The North Korean Problem

By Todd Strandberg
Rapture Ready

North Korea has once again launched an unprovoked attack against South Korea. Last week, the North fired a barrage of artillery shells at the island of Yeonpyeong, killing four people and injuring dozens more.

In March, North Korea attacked a South Korean patrol boat and killed forty-six sailors. The North denied it was involved in the sinking, but investigators found overwhelming evidence pointing to a strike from a North Korean torpedo.

It is easy to see a clear pattern of escalation on the part of North Korea. For several years, Kim Jong Il alarmed his neighbors by either conducting a series of missile tests or by working on a nuclear program. The inability of the world powers to confront North Korea's reckless behavior has caused us to reach a point that Kim Jong Il is willing to kill people to draw attention to himself or his future successor, his son, Kim Jong Un.

Dr. Michael Stoil is the head of the political science department at the University of Guam. He says that this most recent attack has a lot to do with the succession of Kim Jong Il. The North Korean dictator is getting old and is looking to have his twenty-six-year-old son, Kim Jong Un, take his place.

“If Kim Jong-il and his son visited the artillery unit and were briefed on the South Korean naval exercises, they are likely to have given final approval on the bombardment two days later,” said Yu Ho-yeol, professor of North Korean studies at Korea University.

“The North must have propagandized the deadly artillery firing as Jong-un’s achievement to help him gain a stronger grip on the military and bolster its solidarity.”

The U.S. is playing a very dangerous game in always trying to maintain the peace. In the two times that North Korea attacked the South, America has only offered words of condemnation. President Obama will need to do far better than a military exercise and a ruling in the UN Security Council if he wants to get Kim Jong-Il’s attention.

We should have already learned that North Korea cannot be trusted. Past diplomatic efforts with North Korea have proven to be a waste of time and money. In the 1980s, for agreeing to freeze its nuclear program, Pyongyang was given two light-water nuclear reactors to generate electricity and, until the reactors were operational, five hundred thousand metric tons of oil annually (nearly half its annual needs). The United States taxpayers helped pay for these lavish gifts.

During the years North Korea was receiving oil and food assistance, it was secretly completing two reactors capable of yielding weapons-grade fuel. When North Korea announced in 2004 that it had nuclear capability, it became clear that Pyongyang had played us for fools.

Just a few days ago, inspectors where shocked to find that North Korea has built a sophisticated uranium enrichment plant. A couple years ago, the Western media proudly showed images of North Korea destroying a plant used to make plutonium. At the time, I had stated that this was just a ruse, and now we all know the truth.

This weekend, I watched a video on YouTube entitled: "Explorer: Inside North Korea." It was extremely unsettling in how it showed the average North Koreans are in a state of total mind control. They worship the Kim Jongs as if they were gods, and the North Korean military would rage war to the point of committing national suicide if the “Great Leaders” ordered them to do so.

The stand-off between North and South Korea may eventually end very badly. There is no direct reference to North Korea in the Bible, but there are clues about what might happen. We are told that the kings of the East will invade the Middle East. The name seems to imply that the whole region will be unified into vast army of two hundred million soldiers.

War is likely, because you can depend on the depravity of dictators. Saddam Hussein faced a coalition with vastly superior firepower, and yet he still refused to back down. Because North Korea is a land ruled by evil, its leader will eventually give into the most evil of thoughts. We may be witnessing the final stage of this madness.