Kyle Mizokami and Matt Bors.

Click through to revisit our Kim Jong Il Comix, created by Kyle Mizokami and Matt Bors to celebrate Dear Leader’s eccentric approach to war.

Kim Jong Il. Via The Asia Society.

by THE DIPLOMAT

The Diplomat speaks with Scott Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, about the reported death of Kim Jong Il.

Q. Was there any indication, or any rumors, that Kim Jong Il’s death was imminent?

A. In fact, Kim Jong Il had been keeping a relatively rigorous schedule, and it seemed like he had recovered better than many had expected during 2011.

Q. Speculation is now bound to turn to the succession. His youngest son, Kim Jong Un, is seen as the most likely successor – can we assume that he will be taking over?

A. Kim Jong Un has clearly been designated as the successor, fully backed by Kim Jong Il and his family. He has been named the head of Kim Jong Il’s funeral committee. It’s likely that there’s a collective leadership system in place to manage during the transition, but all developments over the course of the past year have signaled that Kim Jong Un is the expected successor, and that he has been gaining power within the North Korean system in preparation for taking on this role.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

By Matt Bors and Kyle Mizokami.

Kim Jong Il. Via China Defense Blog.

North Korean president Kim Jong Il was in China this week, and China Defense Blog has the photos to prove it. This could be very good news. “Analysts say Kim’s trip … would be aimed at seeking badly needed economic aid from China, and the North in return may feel bound to return to long-stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks hosted by Beijing,” AFP reports.

China is North Korea’s major ally and its most important source of food and energy.

The North angrily quit the talks in April last year and vowed to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium. It carried out its second atomic weapons test the following month.

Related:
Kim Jong Il Comix #1
Kim Jong Il Comix #2

By Matt Bors and Kyle Mizokami.

Related:
Kim Jong Il Comix #1

MSNBC photo.

by KIM JONG IL

Occasionally I am asked, “Kim Jong Il, why did you develop your own nuclear weapons?” Usually my answer is, “To use them on people who ask stupid questions.” I never see these people again. Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.

Terrifying sarcasm aside, the question deserves a fair answer, and I’m happy to share it with you.

It’s a Family Thing
When I took over the country in 1993, I had big shoes to fill. Dad was Kim Il Sung, a.k.a. the Great Leader, architect of the Korean socialist revolution, instigator of the Korean War, and true president of all of Korea. Dad was a rock star. I was considered a drunk, a playboy, a clown — and there were all sorts of stupid, libelous, completely baseless rumors about me that ended up being true.

By now all of you have seen the video of mourners weeping and breast-beating at the Great Leader’s state funeral. Will the same people mourn my passing and honor me as much as they mourned my father? That question has dogged me my entire life.

Now I have my answer. Those mourners will mourn me even more than they did my father. I got North Korea into the nuclear club. Everyone here is so proud. Only nine countries have nuclear weapons. As great as Dad was, he didn’t produce nuclear weapons. No, the drunken playboy clown did that. So there.

Deterrence
As I’ve stated in previous columns, my military has been running down since the end of the Cold War. All military equipment gets old and obsolete, and the timer on my stuff has been ticking down since 1990. That was 20 years ago. I started enriching uranium in the mid 1990s, knowing that I would need something to buttress my diminishing military capability.

A lot of people in the West think I have no concept of deterrence. That is not true.

If I didn’t understand deterrence, I would have tried to invade the South a long time ago, back when I had a chance. I would have launched my entire army across the border and not really have understood that the Americans would have come to stop me. Oh, I was deterred all right. And now it’s my turn to deter you.

In 2002, there were four countries on America’s crap list. Since then two of them got invaded, and a third is presently under threat of air attack. The fourth country was North Korea. Perhaps not coincidentally, the only country that America and it’s allies haven’t gone after is the one with nukes.

I Like Money, I Get Money
One of the best things about nukes is that they’re money in the bank. The rest of the world is willing to pay me to stop my nuclear program, and to get the point across they have tried to seduce me with foreign aid. “Look at how nice things can be for North Korea,” they seem to be saying. Well, things are already pretty nice for the only person whose opinion counts: me.

I have cleverly — if I may say so myself — shaped the international effort dedicated to stopping my nuclear program into paying me to merely talk about it. I have built a nice little buffer into the system wherein I really get paid for doing nothing at all. It’s like those advertisements on the Internet for jobs where you sit around at home all day and get paid a lot of money. “Those jobs don’t really exist,” you snort. How naive you are! I have one. I don’t need all of the aid that will come if I drop the nukes. That’s not worth it to me. I like the little inducements plenty. Keep them coming. Or I might stop … talking.

Relevance
North Korea may have done a lot in the last 60 years, but let’s face it: we’re still the smallest country in Northeast Asia. Taiwan is bigger. Remember Taiwan? Used to be a big deal, before China’s rise? Even North Korea is mentioned more often in the news, and it isn’t because of our electronics industry.

Well, that’s it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of guest columns. I’ve laid it all out on the line for you as plainly as I could, and even toned down the self-congratulation. What you all do with this information is up to you. As for Mr. Axe, forget about him, he’s learning an honest trade. See you on Twitter!

by KIM JONG IL

Between 1999 and 2009, I have sent my antiquated navy to the so-called sea border numerous times. These usually end up as staring contests between one ship and another, but sometimes gunfire is exchanged. Although there was one instance where my navy managed to sink a South Korean ship, usually it doesn’t fare so well and I end up having my ass handed to me.

You might think that a losing streak like that would be an intolerable loss of face. Guys like me don’t handle failure well. You might think that having my ships back down or come off second-best would be a personal outrage, and that not only would heads roll, I would throw more money at the problem and, you know, actually make my navy good.

The truth is, I couldn’t care less.

Why, might you ask, do I bother picking a fight when the odds are against me winning? Well, let me ask you a question: do I look stupid? What would I possibly have to gain by winning? Why would I even want to win, when my opponent will always build bigger, better ships? And even if I were to wipe the mat with South Korea’s navy, the U.S. Navy will come to their rescue. Game over. Forever.

When I want to make a point, I make it at sea. I prefer it at sea because it’s easier to control. If I send one hundred troops over the border to turn up the crazy and break the knob off, they could cause a panic if they’re too successful. The Americans and their lackeys might worry that I have one hundred thousand troops in the area — they just can’t see them. Then, somewhere a WMD detector accidentally goes off, a flight of birds is mistaken for one of my An-2 Colts loaded up with a nuke, and suddenly I’m getting bombs dropped on my head.

It’s easier to see the enemy coming on open water than it is in the mountains of the DMZ. Do you think I’ve ever caught the South by surprise with my sea raids? I doubt it — actually, I hope not. Can they count exactly how many ships I have in an area? Yes. Can they see more ships coming, if I send them? Absolutely. I can make the point that I want to make, with little room for misinterpretation. Especially the misinterpretation that gets bombs dropped on my head.

Woody Allen, an American film director who shares my passion for Korean girls once said, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” How true this is. It does not matter if I win or lose at sea. In fact, it’s better for me if my ships sink, or at least limp away trailing smoke. Yes, my navy was beaten, and sent home with its tail between its legs. But at least it was there.

What is the point of all this? That I am a force to be reckoned with, not because of my military power (which even I will admit is turning into a joke) but because of my unpredictability. The loose cannon is the one that gets attention. All of this low-level stuff is meant to get across the idea that while I’m not crazy enough to start a war, I am an unstable element that needs to be dealt with. You can deal with me with a war or by just shoveling foreign aid at me.

That may sound like a dangerous choice, but I think we all know what’s cheaper for you. Funny thing, that’s what I prefer, too.

(Photo: Atlantic Council)

Related:
Kim Jong Il on Strategy
War Is Boring‘s Newest Contributor: Kim Jong Il

by KIM JONG IL

In this second post of my guest column, we’ll discuss strategy. We’ll discuss what my ultimate strategic goal is, and I’ll talk about how I’m trying to get there.

Webster’s Dictionary defines strategy as:

the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war.

That’s pretty close to how I view strategy. Let’s look at that again:

the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies Kim Jong Il in peace or war.

There, that actually makes sense.

My strategic goal is simple: survival. My strategy is this: to use all the resources of North Korea, as well as what aid I can get from South Korea, China, and the West, to keep me alive so that I can die in my bed, on my own terms. Not rotting in a jail cell in The Hague like some kind of freak, or cowering in a bunker with concrete dust falling on my head. Most importantly, not used for target practice by my own people like my friend, Nicolai Ceausescu.

I’m not stupid, those are the ways despots like me wind up.

You were expecting my goal to be world conquest? Storming across the DMZ to liberate the Korean peninsula from the United States and its lackeys in Seoul? Crossing the Tsushima Strait in a 500,000-man swimming contest and subjecting Japan to epic wilding? Gee I’d love to do those things, but in the process of molding my country to serve me exclusively, I kind of broke it.

Dad and I used to have conquest as a strategic goal, back when our army had food, and our air force had gas. The end of the Cold War changed everything. The Soviet Union did a lot for us — I mean, North Korea. All of the free, and heavily subsidized stuff that Dad and I depended on to keep a ridiculously large, disproportionate army stopped coming. The Soviet Union acted out of a sense of shared ideology. Its replacement, Russia, doesn’t, and it doesn’t like being repaid in counterfeit $100 bills or my new flatfish-and-yam dish.

My economy has been slowly going down the toilet for the last 30 years. The window for me coming across the border probably closed in the early 1990s. Since then, it’s been pretty clear the best I can do is survive. I built nukes because I realized I could no longer defeat South Korea, and they were a cheaper and more in line with my strategy of self-preservation than maintaining my ridiculously large army.

Hasn’t it been obvious? Why do I prevent my people from getting even the tiniest glimpse of the outside world? To prevent them from becoming properly angry at the extent to which they’ve been conned. Wheres my perestroika? Ask Nicolai how that turns out. Why I do build nukes? To keep the U.S. and the West at bay. Why am I cranking out the Special Forces and teaching them to use IEDs? In case the U.S. and the West come into North Korea anyway.

Some have been so fixated on me coming over the border they haven’t realized that I’ve long since circled the wagons. From my point of view I’m alone, encircled by more powerful countries, and there is no cavalry coming. Under the circumstances, the sanest thing to do is to act crazy.

(Photo: Blogue.us)

by KIM JONG IL

Hello. My name is Kim Jong Il. I’m the ruler of North Korea.

You may have heard of it. North Korea is the real Korea, not the fake player Korea that makes its headquarters in Seoul. North Korea has the fourth largest military in the world, as well as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Not bad for a nation of only 24 million people.

I was born on a mountain under a double rainbow to my father, Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader of North Korea. I took over running the country when Dad moved on to that great Central Committee in the sky, and have been trying to steer my own course ever since. It’s been a lot of laughter, sweat, and tears, but that and the Juche Idea have forged a nation that’s quite proud of me.

Recently I started a Twitter feed. Perhaps you follow it, or read about it in The New York Times, the Telegraph, The San Francisco Chronicle, or dozens of other mouthpieces of Western imperialism. Even Wired’s Danger Room gave me a write-up.

The takeaway is that I’m kind of a big deal. But I also have an image problem. I read a lot of Internet news and commentary, and I’m beginning to realize that isolating yourself from the international press may not be the best thing. People can ascribe all sorts of crazy things to you. “Kim Jong Il wants to blow up teh world” commentary is not productive. I do not want to blow up the world, not even just your half.

As you know, I am a big fan of American movies. In Cool Hand Luke, a film depicting everyday American village life, the mayor says to comrade Paul Newman, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” That is exactly the problem I have with the West.

President Barack Obama recently sent a letter to me expressing … well, I’ll let you know when I get around to reading it. It’s a nice gesture, I guess. In return, I’m going to live up to my reputation of being a man of the people by taking my message straight to the Western public. Over the course of the next few weeks I intend to post my views and explain how I see the world so that you might understand me better.

My thanks to David Axe for providing this venue for my views. I promise I will release his large Korean family for visiting purposes as soon as this series is completed. (He didn’t even know he had one. Isn’t that funny?)

Kim Jong Il is a graduate of Kim Il Sung University and the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Chairman, National Defense Commission of North Korea, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of North Korea.The views he expresses here are entirely the opinion of every single person living in North Korea and the owner of this blog.

(Photo: The Independent)