Kim Jung Eun Is Focus Of North Koreans' Anger

From One Free Korea:

Kim Jong Eun Becomes a Focus for North Koreans’ Anger


Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 19, 2010 at 5:42 am · Filed under Resistance, Kim Jong Eun



Interesting report from the Chosun Ilbo:



Nonetheless, starving families are said to have swarmed local party headquarters and protested, and even local party officials are openly complaining. Provincial party officials in Chongjn, North Hamgyong Province, and Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province, effectively stopped working, telling party headquarters there is nothing they can do if there is nothing to eat.



With rumors spreading that Kim Jong-un led an unpopular “100-day struggle” and “150-day struggle” that pressed people into service on the farms and even the currency reform, public disaffection is reaching critical mass.



A recent North Korean defector said people are openly calling Kim Jong-un “an immature little bastard” who is “more savage than his father.” Anti-government sentiment prevails among college students in Pyongyang and other major cities, who say the dynastic succession is a feudal practice and a betrayal of socialism.



Kim junior has become a sort of lightning rod for discontent, and earlier hopes for change seem to have been abandoned, the defector said. [Chosun Ilbo]



If these reports describe the sentiment of even half of the North Korean people accurately, you have the perfect environment for an insurgency to rise. First, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the regime. Second, there is an absence of effective government.



If an organization rises to snyc up the discontent among the people and oppose terror of the anjeonbu and the bowibu, enough people will be inclined to join that opposition to pose a real threat to the regime’s authority in those areas.



Insurgencies prosper amid anarchy. Wherever the state fails to govern and provide, a well-funded organized opposition movement could move in and quietly assume the role of governance. The opposition could harness existing trade and smuggling networks to resume food distribution, and the supply of clothing and medicine. It could pay the doctors and nurses and stock their clinics. It could pay mechanics and obtain tools and parts for their use. Where the government can’t govern, the opposition would be able to subvert the regime’s infrastructure with little violence, and without most of those collaborating with it even realizing it until they were already implicated. Insurgencies that rise by trying to shoot their way to power usually fail. Insurgencies that rise as shadow governments are very difficult to uproot.



If you want to know how we get Kim Jong Il and Hu Jintao to negotiate in good faith, we do it by acquiring influence inside North Korea and threatening the stability of the regime