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Korea and Kim Jong Un

Good Essays

Madison Koci
Stewart Frame
GWC PS110
Due: 12/12/13
North Korea and Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Un is the the 29-year-old ruler of North Korea, one of the most distinctive and unpredictable countries in the world. It is a cocktail of poisonous elements: autocratic, repressive, isolated and poor (Powell).Its regime is dangerous not only to its people but also to the rest of the world. Its actions have had an unsettling impact on international relations in northeast Asia, particularly its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 and its shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, all of which led to tensions between China and the united States (Ahn). North Korea’s present and future, therefore, are of global concern (Powell). North Korea is "a …show more content…

Today, everyone in a position of power in North Korea is at least twice Kim Jong Un's age and vastly more experienced (Powell). But they continue to salute him at a moments notice. Any disrespect has meant at minimum, a sentence in North Korea's notorious gulag and at worst death. Consider one especially brutal case: in the mid-1990s, just as the famine that would eventually kill millions of North Koreans was taking hold, reports of grumbling and dissent in a prominent Korean People's Army's division reached Pyongyang (Powell). Kim Jong Il, according to an intelligence source, had the unit's officer corps--several dozen men--arrested and then made the enlisted men watch what could potentially be their future. The arrested officers were required to lie in the middle of a road, their hands and legs tied. Several tanks rumbled forward and ran back and forth over the officers, crushing them to death (Powell). This combination of mercilessness, beliefs and seclusion lead many observers of North Korea to believe that "there is no question Kim Jong Un will be making the decisions now," says a former intelligence analyst in East Asia. He may make the decisions, but they will be based on information filtered through those around him, men who are not peers but elders (Powell). In addition to Jang, the inner circle includes Kang Suk Ju, the top foreign policy adviser who famously admitted to U.S. diplomats in 2002 that

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