利比亞的例子: 對北韓合適嗎？ UN Resolution on Libya: A precedent for North Korea?

조선민주주의인민공화국  리비아 

差五分鐘？Five Minutes to Midnight for Kim's family?

Many freedom and democracy advocates will have mixed feelings over the UN Security Council Resolution over its intervention in Libya. On the one hand it is hard not welcome the protection of civilians who would have been massacred in thousands, should the international community have remained passive while Gaddafi was killing people whom he probably regarded as personal property and who only deserved to be eliminated when they rebelled against his dictatorship. On the other, it is always with apprehension that many ordinary citizens will view the start of what can only be called a war against the Libyan government. Wars are not clean and painless interventions nor are they video games and the populations involved are always the ones suffering the most.
Let us sum up some facts:
— Libyans rose up against their dictator asking for his removal and the establishment of democracy.
— The movement was largely home-grown with, at first, little, or no logistical support from other countries.
— Their dictator was killing innocent populations indiscriminately, not necessarily protesters, and using military, police forces in a ferocious way out of proportion with the original protests. In particularly roaming in neighbourhoods and killing at random as a warning to the general population.
— What made the protesters strong was they had lost their fear of the Libyan regime, or more accurately fear was no longer enough to stop them from protesting. Many Libyans, however, were still too scared to even venture outside their houses or express publicly their dissatisfaction.
— The actions of Gaddafi's regime and family was increasingly being regarded as crimes against humanity by the international community including autocratic Arab regimes.
— The most recent news concerning Gaddafi is that he has not appeared in public for three days (at the time of writing), having supposedly retreated to his extraordinary bunker in Tripoli. Of course, he has called or forced his so-called supporters to come with children in hundreds to show up around his fortress using them a human shield against possible so-called "precision bombings" of his den.

No doubt all of these facts have not escaped the North Korean leadership. The North Korean grip on its own people is as powerful as was the Libyan's. The North Korean leadership rests within the preserve of one family and its intimate circles. As in the case of the Libyan government, some members of Kim Jong-il's  family have managed to use their country's money to invest abroad for personal gains as in the case of one Kim's son, Kim Jong-nam, who has sizeable investments in Macau casinos.
While the censorship had been nearly tight-proof for many years, it has increasingly been easier over the last five years for North Koreans to get access to foreign sources of information and technology which had been unavailable heretofore; in particular, South Korean soaps, Western movies. VCR players are deemed to be used by around 35% of the North Korean population. VCR players in North Korea are not being used to watch local programmes. While the world of South Korean soaps is somewhat removed from daily reality, South or North Korea, it is, nevertheless, a window into an alien world for North Koreans and has provoked them into believing, at least privately, less and less of their government's propaganda.
While many North Koreans, like Libyans, might be unhappy, there is no sign of rebellion except through the increased illegal border crossings into China and the much higher of refugees reaching South Korea. These are proof that the Northern Korean Dynasty is no longer frozen in a static state.
Kim's imperial rule circles are certainly aware now that, should the North Koreans find the strength to rise against their government, it would be difficult to kill them openly and quickly in numbers as Gaddafi's private army has been trying to do in Libya without some international outcry.
One of the primary factors that has made the UN resolution possible is the call of the Arab League for intervention in Libya. This, in turn, has made it possible for China and Russia to abstain in the UN Security Council vote.
There have been many rumours of preemptive agreements between South Korea and China over the granting of natural resources that would be reserved for Chinese companies in North Korea should the unification of Korea take place in tandem with a military free zone south of the Korean-Chinese border to allay Chinese fears of Western armies stationed too close to its southern border.
The North Korean continuous threats to world peace through its testing of nuclear bombs will certainly make many governments even more nervous than they were before Japan's nuclear disaster. Once Japan has managed to stand against on its own feet and there is no doubt that it will, it will certainly look at North Korea with a changed perspective. It could very well one the factors for international action on North Korea, should North Korea's population find the energy and the courage to rise.
The Japanese who have been following the radiation coming from Fukishima 福島. Another danger, as close to home, is North Korean missiles. Japan is well within firing range of North Korea.
Following the last famine, when for the first time North Koreans could travel across the country at will and with no police controls boarding trains as during the Great American depression, they discovered the real state of their country and forged new links. The regular smuggling of people, mobile phones and technology across the Chinese border has opened permanent cracks into the armour of the North Korean nomenklatura. Its days are numbered

The countdown has begun in North Korea, let's hope it won't then show us the same horrors as in Kampuchea.