I don’t imagine things can get much stranger, though I have been wrong about that many times. I was waiting for an appointment the other day and did not have the iPad with me, and looked at my alleged smart phone to see if there was a way to waste time.
I clicked on one of the icons I don’t use often- “Books” I think- and there were two electronic editions I had not known were there. One was “Alice in Wonderland,” or the more formally known “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The story is part of the woof and weft of our lives, and apparently was pre-loaded in the app since the copyright has expired along with the author, Charles Dodgson, who had another name, just like the book.
I vaguely recall some muttering that Mr. Lewis Carroll’s interest in Alice might, in other times, have been inappropriate, but I digress. I was captivated by the whimsy immediately, and really had a hard time getting my attention back to the meeting when the time eventually came.
The illustrations might be the best part of the narrative, and I have been thinking about it, since our friends in North Korea have, of late, fallen down the rabbit-hole, or passed through the looking glass (as did Alice in Carroll’s sequel) and into someplace that only makes sense if you have drunk from the little bottle or eaten some of that enormous mushroom with the caterpillar on top.
I know for a fact that the Northerns are not nuts. I sat in an apartment in Pyongyang at a luncheon every bit as strange as the Tea Party that Alice attended. There were three of us Americans there: the Congressman, Calvin, his staffer, and me the horse-holder. Interspersed were the North Korean Ambassador to the UN, a couple minders, an earnest young man whose English was BBC perfect, and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Worker’s Party of Korea, Mr. Kim Yong Sun. They were not mad as hatters.
In fact, Mr.Kim was quite a card, and his English was much better than my Korean. We had a rollicking luncheon with some wry wit about the defensive nature of aircraft carriers and the multiple rocket launchers that overlook the South Korean capital of Seoul.
That memory came back strongly this morning when I saw the latest video from the North this morning, which features the rockets raining down on the South, and exploding aircraft carriers, and victorious Northern troops parachuting into the city.
An offering early last month showed New York in flames after an apparent missile attack, and another on that came two weeks later depicted US soldiers and President Barack Obama burning in the flames of a nuclear blast, and earlier this week, another video showed the dome of the US Capitol building in Washington exploding in a fireball.
That is just in the world of videos. The production values are circa Super Mario Brothers, and frankly they are entertaining, if a little strange. The other stuff- abrogating the Armistice that has kept a sort of peace since 1954, threatening to shell South Korean-held islands and some other whacky stuff (like the sinking of a ROK patrol boat) are actually acts of war. They have really taken their game up a notch.
I have been following the North with personal interest for a long time- and many things are coming around again in a strange confluence.
Some smart money says this is about playing to the base, as Kim Song Un consolidates his power. The pudgy little guy seems likable in a loopy homicidal way. Ask Dennis Rodman about that. Others comment that this is completely normal with the change of administration in the South.
I don’t know if you recall that the new President of the ROK is not only a woman, but the Park Guen-Hi is the daughter of the autocrat Park Chung Hi who was murdered by his intelligence chief in 1979- the year before I reported to US Forces Korea.
The memories of what came to be known as The Night of the Generals was still fresh- a passel of ROK generals crowded into the Indications and Warnings Center where I later worked, and my shift-mates had been there to see the panic on their faces.
So, the South has their moments, too.
The latest president Park has pledged to “secure South Korea against the threat of an increasingly hostile North Korea at the same time as mending bridges with Pyongyang.”
I have no idea how you do that. General-President Chon Too Hwan who succeeded her Dad didn’t manage to do much, and it has now been a long time. When she was elected last December, Park broke barriers in the patriarchal Peninsula.
There is a link to the four-minute video below, and it is worth a peek through the looking glass. The title is “A Short, Three-Day War” and I think you agree that it is a hoot.
The images show “crack storm-troops occupying Seoul and other cities and taking 150,000 US citizens as hostages.”
(The venerable AN-2 Cub, workhorse of the North Korean Air Force).
We used to worry about the ancient bi-planes sweeping south and dropping paratroopers on Yongsan Garrison where we worked. It was a quite realistic fear, since the Soviet-designed AN-2 Cub could carry several paratroopers and operated at such low speed that the AWACS radars could not track them. Nothing but fun, fun, fun.
In the third day of the proposed invasion, according to this video Seoul and other cities would be in a state of total chaos. No water, no food, and no communications.
“Like this, we have a Unification War scenario that will be wrapped up in just three days,” the narrator says.
So what is this latest lunacy about? I think it might be supplies of cognac, since the UN Security Council tightened sanctions on North Korea over the last nuclear test and the missile-rattling rocket test.
And it may be about bullying the new Leadership in the south. But whatever it is, I have been looking at this a long time and I have never seen anything quite as crazy as this. The rhetoric has yet to be matched by any overt military action, but you never know.
Some people might actually believe this nonsense. I would have to talk to Dennis Rodman about that.
In the meantime, I am going to watch all this with more than a little interest. If you see a white rabbit with a gold pocket watch, I recommend following him to see where he is going.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com