Circus elephants
Few people I have spoken to seem to conceive of an internal coup. Not a contrived and executed CIA mission with Korean secret agents, but a homegrown rooting out of a dictator.
How might this happen? My best guess is Information. Intelligence. Word of something better out there in the world. North Korean citizens en masse need to see what a democratic government and society looks and feels like.
Education is often the overused cliche to solve problems, but it is the most realistic means to remove the elephant in the north room: the unstable, nuclear-armed autocrat Kim Jong-un.
Unlike his grandfather Kim Il-sung, Jong-un is not sophisticated. Where is his head these days? In the clouds? Bewildered? Out of touch with the rest of the world? Indeed, and seemingly so disinterested and incurious about anything other than his own pretense of power.
Much like America’s current president, Kim Jong-un appears unfit to lead — just as I would be, if I were handed the job on a silver platter.
Back to the initial uprising, which does not have to be bloody, but it must, and will, I predict, happen within the country. I am already surprised how one man is able to fend off his internal, though silent, detractors, and maintain what appears to be despotic rule.
In this day and age what decent citizen stands for this kind of paralyzing control? South Koreans got rid of their last president whose most egregious charge was channeling a witch.
Like the American president, the egomania must be so ingrained that a rational and humane individual cannot comprehend it, nor come close to empathizing with such psychotic behavior.
But what if the elephant is sitting in the room to our west? Maybe my naivete has me presuming when, in fact, it is this player who is holding all the cards of change. Is it China that ultimately says, yes or no — something must give, something must drastically change in North Korea? Yet, this is not a poker game. It appears to be more of a circus, where I cannot connect how the elephants actually interact.
Another option is waiting for it all to pass. That’s right — the Kim family dynasty peters out organically, as time will inevitably prove.
However, Kim Jong-un could easily live 40 more years as the North Korean leader, and I am not very patient, nor will I have enough time to enjoy those future photographs of Pyongyang residents lounging in a place like Ethnographic Park — on nice wooden benches on a sunny autumn day reading the latest edition of The Korea Times.