Redstate

By streiff Posted in Contra Tyrannum — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

UPI is running a story which is a South Korean denial of a Japanese report that Kim Jong Il is under house arrest amidst some sort of drama in Pyongyang.

Japan's Jiji Press said Kim was absent from Pyongyang at a time when his aides were involved in an intense power struggle.

Kim may be under house arrest by the military, possibly at his luxury villa at Wonsan on the east coast, the news agency said, citing an unidentified South Korean source. Or he may have suffered a decline in his health, it said.

Or he may not.

We don’t know much about the inner workings of the DPRK. During the late 1970s the DPRK conducted a national mobilization exercise and it only came to the attention of US and ROK intelligence services some weeks after the exercise had terminated.

Strange things happen in North Korea. Actions that would be considered the products of a bad batch of hash, such as hijacking sovereign ships on the high seas, axing foreign military officers to death, attempting the assassination of the president of a neighboring country, kidnapping foreign nationals, blowing up the cabinet ministers of a neighboring country, trafficking in counterfeit currency and methamphetamine as national policy, etc. all happen with monotonous regularity in North Korea.

This is probably not much more than a rumor, but aren’t we entitled to imagine…