a massive problem to the United States and the world.
They are a Nation with a state wide cult-worship of whatever man holds the title of supreme leader, now Kim-Jong-Un. Originally developed by Kim-Il-Sung, Juche is a “religion” that originally stressed fundamental principles of the state. He said that the people must have independence of thought, that policy must reflect the will of the people, methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the country, and that the most important role of the state is molding people into communists then shifting them to constructive action.
Juche is the only ideology endorsed by the Government of North Korea. The North Korean constitution originally allowed people to practice whatever their religion they wished, but a series of revisions eventually turned that into, “No one may use religion as a means by which to drag in foreign powers or to destroy the state or social order."(3, Article 68). While the first part of Article 68 also states, “Citizens have freedom of religious belief.”(3) North Korea uses the second clause to brutally suppress those that practice ideologies other than Juche, seeing organized religion as a threat to its authority.
Furthermore, the North Korean government has been creating for decades a type of worship around the ruling family, the Kims. While North Korea's state media is almost consumed by hyperbolic statements they are among the most sophisticated propaganda machines in the world. The government cuts off internet access to the rest of the world, while television has only state sponsored channels. Their control over information is so great that, if they wanted, North Korea could teach their people that the color blue is actually the color red. Here an identifying aspect of a cult comes out, parroting the same things over and over while ignoring the other side. After all, if someone repeats a lie long enough doesn't it turn true?
Since the death of Kim-Jong-Il, the “Dear Leader”, on December 17th the media spend most of their time talking about “natural phenomena” occurring across North Korea. The most fantastical account is of a swarm of magpies gathering by the dozens in a single tree “ in grief” one high ranking government official claimed (4). They try to turn the Kims into larger than life figures, on a scale comparable to gods or mythic heroes of ages past. In the case of Kim-Jong-Il they had decades to create his image, one of a man that had “no time for himself”- always working for the betterment of North Korea and it's people.
Belief is a deadly thing. Nothing else in this world can be so malleable but ironclad at the same moment. Throughout history people have killed and died for their beliefs, committing hundreds of thousands of atrocities in the name of some god or esoteric totemic being. Rivers of blood flow throughout humanity's history, the question for the future how much, not if, blood will be shed in the coming years.
Think of the People's Temple, founded in 1955 only to vanish in an explosion of violence on November 18th, 1978 (5). It started as an organization birthed from the mind of Reverend James Warren Jones, better known as Jim Jones. The concept of racial integration and service to disadvantaged people such as the poor, sick, and homeless, stood among the most important aspects of their beliefs. Today such beliefs seem innocuous, but back then they seemed radical and foolish. Time warped their beliefs, like it does to so many other things, slowly over the course of the 1970's.
This shift had no single contributing factor: growing interest in the cult by journalists, law enforcement, and the United States government aided in this shift. However, the greatest contributing factor is how Jim Jones started manifesting signs of mental illness, particularly a sense of extreme paranoia. Spurned on by his mental decay he moved the cult from California to Guyana, South America, in 1974, where he established a town called Jonestown.
Like North Korea, the citizens of Jonestown isolated themselves, cutting themselves off from outside influences. Laying about one-hundred fifty miles away from civilization gave Jim Jones almost complete control over who came in and came out. This allowed the cult to grow more and more radical as they recited their mantras and beliefs. Anyone that tried to escape risked getting shot in the back by armed guards, hand-picked by the Reverend for their zealotry.
As the cult grew more radical dozens of warning signs popped up. The members, everyone from children to adults, started calling the Reverend “Dad” and “Father”. Jim Jones often hosted what he called White Nights, where he would give scathing speeches about how the CIA and other agencies conspired with “Capitalist Pigs” to raze Jonestown to the ground. Sometimes Jones gave the his people four choices: attempt to flee to the Soviet Union, commit "revolutionary suicide", stay in Jonestown and fight, or flee into the jungle. Twice when they voted to commit mass suicide they simulated committing the act. Everyone would line up and drink a glass of red liquid, Jim Jones would say that the poison would kill them within forty-five minutes. When that time came and went without any deaths Jones would then explain that they went through a “Loyalty Test”.
About that time strange reports emerged, including allegations that Jim Jones held American citizens against their will. These allegations instigated a call for investigation, in which a delegation consisting of government agents, journalists, and one US Congressman, Leo Ryan, visited Jonestown on November 17th. Jones put on a show for the delegation, trying to form an illusion that everyone loved living in that isolated town. They hosted a huge party; eating, drinking, and dancing so convincingly it wasn't until one citizen approached a delegation member with a list of people that wanted to leave that they realized that the allegations were true. The following day Congressman Ryan announced that he would take anyone willing to leave back to the United States with him. Only a few people took up his offer, the rest afraid of how Jones would react (6).
They gathered up the few that took up their offer into a truck and drove off for a nearby airfield, where the delegation planes landed. Ryan had decided to stay behind a short while longer to see if anyone else wanted to leave. Before the truck got far a member of the People's Temple attacked him with a knife. While Ryan escaped without serious injury that episode made it obvious to the delegation that they were in danger, so they decided to head out quickly. The truck made it without further incident, but the planes still needed time to prepare for departure. While they waited armed People's Temple members arrived and opened fire, killing five- including the Congressman- and severely wounding the rest.
They committed the attack on Jones' orders. If he had allowed those traitors to the group to leave unpunished it would have told other doubters that they could escape. He would have lost power in the face of his people.
Not done there, Jones held an emergency meeting announcing the attack on Ryan's group. He said that the United States would answer bullets with bullets, that the military would parachute out of the sky and massacre the whole town in revenge. The only way to escape would be to put their practice to use, drinking punch spiked with cyanide. The babies and children drank first, followed shortly by their mothers. The rest followed, those few that resisted encouraged to drink by the armed guards. An estimated nine-hundred and twelve people died from the poison- including two-hundred eighty-seven children- only a handful survived.
Now imagine that instead of a town of thousand people Jonestown was a nation twenty-five million strong. Now imagine that they were capable of scientific advancement, namely the ability to develop and deploy a nuclear weapon. Would Jim Jones have ordered a mass suicide with poison, or would he have waited for the United States military to arrive and wipe them all out with a nuclear explosion?
So long as North Korea is isolated from the world their ideas will grow more and more radical. The group thinks only what the group thinks, their media parrots the propaganda declaring the Kims gods among men. For that reason the ruling few will never willingly pull back the Iron Curtain, for then their uncontested power will shatter.
The only way to bring them into the world is kicking and screaming, with bullets, tanks, missiles, and force. So long as their founding principles, the color blue, can be warped by the whim of one man into whatever he wants that threat will remain.
I understand that members of the military will put their lives on the line. Each and every man or woman that could suffer in the line of duty would be a loss. However, it's widely known that North Korea's regime is among the worst human rights abusers on Earth. They have labor camps in which the prisoners suffer through physical, sexual, and psychological torture daily. Are the citizens of any country not entitled to basic human rights?
Think again back to Jonestown. Jim Jones ruled with an iron fist, anyone considered guilty of even questioning Jones' word would suffer any number of punishments in return (7). “Imprisonment, forcing children to spend nights at the bottom of wells- sometimes upside-down-, and simple beatings” made up a majority of punishments. Sometimes they even drugged members into obedience with Thorazine or any other available drug. The citizens of North Korea are victims, just as the many of the people of Jonestown. Life is life, no matter the nation.
References
(1)
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html(2)
http://www.adherents.com/largecom/Juche.html(3)
http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/kn00000_.html(4)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16336991(5)
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-peoples-temple.htm(6)
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1970s/p/jonestown.htm(7)
http://www.guyana.org/features/jonestown.html
