That’s a lot of gushing there by President Duterte over North Korea President Kim Jong-un: gallons of praise for the dictator US President Trump had called the evil rocket man.
Fortunately, the Philippines is not among the countries that will negotiate with Nokor over the nuclear bombs with which only a few weeks it held the world hostage.
Peace in the Korean Peninsula will be explored by Nokor and South Korea along with the United States and China, a circle which may later be expanded to include Russia and Japan.
‘Time will tell’
Even US President Trump wrapped in caution his tweet on the historic event at DMZ in Panmunjom village: “Good things are happening but only time will tell.”
It would be silly, even “laughable” (as Oliver Lewis of “Spectator” put it) if Kim would give up his nukes after all the time and resources spent and trouble faced to build the stockpile. He would need the bombs now more than ever.
Kim is “well-versed in the dark art of politics,” who honed, as his dad and grandfather before him did, the technique of “exciting the West with prospects of peace, securing concessions and then reverting to the hawkish stance.”
Negotiating “from a position of strength,” he could disband some of his troops and rely on his ICBMs for offense or defense.
Change of stance
He may have undergone a change of heart, as Duterte indicated. Veteran watchers of the Korean conflict don’t think so: a mean leader at the core, he could be just putting play-acting on the world stage because his strategy requires it.
He doesn’t need to make loud bullying noise anymore. It’s a change of stance, not character. A shift in strategy, not in the goal for regime and country.
Did he just pull a “master stroke”? Yes, if world leaders wouldn’t see through the charade and instead applaud the performance.
‘Brutality’ in Nokor
Kim is not only a leader who terrified the world with his threat of hell fire and extermination. It’s not just that he sports a bad haircut. He is also accused of heinous crimes.
Last December 2017, three eminent international jurists, with the support of the International Bar Association, recommended that Kim be prosecuted. The panel said he committed 10 of the 11 internationally recognized crimes against humanity. Our president is far behind Kim on that.
Kim and his officials allegedly maintains political prisons that hold 80-130,000 inmates, in which murder, torture and persecution are “a system and practice.”
The panel, citing “detailed satellite images and corroborated testimony of former prisoners and state actors,” says its findings are “beyond doubt.” The report followed an investigation of United Nations in 2014 that came up with the same conclusion.
Choice of idol
Why would one choose Kim as his idol, given the kind of leader that the Nokor president is pictured by critics and independent observers? Kim is the “sort of character,” Spectator’s Lewis says, in “Game of Thrones” who’d torture and kill close family members who pose a threat to him. An allusion to the killing of Kim’s half-brother Kim Jong-nam by nerve gas at the Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017.
A number of people must have been impressed by the act he played at the Panmunjom summit. Others would cling to the hope Kim is a reformed despot and bully.
No idol or hero
Those who’d deal with him more closely aren’t so quick to revise their assessment of Kim. Japan’s Shinzo Abe in effect said he’d believe denuclearization when he’d see it done.
Diplomats have the line for erratic world leaders like Kim: “engage with guarded optimism.” And, yes, the region’s top villain may still be far from being idol or hero material for anyone who loves peace and humanity.