Like most Americans, my knowledge of North Korea and its commie-pinko dictator, KIM Jong Il, is based on news stories and recollections of American Heroes that fought on that bitter land in the 1950’s. (Bull particularly notes the service to our Nation of Tom Harbin, Sniper, USMC. Many thanks, Tom, for your service and for all you taught me.)
After the news of North Korea’s threats of a nuclear attack on the U.S. I thought I’d take a closer look. “Know thy enemy.” We have had to fight these bastards once. Sooner or later we will have to do it again. Perhaps “sooner”.
I shamelessly swiped the following from the CIA “World Factbook” website. Lots of good info there on all nations and nothing is going to violate National Security, unlike those traitors at the New York Times.
North Korea:
- Population: 23,113,019 (July 2006 est.)
- Government type: Communist state one-man dictatorship.
- Executive branch:
- Chief of state: KIM Jong Il (since July 1994); note – On 3 September 2003, rubberstamp Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) reelected KIM Jong Il chairman of the National Defense Commission, a position accorded nation’s “highest administrative authority”; SPA reelected KIM Yong Nam president of its Presidium also with responsibility of representing state and receiving diplomatic credentials; SPA appointed PAK Pong Ju premier.
- Head of Government: Premier PAK Pong Ju (since 3 September 2003); Vice Premiers KWAK Pom Gi (since 5 September 1998), JON Sung Hun (since 3 September 2003), RO Tu Chol (since 3 September 2003).
- Cabinet: Naegak (cabinet) members, except for Minister of People’s Armed Forces, are appointed by SPA.
- Elections: last held in September 2003 (next to be held in September 2008)
- Election results: KIM Jong Il and KIM Yong Nam were only nominees for positions and ran unopposed. (Amazing, isn’t it? *wink*)
- Legislative branch:Unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly or Ch’oego Inmin Hoeui (687 seats; members elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms)
elections: last held 3 August 2003 (next to be held in August 2008)
election results: percent of vote by party – NA; seats by party – NA; ruling party approves a list of candidates who are elected without opposition; some seats are held by minor parties. - Judicial branch: Central Court (judges are elected by the Supreme People’s Assembly)
- Constitution: Adopted 1948; completely revised 27 December 1972, revised again in April 1992, and September 1998. (sounds like what some idiots want to do here in America…)
- Legal system: Based on German civil law system with Japanese influences and Communist legal theory; no judicial review of legislative acts; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction.
- Political Parties and Leaders: Major party – Korean Workers’ Party or KWP [KIM Jong Il]; minor parties – Chondoist Chongu Party [RYU Mi Yong] (under KWP control), Social Democratic Party [KIM Yong Dae] (under KWP control)
- Flag Description:Three horizontal bands of blue (top), red (triple width), and blue; the red band is edged in white; on the hoist side of the red band is a white disk with a red five-pointed star.
- Economy – overview: North Korea, one of the world’s most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel. Despite an increased harvest in 2005 because of more stable weather conditions, fertilizer assistance from South Korea, and an extraordinary mobilization of the population to help with agricultural production, the nation has suffered its 11th year of food shortages because of on-going systemic problems, including a lack of arable land, collective farming practices, and chronic shortages of tractors and fuel. Massive international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape mass starvation since famine threatened in 1995, but the population continues to suffer from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions. Large-scale military spending eats up resources needed for investment and civilian consumption. In 2004, the regime formalized an arrangement whereby private “farmers markets” were allowed to begin selling a wider range of goods. It also permitted some private farming on an experimental basis in an effort to boost agricultural output. In October 2005, the regime reversed some of these policies by forbidding private sales of grains and reinstituting a centralized food rationing system. In December 2005, the regime confirmed that it intended to carry out earlier threats to terminate all international humanitarian assistance operations in the DPRK (calling instead for developmental assistance only) and to restrict the activities of international and non-governmental aid organizations such as the World Food Program. Firm political control remains the Communist government’s overriding concern, which will likely inhibit the loosening of economic regulations.
- Currency (code): North Korean ‘won’ (KPW)
- Exchange rates: Official: North Korean won per US dollar – 170 (December 2004); Market: North Korean won per US dollar – 300-600 (December 2002)
- Radio broadcast stations: AM 17 (including 11 stations of Korean Central Broadcasting Station), FM 14, shortwave 14 (2003)
- Television broadcast stations: 4 (includes Korean Central Television, Mansudae Television, Korean Educational and Cultural Network, and Kaesong Television targeting South Korea) (2003)
- Internet country code: .kp
- Internet users: N/A
- Military Branches: North Korean People’s Army: Ground Force, Navy, Air Force; Civil Security Forces (2005)
- Military service age and obligation: 17 years of age (2004)
- Manpower available for military service: males age 17-49: 5,851,801; females age 17-49: 5,850,733 (2005 est.)
- Manpower fit for military service: males age 17-49: 4,810,831; females age 17-49: 4,853,270 (2005 est.)
- Manpower reaching military service age annually: males age 18-49: 194,605; females age 17-49: 187,846 (2005 est.)
- Military expenditures – dollar figure: $5 billion (FY02)
- Disputes – international: China seeks to stem illegal migration of tens of thousands of North Koreans escaping famine, economic privation, and political oppression; North Korea and China dispute the sovereignty of certain islands in Yalu and Tumen rivers and a section of boundary around Paektu-san (mountain) is indefinite; Military Demarcation Line within the 4-km wide Demilitarized Zone has separated North from South Korea since 1953; periodic maritime disputes with South over the Northern Limit Line; North Korea supports South Korea in rejecting Japan’s claim to Liancourt Rocks (Tok-do/Take-shima) (…and now the nuclear weapon/ICBM issue ~Bull)
- Refugees and internally displaced persons: IDPs: 50,000-250,000 (government repression and famine) (2005)
- Illicit drugs: For years, from the 1970s into the 2000s, citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea (DPRK), many of them diplomatic employees of the government, were apprehended abroad while trafficking in narcotics, including two in Turkey in December 2004; police investigations in Taiwan and Japan in recent years have linked North Korea to large illicit shipments of heroin and methamphetamine, including an attempt by the North Korean merchant ship Pong Su to deliver 150 kg of heroin to Australia in April 2003.
That’s it for now. I’ll see what else I can dig up on these ‘Idiots led by a Madman’. Frankly, just once I’d like to see one of these dictatorships bear the FULL and UNRESTRAINED might of the United States of America. No quarter asked or given. Just to teach the World a lesson they should have learned some sixty-odd years ago.
Bull, out.
