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2 Kim
Jong-il as a guiding light By
Kim Myong Chol
American officials and
experts show grudging respect for Jong-il,
regarding him as a canny fox and a savvy
statesman.
The Washington Post reported
September 26, 1994, that US intelligence profilers
had difficulty in agreeing on the true nature of
Jong-il.
"Kim s largely an enigma to
Washington. US intelligence analysts had
difficulty reaching a consensus about Kim while
preparing a recent, classified psychological
profile of him for policymakers."
The New
York Times reported on June 3, 2009 that out of
exasperation, the late former US defense secretary
Robert Gates
and other senior
Pentagon officials routinely described Jong-il's
North Korea as "not of this planet".
Dr
Brendan Taylor, defense specialist at Australian
National University in Canberra told ABC News in
April, 2009:
I think it's very hard to know
what's going on inside North Korea. It's often
referred to as the blackest hole of black holes,
by the US intelligence community.
A
United States News and World Report in January 13,
2003 described Kim Jong-il as "savvy" and quoted
former secretary of state Madeleine Albright as
declaring the late Jong-il was "a very good
listener" as well as "decisive and practical".
Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst for the
International Crisis Group, expressed admiration
for Kim Jong-il in an interview with USA Today
February 17, 2009:
Based on the criterion of staying in
power, Kim is absolutely
brilliant.
Wendy Sherman, currently
number three at the State Department, told the
same newspaper:
Every administration for the last
many years has come into office believing in the
eminent fall of the North Korean government. The
North Koreans have faced famine. They have faced
a failed economy. But the North has again and
again proved its resilience.
Philip
Gourevitch, former editor of The Paris Review,
told the New Yorker Magazine September 2, 2003:
The people who have met him in
diplomatic contexts, invariably come back
saying, "You know, look, let's be straight about
it, the guy is charming." He is a rational
actor. He is capable of projecting a disarming
normality.
Revolutionary
legacy The late Kim Jong-il left an
irreplaceable revolutionary legacy made up of
mainly three components.
The first, most
important asset was the installation of Jong-eun
as his heir. For the Korean people there is no
greater heaven-sent fortune than Jong-eun taking
his place as their third Kim Il-sung-class
national leader.
The late Kim Jong-il
said: "Young General Kim Jong-eun is the genius of
the genii as he is military- and high-tech savvy
and knows how to conduct war and lead the
population."
There is every likelihood
that Jong-eun will complete the strategic policy
goals Jong-il left unfinished, including the
greatest ambition of Korean reunification. He is
the fourth leader in Korean history who would go
to war for territorial reunification of the Korean
Peninsula and the neutralization and eventual
phase out the US military presence.
No
amount of wealth or nuclear arsenal will take a
nation anywhere, unless proper national
stewardship is in place. The US and the European
Union are like giant, rudderless ships left at the
mercy of stormy seas, as exemplified by the fate
of luxury ocean liner the Costa Concordia,
which ran aground off the Italian coast.
Unlike in North Korea, American and EU
leaders are far from democratic and are completely
out of touch with their "99%". They seldom leave
official residences to mingle with their own
population. US President Barack Obama rarely
ventures out of the Beltway to meet ordinary
citizens.
Supreme Commander Kim Jong-eun
provides the Korean people, the Workers' Party of
Korea and the Korean People's Army with crucial,
highly seasoned statesmanship so they need not be
distracted from final push needed to see the
country reach its goal of flourishing nation
status.
Jo Kap Je, editor of a fundamental
conservative magazine Monthly Chosun, notes in a
March 1994 issue:
Despite the lapse of some 1,300
years between Kim Yu-sin (of Silla) and Kim
Il-sung, the two have one thing in common in
that they are the only two leaders in Korean
history that made up their mind to go to war for
the purpose of national reunification.
Only such a state as can decide to go to
war is able to deter war; only such a people as
can decide to go to war are equipped to have a
normally functioning country as responsible
citizens.
The late Kim Jong-il was the
second leader ready to fight a full-blown North
Korea-US war if there was the slightest violation
of North Korean territory by the Americans and
South Koreans.
Supreme Commander Kim
Jong-eun is also fully prepared to react to any
pre-emptive strike by the Americans, South Koreans
or Japanese, by launching immediate full-scale
long-range retaliatory strikes that would also
complete the territorial reunification.
The second most important asset Kim
Jong-il left is the resourceful and resilient
Korean people. They forced their way through an
arduous march in the 1990s in the spirit of
self-reliance, rallying rock-firm around the late
Jong-il in the wake of the collapse of the
socialist camp and repeated natural disasters,
sanctions - woes comparable to Korean War
hardships. Much to their joy, well-tested morally
and physically, the Korean people have never been
more closely knitted into a well-motivated,
disciplined contingent.
The population
indigenously produce sophisticated multi-spindle
machine tools, roll out a full range of high-tech
products such as supercomputers, PCs, flat-screen
TVs and smart phones as well as manufacturing TV
animations, pianos, accordions, all types of iron
and alloys, not to speak of portable light-water
reactors, power generators, railway cars,
satellite-launch vehicles, missiles, long-range
and short-range, radars, and all types of nuclear
warheads including hydrogen and neutron.
The third asset left by Jong-il is North
Korea's successfully gatecrashing of the two elite
space and nuclear clubs, which has enabled the
country to flaunt nuclear technology related to
nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, involving both
plutonium and uranium.
Under no
circumstances will the Kim Jong-eun administration
relinquish the revolutionary legacy of the late
great leader Kim Jong-il.
Kim Myong
Chol is author of a number of books and papers
in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea,
including Kim Jong-il's Strategy for
Reunification. He has a PhD from the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea's Academy of Social
Sciences and is often called an "unofficial"
spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.
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