No grief is felt here, the old monster is dead. I’ll let Christopher Hitchens deliver the eulogy.
Let’s all hope is successor is a bit less vile.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
No grief is felt here, the old monster is dead. I’ll let Christopher Hitchens deliver the eulogy.
Let’s all hope is successor is a bit less vile.
I hope North Korea will be able to access the internet now.
It reminds me of Horton Hears a Who… when the little voice finally got out to the outside world…
Hitch was in fine form as usual.
Will the little heaven on earth cease to be such a tyranny, ever?
Hard to say, really. One problem being that North Korea never has really known freedom, and has done its best to prevent its citizens from learning about it.
At least it’s not likely to get worse, being near the bottom of any kind of humanly-tolerable society.
Glen Davidson
Video: TeamAmerica – So Ronery
His apparent successor, youngest son Kim Jong-un, was educatated in Switzerland. Whether this will have an impact on North Korea’s relations with the rest of the world remains to be seen, assuming he actually gets to take power.
Well, this provides N. Korea opportunity to finally create a trinity.. I think that they were feeling a little inadequate with only a duality in Kim Il Sung & Kim Jong Il.
I was about to suggest that that might not be possible… but such a comment is doomed to being proved wrong, in an awful manner.
People are saying Kim Jung-un is actually much more vile.
One day you’re Kim Jong Il, the next day you’re Kim Jong Dead.
@6:
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Shit What Now?
In other news, Kim Jong Il is still dead.
At what point do we call North Korea the fucked-up absolute monarchy it is?
Video: BBC – Retrospective
How does a young, untested and un-trusted (by the military) 20 something year old prove himself. I doubt it will be good from here
GAAAAAAH! Why couldn’t he have died like a week ago? Hitch would have LOVED to see this. : /
I was sitting here in my Jr. High teacher’s lounge (here in Japan) when I read the news. The teachers didn’t say too much, but smiled when I said “I hated that son of a bitch!” The Japanese teacher are much more polite than I today…
I also wonder what Kim Jong-un has in store for his nation. I worked and lived in Israel for a number of years and remember when both Jordan and Syria passed their leadership down to the sons upon the death of their fathers.
Both were educated in “the west”. One has worked out (moderately) well. The other appears just as ruthless and vile as his father.
Also, I can’t express how utterly disappointed I am that Kim Jong Il outlasted Hitchens. What a great opportunity it would have been for Hitchens to properly and thoroughly eulogize the man.
“At least you can fucking die and leave North Korea” unlike the eternal worship in Heaven. Hitch wins again.
falstaff says:
*groan*
Kim Jong il, baron of hell on earth, dead at 69.
He will not be missed.
I don’t think this country will improve anytime soon. North Korea will have a horrible uphill struggle, and I doubt its next leadership will be better.
I will miss Hitchens, so very much. I thought the audience’s laughter was very ill-timed on many of his points – I took his entire speech as grave and serious. I would have preferred it without the audience noise.
On the passing of Kim Jong Il, he got off easy. In his case I could only wish for eternal torture. Maybe experience the slow, painful death of all the infants and children who died of malnourishment and starvation – each and fucking one of them. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter – I have little hope for the civilians of North Korea – I don’t know what it will take to shine a ray of hope in that forsaken place, but it’s not with the passing of this guy – and whatever it is, it’s a long time coming I suspect.
I say carve up Kim Jong Il’s body and feed it to starving North Koreans, as his final service to them.
My condolences to his family and loved ones. And my hope for the people of N. Korea that his son isn’t a bugfuck crazy evil tyrant like his father and treats them like human beings.
Good thing religion isn’t true so we don’t have to suffer the horrific fate that Hitchens paints a picture of if it actually were true. Unfortunately, the North Koreans haven’t been so fortunate; I only hope that the North Koreans will be released from their hell with a new leader.
I have been expecting this for a long time of course, but I am not looking forward to this. It is difficult to say where the country will go from now. We live in interesting times. Hopefully it will not be too interesting.
I kind of want to go over to the Korean Friendship Association forum and see what they are saying but I am not sure I can stomach it at the moment.
@Travis
Well, I will tell you what I think personally as an ethnic Korean. Frankly, I don’t know what to feel. While I lived most of my life outside of South Korea, I am still concerned with the situation there. My relatives live in South Korea, and a destabilization of the region could end up harming them. Seriously, I internally freaked out when that artillery bombing happened a while back. Sure, the chances of full scale war is small, but any amount of chance is too big of a chance for my family there to end up hurting.
Anyways, the thing is, while I am glad that a horrendous monster like Kim Jong Il is gone, the uncertainty of what’s next is making me nervous. It could lead to North Korea getting better or it could be the beginning of worse things to come. I really don’t want to think of what could happen if things destabilize.
ibyea,
I understand what you are saying. I certainly worry about the situation destabilizing now. I have three cousins living in Korea. The DPRK can be a frustrating country to read about because there is so little information about how decisions are made and what is going on internally, so we sit here mainly waiting to see what happens.
I figure they either loved and respected him to the end in which case they can go fuck themselves or they emotionally distanced themselves from this monster long ago, in which case they don’t need my condolences.
Either way, fuck him.
Ibeya “Anyways, the thing is, while I am glad that a horrendous monster like Kim Jong Il is gone, the uncertainty of what’s next is making me nervous. It could lead to North Korea getting better or it could be the beginning of worse things to come. I really don’t want to think of what could happen if things destabilize.”
and the way things are at the present we probably won’t be able to tell for some time what is going on, there is so much we do not know and have very little ability to influence anything. Yes one tyrant has died I see very little that would expect anything rational. My heart goes out to for the people . Lets us hope that the countries that surround the North use there own wisdom.
uncle frogy
I’ve always wondered why the religious want God to exist so badly, all the dictators with God complexes pretty much showed what such an eternal heavenly dictator would be like.
If they really wanted that kind of treatment, why didn’t they just shift to North Korea or Iran.
Once saw a documentary that interviewed an American visitor to North Korea thrown in prison for making a remark about the dear leader. He simply asked, ‘Why is everyone here so thin when Kim Jong Il is so fat?”. He was two weeks in prison before the embassy got him out.
How cowardly of them to suppress the news of Kim Jong Il’s demise as long as Hitch is alive.
But on a serious note, I don’t dare to say that it can’t possibly get worse. It wouldn’t make sense for Un to start an all out holocaust, but who knows what these people think…
PZ, you misspelled “its”. ;)
An odd mix of deaths, our Havel just died too, feels like the 21st C. has really begun, after a decade-long warm up.
OT:
CNN, who do you have writing for you? *facepalm*
Umm, no… that’s his family name. It’s no surprise that a son has the same family name as his father. Kim Jong Il’s son’s name is Kim Jong Un.
I hope you don’t really mean that. He was a monster and good riddance to him, but no-one should be put through torture as punishment for anything, ever.
Good news.
Is Francisco Franco still dead?
The King is dead, long live the King
I hope the new king at least makes an attempt at feeding the people.
They are a sorry and poor bunch of highly delusional people who think that they still have it best on earth.
One thing to remember is that North Korea has the fourth largest standing army in the world.
@ Kim Jong-un
My prediction is that you will soon die in an unfortunate car crash and be mourned by the nation.
Here is another idea you might try: Lease your entire country to China. They own you as it is. Give it about thirty years. You will be safe, South Korea will be safe (you could even reunite at the end). The Chinese are good at honouring this type of agreement (think of the 99 year leases of Hong Kong and Macau). Win-win-win and everyone is happy.
Fail to think out of the box and you better fasten that safety belt reeeal tight.
One Tyrant less in the world. I hope this means the beginning of the end for that ghastly regime.
Good riddance to evil “Ronri” rubbish.
Pity there probably isn’t a hell for Kim Jong-Il to go to and get his just deserts. Maybe not for an infinite time but certainly for a long enough one.
Great to see so many evil excuses for “men” fall from power or die this year – Gaddafi, Mubarak, Osama bin Laden and now Kim Jong-Il.
Here’s hoping that Syrian sad-ass Assad, Fidel Castro & Iran’s Ahmadinejad soon follow them into the grave – preferably dying miserably, painfully and in public humilation at the hands of their own people – or US / Israeli forces.
Some people make the world better by their presence in it – others make it worse by their presence in it.
Kim Jong-Il was one of the latter.
Raises beer to the world being rid of him, hopes North Korea will follow East Germany into history soon as possible and its poor and inniocnet citizens can recover from their lifelong brain-washing and ordeals.
As for North Korea’s guilty power elite – hope they join the “dear leader” human piece of shit in miserable death ASAP too.
QFT.
I don’t expect any change at all for the people of DPRK as long as the leadership continues to live inside the bubble that is solely geared to maintaining their power. If you’ve seen pictures of Kim Jong-Un, you’ll notice that the North Korean famine has completely passed him by.
One shouldn’t speak il of the dead.
Somehow I don’t think the young ‘un will last long in power.
My quick prediction for North Korea?
10% — to shore up the military’s supprt, North Korea defends itself by invading South Korea.
30% — military coup followed by a military dicatatorship (with a 50% chance of a civil war as two or three generals decide to fight it out to determine who gets to be the next supreme leader.
30% — North Korea continues to drift through abject poverty and into full destitution (in other words, no change)
10% — A North Korea Spring (and I think I am overestimating this) to be followed by a civil war (with a 50% chance of it spilling over into South Korea).
20% — Total economic collapse followed by civil war (with a 50% chance of it spilling over into South Korea).
I have a very positive feeling about North Korea’s future. I am positive that, within the near (25 years) future, nothing good will happen for the people of North Korea.
Let us all have a double helping of tree bark in his memory.
Worryingly, North Korea have alread test fired a short-range missile, east into the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
I heard that the North Korean leadership has sent a thank you letter to Richard Dawkins. Apparently, they didn’t have to go to the trouble of composing a eulogy for their Dear Leader Once Removed. They simply copied and pasted from Little Lord Fauntleroy’s website, and then ran a search and replace on ‘Hitchens’ and ‘Kim Jong ll’.
Gilliel, I think you mean, “The Kim is dead; long live the Kim.”
A lot of people have commented on how the personality cult of the Kims resemble a religious cult. But it struck me that the reverse is also true. Kim Jong Il really is very much like the Christian/Muslim/Jewish god. You are supposed to scream his praise incessantly, and anyone who doesn’t go along will be sent to Hell. The only difference is that Kim Jong Il (and his Hell) actually exist.
This after you have watch the video above? Think before you post… tadpole…
Well, the trifecta is now complete. Kim Jong-il is now the sacrificial son of the trinity, and now all that’s left is for his youngest son as the holy ghost incarnate..how fun. A new cult is starting. Sure, you don’t need religion when you have cult-of-personality to worship. What does it matter if your religious views are non-existent when you still don’t have critical thinking? Ultimately, forced atheism like the kind during the Soviet Union will backfire. They key is the proper tools for freedom of the mind. We all have to come to it on our own, not because someone told us, but because we come to understand that we don’t need to invoke something supernatural to explain the universe. Let the poor fools living under the yoke of an authoritarian dictatorship or something not much different than it, a religion/cult, remain ignorant. Our job is to work tirelessly and vigilantly to promote critical thinking and the scientific method. Also, satire, and other mock forms of comedy help as well. We want the ignorant to know they’re ignorant and in the fringes, and are being laughed at for their stupidity.
You know, if this were Discworld, I could imagine the gods sitting around the board in Dunmanifestin, saying, “Well, they just lost Hitchens – I guess we need to balance it out. Who’s a righteous bastard on the side of ignorance?”
@BrianX #12: Yes, I’ve thought for some time that North Korea is a Communist monarchy.
Back in the 1980’s, I remember someone calling it a Communist monarchy on account of Kim Il Sung wanting to be succeeded by his son. How true that was. Not only did that happen, it looks like it’ll be happening for Kim Jong Il also.
Disgusting as Kim Jong-Il was, was he wrong to develop nuclear weapons? The one sure way to avoid an invasion by the US is to have a weapon they’re scared of. From the country autonomy perspective, I’d have to say he made the right move there. Now if he had actually given half a fuck about any of the people of his country, that might have been a good thing.
With a garnish of blades of grass.
With sawdust cookies for desert.
IANAD (I am not a despot), but it seems like a sound tactical decision. It got the US to talk to him again after all.
IANAIO (I am not an intelligence officer) but wouldn’t that be suicidal? I was under the impression that SK’s military budget dwarfs NK’s entire budget and that invasion is highly unlikely.
Coyne linked to this amazing documentary of a seemingly cool American dude (plus a camnera guy, of course) who managed to travel to North Korea as a tourist.
Amazing.
I wouldn’t describe the North Korean necrocracy as atheistic.
It has a lot of suspiciously religious elements. Isn’t Jong-Il’s father considered a god ?
Saying the North Korean imposed dictatorship is non-religious is akin to saying that chinese folk taoism, and other forms of ancestor worship, are not religions. It would also redefine mormonism as non-religious, since they also believe their ancestors have become gods on their own private planets.
North Korea is best described as a communistic theocracy.
Religions are not strictly restricted to various forms of middle-eastern monotheistic cults.
@Ing
While I think that North Korea would lose in a second Korean war due to old equipments and starving soldiers, I think it would be a very deadly war for South Korea. It would probably be a pyrrhic victory.
As well as the World’s worst dictator, we’ve just lost the World’s greatest sportsman. Apparently when Kim Jong Il played his first ever game of golf, he scored 6 holes-in-one. Tiger woods, tremble in your boots…
The more I see of NK, the more it looks like a nationalised religion. Those people weeping n the street are genuine; they really believe that stuff.
It is times like these when I sometimes wish there were an afterlife. As several commenters above have posted, no one deserves as eternity of torment.
However, I would not mind at all if it were possible to create a grand sum total of every iota, every yoctosecond, of suffering this man caused and make him experience it in one long continuous session. As a thought exercise I’ve run this simulation using rough numbers for people like Hitler, Mao Tsetung, Stalin, etc and come to the conclusion that several tens of thousands of years in something resembling the Christian Hell would not in fact be disproportionate.
It’s simply a question of causing back the exact amount of suffering they caused, no less but no more. It’s just that they caused so very much of it. Am I a sociopath?
In his case I could only wish for eternal torture.
I hope you don’t really mean that. He was a monster and good riddance to him, but no-one should be put through torture as punishment for anything, ever.
Yes, I absolutely mean that. I have no defense – but with all my heart I wish he had suffered like those under his iron fist.
Yes. But it would not be the first time a government has led a country into a suicidal war to quell domestic disorder.
(and I was never an officer)
25 people who though Lil’ Kim just died.
Now all we need is an evil dictator whose name is similar to Nicki Menaj to die.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44805190#null
Yeah, I don’t regret my wish for Kim Jong Il to have suffered like those under his rule. Not at all. I am glad I live in a society where vigilante justice is curbed by the law – but doesn’t make the anger, horror, disgust, and desire for punishment any less.
The Kim is dead, long live the Kim. (That’s what a newspaper said last time.)
Fat Kim follows deranged Kim
– Austria’s biggest (and worst) newspaper today.
Anyway, theophontes wins – I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that’s in comment 42. :-)
…which actually took place in exile in Siberia, not on that holy mountain in North Korea. But never mind.
I’d say “dyslogize”. :-)
That would be majorly counterproductive in most or all of these cases.
My brother predicts that one day the North Koreans will ask why only one of them is fat, and then the Kim dynasty will end like Ceauşescu. And then South Korea will inherit the bankrupt country that produces nothing but cement and low-grade heroin, and there will be desking of heads and palming of faces.
…which is… not soon. The Germans are still paying for their reunification, and compared to North Korea East Germany was positively rich.
X-D
While they don’t have Internet or foreign TV, there are now a million cell phones in the country. So, who knows.
ROTFL! It’s true! Kim Il-sung is still the president of North Korea!!!
*lightbulb moment*
Ahmadinejad? Would simply be replaced by the clergy (in totally free elections the candidates for which are hand-picked by the clergy). Remember, he’s not even commander-in-chief; Khamenei is.
*looks stupid*
Because of, uh, technical restrictions, I commented first and watched the video afterwards. In case anyone else hasn’t seen it yet, necrocracy and thanatocracy are Hitchens’ coinages, and Hitchens points out that Kim Jong-il was the head of the party and the army but not of the state.
Damn it all the good jokes have already been taken. Even Franko.
Next dictator to topple? No idea, but I really hope it’ll be the Belarus fucktard. Not that I would complain to see Poland liberated from the Catholic fascists, but that seems unlikely, since the people actually like that.
Yes, would have been cheaper and safer to just buy them from Israël. It’s not like anyone would ever know. Israël doesn’t have the bomb after all, so they can’t sell, and North Korea is selfsufficient so they would never buy it.
My, but propaganda is fun.
Public service announcement: Sili would make the perfect evil overlord. Do not, I repeat: not, trust him with death rays or even just nookular missiles.
Poland is getting better by the decade. One word: Palikot.
@ David M.
Awwwww…. *blushes* … Thanks, I owe you more beers.
I am actually quite serious about this. I do think it could work. The problem is more – who can broach the subject without dying in a nasty car crash?
The Chinese could break the news, but would need complete agreement from the South Koreans. The real problem in North Korea is perhaps that they are at the point of fragmentation in the upper echelons. China would have to get them together and threaten to play hardball. This would be a bit out of character given their historical relationship with North Korea.
China could make huge gains in prestige and also defuse an explosive situation on their (back) doorstep. Huge investments in infrastructure by the Chinese could be offset by (time limited) concessions there. This would be a massive boost to the Chinese economy. Lifestyles in North Korea would boom and South Korea would gain security and, in future, reunify with a strong NK. And the fat gnome would get to live.
(Another sweetener to get the generals to jump the fence: Install them in luxury villas in their own compound on Hainan Island (The “Hawaii of China”). They can get liquored and oppress each other ’til the cows come home.)
North Korea is best described as a communistic theocracy.
no, it really isn’t.
it’s best described as what it actually is, which is a totalitarian dictatorship.
has nothing to do with communism, socialism, or religion.
China could make huge gains in prestige and also defuse an explosive situation on their (back) doorstep. Huge investments in infrastructure by the Chinese could be offset by (time limited) concessions there. This would be a massive boost to the Chinese economy.
actually, both the US and Japan have been begging China to do this for decades now, but the Chinese simply refuse to do so.
probably just because it was suggested by the US and Japan.
China is still the ONLY hope for North Korea.
as I wrote on TET
I don’t think it is very realistic, even the North Koreans are fiercely protective about their Korean identity and nationhood.
BTW, you do know that the Korean nation is split in three? There is an autonomous Korean region just across the border from North Korea (Yanbian), (personal anecdote omitted) which used to be part of Kogyureo. Chinese control of any more Korean territory would just be inconceivable.
Also, Ichthyic, even China only had limited traction in N.K. There have been instances where N.K. would even frustrate China by its intransigent behaviour. So don’t make it sound like N.K. would do whatever China wanted it to do…