Kim Jong-un playing out dictator fantasies in a new world

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From an opinion piece in LA Daily News:

After a brief hint that he might be a regular fella – producing a pretty wife allowed to be photographed in public – North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un has reverted to the weird ways of his pops and gramps, fellow supremes.

As if we lived not in the real world but in a “Batman” episode, he now refers to America as “the arch-enemy.” He makes a special point of saying that the new inter-continental ballistic missiles his military are testing are designed to reach the U.S. of A. What a sweetheart.

The rhetorical saber-rattling is not so worrisome, but the missiles are. New Secretary of State John Kerry’s “Korea Desk” scholars will have their hands full figuring out the balanced approach that will bring the new Kim down off his ledge.

Google is making inroads in increasing the flow of information to the rest of the world about a nation that has been closed in on itself for generations. …And there’s something serious about this new flow of data where previously there was little. Kim can try to keep his nation closed to the outside world. But it’s a different world than the one in which his father and grandfather played out their dictator fantasies. He can’t stop the flow of information any more than King Canute could hold back the tide.

This entry was posted in , by Grant Montgomery.

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