Kim had repeatedly nullified America’s superior military power first and foremost
It’s still (and will be for a while!) heatedly debatable if Kim Jong Il will and should be remembered as one of the most important leaders both nationally and globally, particularly with regard to the world’s anti-imperialist, self-determination and independence struggles.
However, this could-be controversial statement can be undisputedly substantiated by his strategically bold, precise and wise leadership which had repeatedly nullified the nonstop US military aggressions first and foremost.
Without any doubts, it’s now a globally-recognized fact, either approve or disapprove, that he’d successfully and brilliantly defended his nation from the undisputedly and unprecedentedly most powerful-ever Global Empire’s nonstop military threats and war attempts.
It’s a well-known and well-documented fact for over 60 years that US has also never given up to invade, destroy and occupy the north as they’ve successfully done it in the south since September 1945.
But Kim anyhow had defended his nation from the warmongering US but also successfully made the nonstop US-led global war propaganda [mainly by way of viciously cunning demonization which has been always accompanied by global media deception, media control (e.g., “manufactured consent”), disinformation, misinformation, false witnesses, lies, fabrications, and all sorts of “false flags” including the most recently fabricated Cheonan Sinking Incident in March 2010, etc.] dismissed, powerless, or failed.
Neither US-led global economic blockades nor all sorts of complete financial sanctions have worked. None had been able to kill their diehard and never-dying spirit of “self-determination” which most DPRK people deem much more important than their own lives.
For they’ve been determined to, under any circumstances, “independently” or “self-reliantly” overcome any form of military threats, political isolations, economic strangulations in the form of “chronic food, energy and power shortages.” Under such circumstances or conditions, most, if not all, nations and their peoples could have been impossible to survive not even for a few years.
However, for several decades now since early 1950s under the already then extremely difficult conditions due to the “completely ruined nation” of which its social infrastructures and national economy had been destroyed from those three years of America’s nonstop criminal aerial bombings and destructions, DPRK had not only survived but also even made year after year their political, military, scientific, ideological and even cultural power much greater than before.
This has been the historically identical case during the eras of both founding President Kim Il Sung and the first successor Kim Jong Il, except during the period of already-mentioned late 1990s in the previously published article, The 4th Media’s Exclusive Report from Pyongyang, DPRK (http://www.4thmedia.org/2011/12/25/the-4th-media-exclusive-report-from-pyongyang-dprk-2/).
However, under Kim Jong Il’s leadership, DPRK now claims they are even ready to show soon their now much greater, far better and scientifically far advanced and much more developed economic strength than before, particularly than the worst period of late 1990s when almost everybody in the world had readily predicted “North Korea will collapse within two three years.”
Under the constant military threats from US even with its vast number of most sophisticated nuclear weapons, as an absolutely-justified “right to self-defense” and as “a last resort,” Kim Jong Il had armed his nation with an undeclared number of successfully-built nuclear weapons. Of course he’s also successfully built an unknown number of ICBMs.
Now USA, Japan, South Korea and even other major global powers seem worrisomely anxious to find out how far DPRK has been able to advance their surprisingly already quite sophisticated weapon systems in terms of the world’s most developed military scientific technologies so far.
However, it seems correct to say that the great majority population of the world may not necessarily know what sort of prices and sacrifices Kim and his whole nation had had to pay in order to make that independent “nuclear power state” which possesses a “capability of nuclear deterrence” a reality.
After all the US-led continued demonization of Kim, his nation, most significantly his “military first politics” instead had made him paradoxically one of the most globally recognizable figures and even in some parts of the world as a “deeply revered charismatic leader both for his own nation and the world.”
Major global backgrounds and reasons why Kim has been revered in some parts of the world
Since the collapse of former Soviet Union in early 1990s, most of the world’s national leaders had been either subdued by or voluntarily surrendered their nations’ independence, right to self-determination and sovereignty to the unprecedentedly arrogant, lawless, and untamed “sole global superpower.”
Or, even before the demise of Soviet Union, some third world nations like Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, and Nicaragua in 1990 had been either militarily invaded or continuously destroyed by the US-sponsored terrorism. As well-known, their national leaders had been either killed (Maurice Bishop), imprisoned (Manuel Noriega) in US prison, or thrown out of power (Daniel Ortega).
Throughout the first decade of 21st Century, nations like Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, and Libya in 2011 had been even indiscriminately bombed thereby completely destroyed and ruined. Accordingly tens of millions of their civilian populations had been either murdered or maimed or displaced.
Now, at any moment, Syria and Iran as the two most urgent and dangerous cases in the Middle East like the case of Libya in North Africa only a few months ago are about to be either attacked or invaded by US/Briton/France/Israel-led imperialist coalition with their sold-out minions in the Islamic world headed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other GCC-affiliated kingdoms, unless those globally-organized gangs of nations as thieves and evildoers are stopped once for all by any means necessary.
Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, Venezuela, Yemen and many other third world nations have been either intervened already, threatened or warned by the overwhelming global superpower whose military strength has never been precedent in human history. Of course there are many other similar, if not exactly same, cases in other parts of the world such as in East Europe and Central Asia.
However, for some reasons and under any circumstances, US had not been able to make DPR Korea either feared or subdued or surrendered a bit. The US instead had miserably and repeatedly failed in its nonstop attempts to destroy this small, tiny, poor, isolated, mostly (80% of its land) mountainous nation whose age is now a little over 60, whose population is about one twelfth of US, and whose economic and military power is incomparably much (much more!) smaller than that of US.
But for some mysterious reasons, it’s been US, together with its client states, most notoriously Japan and South Korea who’ve been repeatedly either subdued or retreated or, in a way, defeated by this, according to their own propagandas as their own undying wishful thinking, “soon-to-be-collapsing nation.”
Ironically it’s been rather US, Japan and South Korea whose “regimes have been repeatedly changed” either by continued revolutions (both violent and nonviolent) in South Korea’s over 60 years of division history or by their so-called “free and democratic” elections in all those three nations.
Now there is no need even to talk about what are the real faces of their so-called “free and democratic” elections which have been, without exceptions, riddled with mass deceptions, media fabrications, all sorts of election frauds, votes bought by money or sold out to corporate business interests or dirty politics which are almost all the time involved with bribes, i.e., the money.
Korea where US Decline has begun in 1950s and still today
The Korean War in 1950-53 was “the first-ever war US didn’t win in its entire war history” which has been filled with mostly wars of aggression under the imperialist’s grand design of global domination. Until 1950, by then already a global superpower in its less than 200 years of history, US had never been physically deterred therefore prevented from furthering its military goals and plans until US directly faced DPR Korea in the 1950-53 war.
To make a long story short, let me just highlight here the most important fact that, no matter what and how things have happened, US has repeatedly failed to carry out its hidden but well-known mission to occupy the whole Korean peninsula by destroying the north for over 60 years.
Together with Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, Korea People’s Army successfully deterred first and then defeated America’s overwhelmingly well-equipped, technically far-advanced, and much bigger size in manpower together with its over a dozen minion nations under the US-led UN Military Command flag, particularly the unbeatable, undeterred, but undoubtedly superior air power in one of the most destructive, the most cruel, and the most criminal wars in the history of major global wars.
Until 1994, it was late Kim Il Sung whose leadership had made that arrogant global superpower repeatedly and miserably failed in its attempts to subdue, destroy or occupy this small but greatly courageous and proud nation.
However, after his death in July 1994, it’d been Kim Jong Il all by himself who’d succeeded the nation’s supreme leadership from his father who had founded DPR Korea. When he assumed the nation’s top leadership position then, his nation had had to face with and overcome the period known “the Second Arduous March” which was the most difficult moment with unimagiable sufferings and hardships in its entire history since September 9, 1948 when the DPRK was founded.
Dr. Kiyul Chung who is Editor-in-Chief is also a Visiting Professor at School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
(The special series on DPR Korea will continue in the following articles of DPR Korea, USA and The World: Part II and Part III which will be published in the following weeks.)