Newz of the World ein sehr schöner Podcast über eben jenes, hat in Folge 10 u.a. über Nord Korea und den anstehenden Satellitenstart im Rahmen des Programms zum 100. Geburtstag von Kim Il-Sung gesprochen.

Ich habe daraufhin im Blog ein wenig kommentiert, aber leider ist der Kommentar noch nicht freigeschaltet. Daher an dieser Stelle:

I just want to give some comments about the part about North Korea. The name of the leader is Kim Jong-Eun (depending on transcription type you choose it can be Kim Jong-Un as well). The J is spoken like in “jungle”. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an example for the “eu”…and I’m not good in the phonetic alphabet… :(

2012 marks the 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the great leader and eternal president. NK said for a pretty long time now, that they will be a “strong and prosperous country” until 2012 (well…at least in the propaganda).

The problem with the satellite launch is that they show with that, that they have a developed a working long-range model. The Taepodong-1-missile was shot over Japan to show, that they can reach Japan. Now with the Taepodong-2 they want to show that they can reach the US (Alaska iirc) with their weapon arsenal. Since North Korea always uses a kind of blackmail to get what they want, this is obviously part of it.

The US won’t launch a military attack against North Korea because nobody in the region has an interest in that. China is afraid about tons of refugees, South Koreas capital Seoul is in range of the artillery of NK and a unification would be far pricier than that of Germany (the last estimate that I read was 2.5 times pricier than that of the unification of Germany). Japan could be targeted by NK as well. And China won’t approve of a war against NK, they are still kinda allies, even so NK is in the minor position and China could probably do something about the state of the country. After all it seems that the last travels of Kim Jong-Il to Beijing was about getting Beijings blessing for Kim Jong-Eun as a rightful heir of the leadership. And like Richard J. Samuels once said in a talk he gave at the Free University of Berlin: If NK wouldn’t exist, it would have been invented. With such an enemy available you can give a lot of things a reason (i.e. security policies). Ah, and I doubt that Kim Jong-Eun is better than his father and grandfather. Nobody knows yet what is influence is, but after the dead of Kim Jong-Il the borders got shutdown tight and punishments for border-crossings got harsher and more strict. But I have to admit that I do not know what the current state of the borders to China are. They might be opened up a bit after the mourning phase was over. NK also stiffened the control of foreign media which is one of the main influences which could lead to a change because it shows that the propaganda is completely wrong. Thus I doubt that Kim Jong-Eun is a new generation that will bring betterment to the country.