Is Moscow Double-Dealing on North Korea?

International Affairs

Is Moscow Double-Dealing on North Korea?

Toby Westerman

Despite its condemnation of North Korean nuclear and missile testing and its overt support of sanctions against North Korea, Moscow continues to aid the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang, maintaining a policy that began with the establishment by Soviet authorities of a Communist government in northern part of the Korean peninsula in 1948.

North Korean president Myung meets with Lavrov

Lavrov, right, greets North Korea president Lee Myung

In late April 2009, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in North Korean capital, Pyongyang, for a two-day visit. Lavrov's activities followed the line of Moscow's stated position on North Korea: Russia will assist North Korea to develop in a peaceful manner, but will discourage nuclear and ballistic missile experimentation.

The two nations signed a series of agreements that covered "the entire spectrum of humanitarian interaction," according to one Russian language report.

But the Lavrov visit, as well as Moscow's true relationship with North Korea, are better framed in the written comments Lavov left at the mausoleum dedicated to the first dictator of North Korea, Kim II Sung, who died in 1994 but is still referred to as the "perpetual president" of North Korea.

In the commemorative book for honored guests at the mausoleum Lavrov wrote that Kim II Sung "will be forever in the memory of the Russians" and that Kim "was a consistent supporter of the friendship and cooperation between our nations and peoples."

The cult to Kim II Sung is promoted by the Communist State

Lavrov's comments were charming reminiscences for a monster.

Kim II Sung launched the Korean War when he invaded non-communist South Korea on June 25, 1950. More than 30,000 American lives were lost in what was characterized as a United Nations "police action." Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had equipped the North Koreans with modern tanks, jets and small arms, but South Korea was left unprepared by the U.S.

Stalin allowed Kim to invade the South because the Soviets had obtained the atomic bomb through the efforts of Communist spies and sympathizers in the West. With the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons broken, Stalin felt free to act. The Soviet dictator was also convinced that U.S. President Harry Truman would not intervene in the event of a North Korean attack.

The Korean War has never officially ended. An armistice in 1953 stopped large scale hostilities, but Kim continued periodic, small scale attacks. Fire fights have erupted along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), sometimes resulting in deaths of U.S., South and North Korean military personnel. Invasion tunnels from the North into the South have been discovered under the DMZ, which could be used for small or large scale attacks. In 1968, sensing U.S. weakness as public dissent raged during the war in Vietnam, North Korean staged an overt act of war against the U.S. by capturing the USS Pueblo.

Kim II Sung also initiated one of the most bizarre occurrences of the Cold War: North Korean raiders landed in Japan to abduct ordinary Japanese citizens. Held for decades, few of the abductees ever returned to Japan. The apparent goal of the abductions was to obtain information on contemporary Japanese culture and society.

The government established by Kim II Sung was one of the most despotic and savage ever inflicted on humanity. After Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev began the process known as de-Stalinization, a lessening, to some degree, of Soviet despotism. North Korea under Kim II Sung, however, stayed true to the concept of Stalinism in all its grinding brutality.

Two U.S. journalists jailed in North Korea

Two US journalists convicted in the North Korea

Kim's son, Kim Jong II (the beloved leader), has continued the tyranny and militant hostility to the West began by his father. Kim Jong II has driven his people to starvation to feed his military and nuclear ambitions, and maintains his nation as a virtual prison camp, as two American journalists have recently discovered.

Depending upon various sources, as many as one in seven North Koreans are interred in the most severe prison camps on earth, another continuation of the elder Kim's policies. Many thousands of North Koreans die every year from hunger or governmental oppression.

Moscow has a serious stake in what happens in North Korea. Although China shares most of North Korea's border, Russia does have a short frontier on the east, and the important Russian Pacific seaport of Vladivostok lies not far from North Korean territory.

A deep growl from the giant Russian bear would bring North Korea to its senses. But the bear does not growl, it publicly shows only a mild dissatification and warmly recalls a past dictator, while supporting the brutal oppression of the present tyrant.

The world can only ask: "Why?"

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Posted June 20, 2009

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Find out what the centralized media is not reporting - read
Lies, Terror, and the Rise of the Neo-Communist Empire: Origins and Direction.
by Toby Westerman
Contact T. Westerman at
www.inatoday.com
or P.O. BOX 5182, Rockford, ILL, 61125-0182

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