June 16, 2000

12:01 PM

If this little manwith the funny haircut has the courage to abandon the policies of his father, there is a chance within three years to witness one of the greatest triumphs of human spirit in recent memory.
posted by netbros (3 comments total)

Up to this point, he's seemed just about as bad (as least from the news our capitalist masters manufacture for us). But here's to hoping. Seeing the pictures from North Korea over the last few years is more depressing to me than any of the shit going down in Africa. Makes me value the freedom and affluence I squander playing Void on my Palm . . .
posted by sylloge at 12:13 PM on June 16, 2000

Gee, he's the Nixon of North Korea. Sure, he may have been part of a neo-fascist regime, but only he could go to South Korea and make it work.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 1:04 PM on June 16, 2000

Bizarrely, one of the advantages of autocracy is that you can sometimes get an enlightened autocrat who does more to reform a nation than even the most well-meaning and charismatic democrats. It happened with Meiji in Japan, and with Atatürk in Turkey, and while it can only be a stepping-stone, we can only hope that there's something in the psyche of this undoubted eccentric that makes him want to be more than his father's son.
posted by holgate at 2:23 PM on June 16, 2000