It’s madness, not his nukes that makes Nokor’s Kim Jong-il so dangerous

Metro Manila traffic was gummed up all day and half the night last Wednesday because government work crews were rushing the dismantling of many giant, iron-strutted billboards all over the metropolis. The work not only impeded traffic, but sparks flew from the acetylene torches being utilized onto the roofs of vehicles passing underneath.

This is typical of government. First, our officials permitted those huge billboards to proliferate willy-nilly. We didn’t realize there were already too many of them. Now, in a rush to tear down and dismantle them, the government is trying to dismember and pull down in two or three days what the billboard advertising companies took many months to erect.

I’m not unhappy, I must stress, to see those oversized billboards go – they blocked out the landscape, and, as Typhoon Milenyo demonstrated, when they collapse they endanger life and limb, whether of passing pedestrians, homeowners, or those sitting in parked or passing vehicles.

The Metro Manila Development Authority can be praised for immediately tackling the job, instead of procrastinating, but the MMDA ought to have spaced out its work schedule so as not to affect daytime traffic and disrupt the essential rhythm of life in the big city. And besides, the falling sparks might have burned commuters or started a blaze. Perhaps the operation should have been conducted from late night to dawn, over a week or two.

As it is, many in the metropolis found themselves stuck in the wrong places, unable to meet schedules or get to appointments in time. Many car-owners, finding their vehicles gridlocked (and lucky to have drivers) abandoned their vehicles and took the LRT or MRT trains in order to fulfill their scheduled obligations.

And by the way: Those billboards along major thoroughfares like EDSA may have been overpowering and intrusive, but they served an unexpectedly useful purpose. They lighted up EDSA at night, where otherwise the highway would have been in darkness. Now that those immense, well-lighted billboards are gone, the GMA government must install more street lamps and illuminate the "main street" of the country.

In other cities abroad, from Paris – dubbed the City of Light – to glittering Manhattan, and neon-glowing Shanghai, which has mastered lighting up its high-rises and flyovers, as well as its signature Pearl TV tower, motorists and bus drivers need not grope in the dark. In Metro Manila, even as power rates go up, there’s a deplorable lack of power – and light.

We’re a metropolis of 14 million plunged into darkness after the sun goes down. And it is in darkness that crime and sin – and despair – proliferate. Our President must set EDSA, a national road, alight. Our mayors, instead of squabbling, must join forces to bring light into the situation – not only the political situation but into the avenues and byways where our people live.

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North Korea’s Leader Kim Jong-il is both unrepentant and truculent in meeting the torrent of criticism which accompanied his detonation of a nuclear device. Not only has he promised to explode more in a series of nuclear tests, but he has warned Japan, which is among the loudest in condemnation that, if Tokyo moves against him (like blocking his ships and exports) he will regard this as a declaration of war and immediately take appropriate counter-measures.

In fact, Mr. Kim knows Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rather well. It was Abe who gained nationwide recognition when he denounced North Korea for having kidnapped dozens of Japanese over the years and negotiated the return of some of the abductees, no matter how many years had elapsed, for "reunions" with their families in Japan and who had almost given them up as lost forever. Abe encouraged the Japanese returnees, a number of them women with spouses and children in North Korea not to go back and remain in Japan.

Why the so-called Democratic Republic of Korea, which is what North Korea calls itself, needed the kidnapped Japanese (among them girls barely into their teens) remains uncertain – except for having them teach Japanese language courses – but Mr. Abe rode to fame on that emotional issue.

In the United States, the Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other for failing to contain Dear Leader Kim and curb his nuclear ambitions.

Former President Bill Clinton is being faulted for not having been tough enough with Kim, for example. I think all that argumentation and fuss and bother are useless. Neither Kim Jong-il nor his late father, "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung listened to anybody. They made North Korea a real hermit kingdom in which only their word was law – and nobody could contest it.

The United States, of course, is regarded as the greatest threat to his regime by Kim Jong-il. The US maintains 37,700 troops in South Korea (The Republic of Korea); 41,848 in Japan (most of the US Marines are in Okinawa, primed to rush to the defense of South Korea); and 16,090 afloat – on warships like Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups which include AEGIS cruisers and destroyers.

The North Koreans’ official policy is based on a lie. My brother Willie went to Pyongyang on a special mission for the World Bank (I think), seconded from his post as a Managing Director of our Central Bank (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas). This trip took place a dozen years ago. He and his group found Pyongyang a city full of impressive marble and granite monuments but strangely empty of people. The following day, however, as if a magic spigot had been turned on, the city was thronging with people of all ages, in festival costumes. Just like that. An entire population emerging out of nowhere at the snap of a finger.

"It was weird," Willie told me, when he got back.

Why the lie? Visitors to Pyongyang are generally taken to a grand Korean Revolution Museum. In front of it stands a 70-foot high statue of Pater familias Kim Il-sung and inside the building history is turned upside down. According to the Museum exhibits and story-line it was the South which launched the great attack on June 25, 1959. Within three days, however, Kim’s army counter attacked and reached to within a few miles of the southern end of the peninsula. In short, the South had tragically betrayed the North.

There’s no mention at all of Josef Stalin or the 900,000 men which China had sent into the fray to force the Americans to retreat over the Yalu.

The Museum only hails two heroes: Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

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Kim Il-sung was of course, invented by their official doll makers. While the US backed South Korea which they established in the south, the Soviets had to "invent a heroic North Korean leadership." They picked Kim Il-sung and gave him a fictitious war record. One of Kim’s innovative victories occurred when he "defeated" Japan’s Kwangtung Army which had never been defeated. Thus, Kim Il-sung drove the panicky Japanese out of Korea. On August 25, 1945, Kim took the weapons abandoned by the Japanese and recruited as many as 20,000 Koreans to fight in the civil war waged against the Kuomintang (KMT). The Soviets entered the war just days before Japan surrendered. Taking over North Korea, Stalin did not quite know what to do about it. In the end, he picked an aspirant like Kim Il-sung, created a great legend around his having fought the Japanese.

The war exploits of Kim Il-sung were, naturally, fictitious – but the often the lie was repeated over the years, the more his Korean vassals began to believe it.

When dad died in 1994, Kim Jong-il without a break in stride, assumed his legacy. Kim began building himself an arsenal which is stupendous in sweep and category. This guy is not to be taken lightly, although he has many of the expectations of a buffoon. Kim has built 8,000 underground installations (even as many as 15,000) and dug over 500 miles of tunnels housing factories, battleships and planes. In this labyrinth, Kim can conceal five or six nuclear bombs and nobody would know they were there. Its Nodong missiles can certainly reach Japan, while its Taepodong missiles, with a few improvements, could eventually reach the US.

Since the 1990s, Kim has poured his resources into creating a fleet of modern missiles. The South, hardpressed to maintain its increasingly forlorn-looking "Sunshine Policy" may be forced to do so out of pragmatism and fear.

The south’s capital of Seoul is just 35 miles from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Although Seoul is well-fortified, North Korea has deployed SA-5 surface-to-air missiles; FROG 5/7 ground-to-ground free rockets; FROG 5/17 ground-to-ground free rockets with a range of 59-70 km. from 400 to 600 Scud missiles capable of hitting any target in South Korea; No Dong missiles (capable of striking the US mainland); Taepo Dong 2. With over 1,700 aircraft and a Navy of 900 vessels, North Korea is no push-over.

In short, Pyongyang’s Blitzkrieg plans call for its 700,000 troops, 8,000 artillery systems; and 2,000 tanks to race south, all 300 miles to Pusan and the tip of the southern archipelago.

The most perilous thing about dealing with Kim Jong-il is that he immerses himself in fun and frolic, rather than seriously consider any situation. He is a gourmet and a gourmand – the two qualifications fit his enormous appetite completely.

He travels around – even to Berlin – in his private train, a luxurious, Japanese built train crammed by his cordon bleu cuisine, huge stocks of caviar direct from the Caspian Sea, his wine cellar beyond compare, his Japanese chef and collection of sous chiefs, his two carriages of mistresses and concubines, and every luxury an emperor could crave. He would sent to France for Burgundy and Bourdeaux, to Persia for caviar, to the ends of the world for any delicacy brought to his attention – stocking his 21 carriages to the gills, while millions of his own people starved. Kim’s official residence is stocked with 10,000 bottles of French wines, as well as renowned sake brands, Royal Salute, Johnny Walker, Hennessey XO cognac, etc.

At a time when the United Nations in 1988 was appealing for a US$600 million in emergency food aid, Kim splurged $20 million on importing 200 new S-500 class Mercedes Benzes-limo to add to his country’s pool of 7,000 Mercedes Benzes.

In sum, there is no limit to Kim Jong-il’s appetites, or of his scorn and disregard of his own people. His prison camps have already accounted for seven million dead.

Can you negotiate with such a man? That’s the question.