Kim Jong Il: May He Rest in Peace... or something like that

Great news about Kim Jong-il or, as Rush Limbaugh says, Kim Jong Dead (He may not have been the first one to come up with that; that’s just where I heard it first). I’ve been reading some of the comments from online news stories about his death, and a significant number of people out there seem to think the people are being held at gunpoint to mourn like this and that the American media isn’t telling the full story of how evil a dictator Kim Jong Il was. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a big fan of the mainstream American media. And I wouldn’t put it past the North Korean government to hold people at gunpoint to do anything (Win the World Cup and every sport in the Olympics or else, for example). At the same time, however, I think it’s important to remember how brainwashed most if not all these people are.

Nobody the rest of the free world over doubts what a brutal dictator this man was. They know he did anything he could to hang on to his power, even when that meant letting his people starve to death. But his power lust also made him brainwash his people. He kept his hermit kingdom so apart from the rest of the world and told his people so many lies that many North Koreans didn’t and still don’t know how crappy their lot in life was. It seems very plausible to me that at some point a captor like him doesn’t need to hold a gun to his victims’ heads to make them weep and wail and gush out tears. If people have been held back from the truth their entire lives and all they know is a lie, they will react accordingly. In March of 2003, fourteen year-old Elizabeth Smart was miraculously found in Sandy, Utah, after being held in captivity for nine months. She still remembered her own name, but also appeared genuinely concerned for her captors, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. If she can be brainwashed enough to believe these two people love her, imagine what an entire regime is capable of.

I personally believe the North Korean people can be unbrainwashed, just as Elizabeth Smart was, even though it won’t be easy. I wish there was an easy answer. It’s hard for South Korea to aggressively deal with the North when, among other factors, China and North Korea have such a cozy relationship and when the South Koreans themselves do so much business with China. I hope that the communist regime will buckle under its own weight. I hope we as a country have the resolve to help this regime fall, just as Reagan did to and for the Soviet Union.

I had the amazing opportunity to live in South Korea for two years while serving a religious mission for my church. I even got the chance to tour the DMZ while I was there. The South Korean people are forever grateful to American and allied forces for freeing them from the grasp of the communist North back in the 1950’s. I only wish their family members in the North enjoyed those same blessings of capitalism and democracy. My heart goes out to the North Korean people who have never known real freedom; many of them likely do not even know they have family members in the South. I pray that with stronger international resolve, a financial debt paid off to China (a debt that never should have existed in the first place), and an American president that on the international stage projects strength rather than weakness, that day of liberty for the North Korean people isn’t far off.