Call this “North Korea for Dummies”. The most important thing to remember abut North Korea is that the Kim family mafia behave like idiots because they literally have no choice. Kim, his aunts, uncles and generals spend their lives trying to figure out how to keep from falling off the anthill in Pyongyang. They know that if there is even a crack in their isolation, a whisper of “normalization” — they are finished. A tidal wave of ideas and prosperity will sweep them away for ever. That’s because the North Korean political and economic model cannot survive sensible interaction with the rest of the world. That’s why Little Kim is always screaming at us. He might as well be saying, “Stay away, stay away. I’m nuts.” The second (and last) thing to remember about North Korea is that the Chinese embarrass themselves daily with their hand-wringing. The wise guys in Beijing have made an enormous mess of North Korea. Let them have the courage to fix it. Sure, it will require some heavy lifting but they owe it to us, to themselves and especially to the benighted 25 million souls who struggle to find food in the sad place next door.
