The Cold War ended more than two decades ago. The Soviet Union disintegrated less than 75 years after its tumultuous birth. China expunged its Maoist experiment in about half that time. Pol Pot’s Cambodian utopia didn’t last even four years.
However, the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea lives on, 64 years after its creation under the protective arms of the Soviet Red Army. The DPRK has fused communism with monarchy, twice elevating to godlike status a son of the previous dictator. North Korea’s obituary has oft been written, but the Kim dynasty staggers on, seemingly unaffected by mass starvation, pervasive poverty, extraordinary repression, and social collapse.
It is hard to imagine a starker comparison than between the North and the Republic of Korea, a prosperous and democratic state. Yet even more dramatic may be the contrast between what the DPRK is and what it was supposed to be.
North Korean founder Kim Il-sung was an anti-Japanese guerrilla. Give him his due: he fought against a system of foreign repression. Japan had turned the once independent kingdom into a colony. Tokyo’s brutal suppression of Koreans’ identity rankles still, poisoning the relationship between two modern nations that should be cooperating to promote a democratic, market-oriented order in East Asia.
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