I have been reading about Hwang Jang Yop’s defection to the ROK in 1997, and his warnings and commentary about his time in the KWP and what should be done about it seems to be largely ignored by a lot of folks. For what reasons and what end is something I am not too sure of yet, but I have been looking to other high level defections from other former communist nations. One I knew nothing about and seems pretty well-known is a man named Ion Mihai Pacepa. This defection made news and apparently was used by the United States for information regarding the Soviet bloc. This led to a multi-million dollar price tag on his head. His story is very interesting, and am reading more about this man. Also, there is a lot more information about Ion Mihai Pacepa than Yuri Bezmenov other than the 1985 interview posted earlier this week. Therefore, I have a lot of reading to do.
So I looked him up to see if he was still alive, and apparently, is alive and well. He wrote a lot of articles for conservative-leaning magazines (FrontPage Magazine, National Review and some others) and wrote some books. One I just ordered today is called Red Horizons. I read the limited preview on Google Books and was instantly riveted. It told the tale of how things worked behind closed doors of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist Romania. This was in such detail (I am so used to little to no details when reading about the inner workings of North Korea) I could not believe my eyes. Once the limited preview was over, I was sorely disappointed and ordered the book. It was not that expensive $10 + shipping, but I will not like the wait for it to come to the door.
Now some may be asking why Romania and other former regimes when this blog is about North Korea. I am beginning to think there is some parallels and maybe some lessons to be learned. What can me gleaned from these other former regimes in respect to North Korea? I mean Romania had some similarities albeit Ceausescu’s imitation of other models of North Korea and China for instance. He had a huge cult of personality, a manufactured biography, and spending huge amounts of money on luxuries while others suffered greatly in his Utopia. In North Korea, there is a huge cult of personality, both Kims spend money for luxuries at the expense of the citizens, no tolerance for dissidents and a very closed off society. So my question is, how is Romania different or the same about North Korea? What can we learn from the mind of Nicolae in respect to Kim Il Sung and/or Kim Jong Il’s leadership? Maybe they are very different in many ways, but maybe history repeats itself. Perhaps this is something worth discussing further.
In the meantime, I will wait for this book, and if others have read this book or wants to discuss this further, by all means, let’s discuss it. Oh, and once I am done with the book, I will give my thoughts on it.
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