Pet cemetery

Nothing would surprise

“I’m suspicious of people who don’t like dogs. But I trust a dog when it doesn’t like a person.”

—Something Bill Murray didn’t really say.

But should have.

AS FAR AS the “news” coming out of North Korea this week, or maybe more accurately coming out of those in South Korea who watch North Korea, we won’t believe that Lil’ Kim is in a coma until we see the machine up close.

The West has fallen for this before. Earlier this year, North Korea’s pudgy little dictator was supposed to be knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door, only to show up on camera once again. Much to the world’s relief and misery.

Relief because nobody knows what will happen if the regime falls. And misery because he’s a brutal little so-andso who tends to send missiles into the ocean when he feels like he’s being ignored.

The word this week, such that it is, is that his little sister is set to take over if Lil’ Kim really is ill. Kim Yo Jong is her name, she’s said to be in her early 30s, and the world doesn’t have as much hope for her regime as it did in 2011 when Kim Jong Un took over from his father. (A communist monarchy! Wouldn’t the Romanovs have been surprised?)

Why the hope in 2011? Because Kim Jong Un had been a secret hidden student in Europe while growing up, and knew what a healthy state and economy—not to mention a healthy people— looked like. And some of us hoped, foolishly as it turns out, that he could be different. There is no hope of such improvements should a Kim Yo Jong regime take over Pyongyang.

Military planners below the 38th Parallel say a more likely strategy would be for the younger sister to build street cred, and fear, by launching more ordnance and even cracking down on her people with more punch.

Bottom line: Things don’t look to improve in North Korea, no matter who is in charge.

In fact, things might be getting worse.

As for who is in charge just now, it’s all speculation. What’s not speculation is that the government in Pyongyang is rounding up dogs. Stay with us.

The regime has put out an edict on pooches: They must be turned over to authorities. Police apparently have the names and addresses of those who own dogs, and have been going door-to-door. The people know better than to resist. Lest they become a head shorter.

The official reason for the roundup: These pampered mutts represent

Western decadence. And keeping dogs as pets is a part of bourgeois ideology. These animals are merely furry props of the capitalist culture that we should struggle against in our effort to cast off the oppressors and free the workers from the formalistic and static ideological productions of the dominant classes as the Supreme Commander guides us onward toward final victory, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Or the dogs could be food. Once again there is a food shortage in North Korea, which seems to be the normal way of life in that hermit country. (Young American socialists, take note.)

For years the country has had this off-and-on ban on dogs—mainly because dogs consume resources, too— but the crackdowns get serious during times of starvation, when meat of any kind is valued. This is one of those times. Of course, famines are always the weather’s fault. Just as they were in Stalin’s USSR.

Press releases from North Korea say the dogs are being picked up to stifle “resentment.” Other reports say the dogs are being picked up to stock restaurants.

As awful as this sounds, nothing should surprise about North Korea, its government, the way it finds “solutions” to food problems, or the desperation of its people. In recent years, the government has told its people to collect their own waste for use as fertilizer in the fields. It has experimented with giant rabbits.

The entire country’s economic engine is focused on keeping up the military, but a good portion of its people were so malnourished as children that they don’t have the cognitive ability to serve in uniform. People in rural areas are forced into foraging for food in the wild. They’re eating grass.

About 10 years ago, Pyongyang sent its secret police to ransack villages, looking for ramen noodles on the black market. Apparently they are all the rage in North Korea, for those who can afford them.

The story has it that, several years back, the South Koreans picked up a couple of North Korean fishermen on the high seas. Their boat had stalled, and they were out on the water for a week. Before they were repatriated to the North again, the fishermen had to spend a few hours in a South Korean hospital to make sure their vitals were okay for travel.

After looking around, one told his friend he could never live in South Korea: He had been watching the nurses. The South Korean women were too big.

One day, this succession of Kims will end.

The world can only hope they go out with a whimper. Not a bang.