North Korean analyst: We’ll be the next Asian tiger by 2012
North Korean scholar and unofficial Kim Jong Il spokesman Kim Myong Chol writes in the Asia Times on the glorious success of Dear Leader’s visit to China and throws in a mighty bold prediction: A closer bond of friendship and solidarity that bands together two nuclear weapons states goes a long way to keeping ...
North Korean scholar and unofficial Kim Jong Il spokesman Kim Myong Chol writes in the Asia Times on the glorious success of Dear Leader's visit to China and throws in a mighty bold prediction:
North Korean scholar and unofficial Kim Jong Il spokesman Kim Myong Chol writes in the Asia Times on the glorious success of Dear Leader’s visit to China and throws in a mighty bold prediction:
A closer bond of friendship and solidarity that bands together two nuclear weapons states goes a long way to keeping the peace in East Asia. The enhanced ties coincide with two major developments in the global balance of power.
One is an International Monetary Fund forecast that China will become the world’s number one economy in 2016, downgrading the war-weary and reluctant US into a humiliating second place. Leaderless Japan finds itself reeling from the poorly managed nuclear power disaster, while South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak and his administration are shivering in their shoes at disquieting signs of their lame-duck syndrome given their successive election defeats at the hands of disgruntled South Korean voters.
The other is a growing strong likelihood that a 2006 Citigroup prediction of North Korea becoming the next Asian tiger will come true in 2012. North Korea’s successful and self-reliant bid to join the world’s third elite club, one of thriving nations, will demonstrate once again for all to see that the US policy of hostility has only benefited Kim Jong-il, prompting his heroic people to rally him under the banner of his songun policy of putting the military first.
That CitiGroup report is real, though it significantly doesn’t predict a date for North Korea’s economy to take off and says it’s contingent on political reform. More to the point, it was written before Kim’s government took the brilliant step of wiping out whatever meager wealth his country’s nascent private sector had managed to amass in one fell swoop.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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