Published By ... Man has learned to identify patterns in nature to help predict when certain activities will occur. Studying these patterns empowered him to know when seasons would turn, when the moon would wax and wane, when a solar or lunar eclipse might occur, etc. 

By studying nature’s patterns, modern man now can predict events that once seemed totally unpredictable, such as where earthquakes or tornadoes might wreak havoc. Today, “hazard maps” of the US plot out where future earthquakes are most likely to occur.  

While man has recognized patterns in nature, he seems disinclined to recognize them in human behavior—particularly when dealing with irrational foreign leaders. Unfortunately, “human hazard maps” based on a leadership’s consistently bad behavior are lacking to predict future actions. But then, where dealings with these leaders have a long history of consistently bad behavior, why would such a map be necessary? 

We should clearly know what hazards to expect in all future dealings with such a leadership for its bad behavior becomes even more predictable than nature’s. 

A country where the leadership has demonstrated such consistently bad behavior is North Korea. It is behavior that has confounded eleven US presidents, yet still seems now to baffle a twelfth.  

During the 64 years since its creation, North Korea has been led by three leaders of the same family—father, son and grandson. Kim Il Sung ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994; Kim Jung Il from 1994 until late 2011; and now, at 28, the youngest family leader—Kim Jung Eun.  

The Kim dynasty is firmly entrenched in power, maintained through a combination of cult worship and fear. This control formula works even though millions have died of malnutrition due to a government incapable of providing for its people. 

It works because the government has kept its people isolated—not only in terms of the flow of information but also in terms of providing them with any infrastructure to communicate among themselves. It works because the government constantly projects the image to its people it is a country targeted by hostile nations, such as South Korea and the US. 

It works because it convinces its people no matter how bad things may seem, conditions are much worse elsewhere.

Critical to feeding its people the party line that North Korea is victimized by other states is the need to create an environment projecting that perception. It is difficult, however, when allegedly hostile states just do not cooperate in promoting such a perception by their non-violent actions. Therefore, Pyongyang’s leadership has sought by its own violent actions to trigger a violent reaction. 

Initially, and we now know with encouragement from Moscow, it sought to do so, believing it could prevail, by launching an invasion of the South in 1950 to reunite, under Kim Il Sung, a divided peninsula. That started a three year war which ended in 1953 with an armistice. To this day, however, North Koreans believe the war was initiated by South Korea the US.

When the Korean War ended in a stalemate, the North fell back to lick its wounds and strategize how its leadership could ensure its own survival. The strategy mapped out involved keeping its people isolated from the rest of the world and developing a domestic philosophy that put the onus on them to be responsible for their own welfare. 

As a relatively new state—one in which Kim Il Sung was placed in power by Moscow—he knew, absent aid from his Soviet and Chinese allies, North Korea was unlikely to be able to provide for its people. So Kim Il Sung conceptualized the “juche idea”—a philosophy meaning self-reliance, i.e., the people are masters of the nation’s development.  

The juche idea was doomed from its inception, however, as it was mandated under very restrictive conditions. These conditions fostered no individual creativity, provided no individual freedoms and bestowed none of the individual rewards a capitalistic system grants to inspire high achievement.

After the war, Pyongyang embarked upon a pattern of provocations targeting the US and Japan but, primarily, South Korea. A list of these provocations illustrate the outrageous means the North employed to reach its desired end—i.e., the perception by its people the North was a nation in conflict with hostile nations targeting it. 

A partial list of the unprovoked acts of aggression it initiated include:

- Infiltrating thousands of armed saboteurs and spies into the South via land or sea (submarine insertion)—many of whom were subsequently either caught or killed;

- Attacking and seizing a US Navy intelligence ship (USS PUEBLO) in international waters (the ship remains on display in the North today);  

- Attacking US military aircraft in international air space—one attack downed an unarmed reconnaissance plane claiming 31 American lives; 

- Ambushing US and South Korean ground patrols in the South;

- Kidnapping hundreds of South Korean and at least eleven Japanese citizens (the former included a famous actress and her movie director husband to fulfill Kim Jung Il’s film fascination; the latter included young school children pressed into service to teach North Korean spies Japanese culture and language);

- Digging tunnels into the South large enough to provide troops and tanks access behind the DMZ; 

- Attacking, sinking or seizing South Korean commercial vessels;

- Committing acts of terrorism (including successful or attempted assassinations of North Korean defectors—one of whom was Kim Jung Il’s nephew—as well as South Korean citizens and high officials, with one such attack causing the death of South Korea’s First Lady during a third attempt against the country’s president; attempting to assassinate at least three other South Korean presidents not only in the South but in other countries as well; hijacking and/or bombing South Korean airliners and airports);

- Threatening South Korean commercial ship crews making humanitarian rice deliveries to the North either for failing to lower the South’s national flag, replacing it with the North’s, or simply for taking pictures while in the North;

- Abandoning international agreements not to develop nuclear weapons;

- Conducting provocative missile test firings with trajectories over Japan;

- Torpedoing and sinking a South Korean warship that claimed 46 lives;

- Conducting an artillery attack on a South Korean island.

It has taken immense restraint by the US, Japan and South Korea not to take retaliatory action against the North for these acts. That some of the aggression occurred during Seoul’s “Sunshine” foreign policy days of unilateral appeasement towards Pyongyang (1998-2008) should leave no doubt that, while the names of North Korea’s Kims leading the country will change, their bad behavior will not. 

During this Sunshine period, the South secretly paid the North almost $1 billion to hold a summit meeting in Pyongyang—which Pyongyang did but then reneged on its promise to hold a second meeting in Seoul after receiving full payment. Their monopoly on leadership guarantees the dynasty’s survival and its continued bad behavior unless its fall is triggered by other influences.

For the few months Kim Jung Eun has been in power, we see more of the same. 

US food aid talks, nearly concluded before Kim Jung Il’s death, were resurrected and concluded by Kim Jung Eun on February 29th. It included a promise to stop all weapons testing. The ink on the agreement was barely dry when Pyongyang announced it would conduct a long-range missile test in April—in direct violation of the agreement it had just signed. 

There has yet to be any agreement Pyongyang has signed that it has honored. Yet, after 64 years, we still have difficulty predicting future dealings with the Kim dynasty will generate anything but bad behavior.

Once again, we can plan on the North violating its most recent agreement by test firing a rocket in April. When it does, it should not take a rocket scientist to recognize Pyongyang’s pattern of bad behavior will not change a foreign policy built on aggression and lies. 

Still baffled by the North after six and a half decades, perhaps we do need a rocket scientist to tell us it will only be accomplished by a change of regime, making all future dealings with the Kim leadership senseless.