Michael Sheridan and christian "would-be investors in an experimental free trade zone" slipped into Rajin, DPRK, for a Rupert Murdoch-owned
Times Online article, "Chairman Kim's dissolving kingdom" Jan. 30.
Sheridan is a right-wing ideologue, one of the dumb ones: "The secret police cannot staunch the word of the gospel," he writes, then smirks: "Two of our party turned out to be Christian businessmen who had come from China carrying wads of cash."
Sheridan describes a pair of North Korean "snowbacks" sneaking across the border, an armed, fortified, Berlin Wall that serves as a model for the wingnuts' vision of a Mexican-American dividing line.
It was a desperate risk to run in the stark glare of the winter sunshine. We had just seen a patrol of Chinese soldiers in fur-lined uniforms tramping along the snowy bank, their automatic rifles slung ready for action.
The "snowbacks" made it to shelter. Sheridan recaps most of the current Kim dynasty gossip, forming, in his words, "a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse." To recap:
- the death of Kim's favourite mistress last summer;
- a security clampdown on foreign aid workers;
- a reported assassination attempt in Austria last November against the leader's eldest son, Kim Jong-nam;
- "signs of instability" inside the political establishment from Japanese intelligence;
- predictions of a feud among the elite as they strive to seize power from Kim, from the same Japanese intelligence source;
- Kim's brother-in-law, Jang Song-thaek, was purged from party office after he tried to build up a military faction to put his own son in power;
- mystery fate of Vice-Marshal Jo Myong-rok, the soldier once sent as Kim's emissary to meet Bill Clinton in the White House.
Sheridan's juiciest gossip:
The dictator's favoured heir apparent, his son Kim Jong-chol, 23, who was educated in Geneva, is reported to have staged a shoot-out inside a palace with Kim Jang-hyun, 34, an illegitimate son of Kim Il-sung, father of the dictator and founder of the dynasty.
Kim is slow to dispel the rumors. Nor is he keeping up with contemporary clothing styles, apparently:
...the bouffant-haired dictator is wearing the same clothes as in photographs from two years ago, suggesting that they [the photos] may have been taken then. Observers await Kim's official birthday, February 16, to see if the state media accord him the usual fawning adulation.
Sheridan describes an heroic Christian network of "underground railroad" contacts assisting North Koreans to escape. Christian-wing democrats are urged to read the story, Sheridan's account is fairly dramatic narrative.
Karl Rove might have written some of Sheridan's DPRK-spin:
Bush's re-election dealt a blow to Kim, 62, who had gambled on a win by John Kerry, the Democratic candidate. Kim used a strategy of divide and delay to drag out nuclear talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea through 2004.
Paranoia and brainwashing remain the regime's most effective tools. Yet even as it tries to fight off God it has made its peace with Mammon.
On a freezing night when Rajin was sunk in gloom, its oil refineries empty, its power stations inert, one building stood ablaze with lights on the bleak seashore northeast of the city.
It was a casino, where slate-faced Chinese gamblers squandered thousands of dollars at the baccarat table while impassive guards scrutinised them for any hints of dodgy play.
This diary started as a comment in JenOK's North Korea Sold Uranium to Libya? Hmm... earlier today.