There are three lessons to be learned from what’s
happening in the pitiful, totalitarian madhouse known as
North Korea.
• First, it serves to verify the objective of the
logic of Marxist-Leninist collectivism based on a single
party, central planning and autarchy or economic
nationalism.
In 1953, by the end of the Korean War, provoked by Kim
Il Sung’s expansionist madness with the complicity of
Mao’s China and Stalin’s Soviet Union, the two Koreas were
destroyed. At that time, both countries had a per capita
income lower than that of Honduras, then the poorest
country in Latin America.
Today, 60 years later, South Korea’s per-capita income
is $32,400 (twice that of Chile, Latin America’s richest
country), while North Korea’s barely rises to $1,800 (half
of Nicaragua’s, the poorest country in Latin America.)
Every year, South Korea produces 18 times the goods and
services, per capita, that its neighbor to the north
produces, although they both share the same ethnicity and
culture and have similar levels of education. They are
twin brothers made different by two antagonistic systems
of organizing society.
With an economy based on the market, competition,
private property, multiparty politics, democracy,
commercial openness and respect for individual rights,
South Korea has integrated into the First World,
eradicated poverty and is one of the engines of the
planet, with more patents and scientific articles
published annually in specialized magazines than any Latin
American country.
North Korea, which does the opposite, is the world’s
worst and poorest tyranny. (It would be useful if the
cheerleaders of 21st-Century Socialism made note of those
differences.)
• Second, North Korea serves to verify how a
political and social disaster of that magnitude, once it
manages to develop nuclear weapons (something that
happened with China’s irresponsible help), becomes
invulnerable and can extort its neighbors or the United
States with the threat of provoking a nuclear catastrophe
that would kill tens of thousands of people. A drunken
monkey wielding a razor may be very stupid but is
extremely dangerous.
• Third, it serves to confirm the Israeli theory:
It is suicidal to allow the theocracy in Iran, a country
led by fanatical imams, to develop nuclear weapons. Ali
Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has said it often: “This
cancerous tumor must be removed from the region,”
referring to Israel.
Khamenei, the iron-handed oncologist, is intent on
resorting to atomic surgery. He doesn’t have to consult
with anyone. According to the Iranian Constitution, it is
up to him to declare war or peace. Sovereignty does not
rest with the people or Parliament. Sovereignty belongs to
Allah. Ali Khamenei, the nation’s top ayatollah, is the
interpreter of Allah’s voice. He can and wants to pull the
trigger.
The American theory of containing or isolating Iran
will not work, as it hasn’t worked with North Korea.
Washington can coexist with a nuclear Iran, as it did with
the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, because it
was obvious that no nuclear attack perpetrated by either
country would wipe out the United States.
Israel is a lot more vulnerable. No one doubts that
Jerusalem has the strength to counterattack and pulverize
Iran or any other Islamic country that may attack it with
nuclear weapons, but the damage it might suffer would be
ghastly. After all, Israel is a small country with a
population of no more than 7 million. An atomic hammer
blow could wipe it out altogether.
We need to look into the North Korean mirror and act
before it’s too late. Time is running out.