Gordon Chang's Thoughtful Analysis Leads Imus to Sick Thoughts

It was “a real thrill” for Gordon Chang, a Korean affairs expert and author, most recently, of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World, to appear with Imus, who returned the sentiment by wondering how Chang got booked on his show in the first place.
 
Yesterday’s shelling by the North Koreans of a disputed South Korean island they believe is theirs was inevitable, in Chang’s view. He believes action by the United States and South Korea this past March against North Korea, which had just torpedoed the Cheonan, a South Korean frigate, could have kept the isolated Communist nation at bay.
 
The U.S. is now sending an aircraft carrier, the George Washington, to the Yellow Sea for naval exercises with South Korea, but Chang noted that it was a bit too late. “We were supposed to do that after the sinking of the Cheonan, and China publicly warned us not to do that,” he said.
 
As a result, the U.S. appeared weak against China. “It looked like we were intimidated,” Chang said. “They didn’t say what would happen, but they said the United States shouldn’t do this, this is provocative. They then defended North Korea.”
 
China was the only country to defend North Korea after it sank the Cheonan, an attack they deny despite forensic evidence to the contrary. Had the United States been more aggressive, Chang believes North Korea would not have acted out just 36 hours ago.
 
He chided President Obama for bad diplomacy, but lauded the efforts of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who he thinks would have taken a stronger position. “Clinton has been pretty tough on the Chinese, and really because the region wants her to,” Chang said. “Because they’re worried about China being really belligerent.”
 
Though North Korea, led by nutty little Kim Jong-Il, has lobbed shells periodically into South Korea over the years, they had not killed a civilian, as they did yesterday, since the mid-1990s.
 
“This is something that is really going to unite the South Korean public against North Korea,” Chang said, and credited Obama with doing the right thing by declaring the U.S. would stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with the South Koreans.
 
Beyond sending naval support, the U.S. could impose the financial sanctions against North Korea that were put in place in 2005 by President George W. Bush, which would cut North Korea off from the global financial system. South Korea could also help itself by ordering that companies operating in the Kaesong industrial zone, just north of the Demilitarized Zone, leave the region because their presence “provides enormous amounts of cash to Kim Jong-Il personally, and to senior members of the regime,” Chang said.
 
Chang feels Obama is not particularly interested in foreign policy outside the Palestinian region, and has therefore kept Asia “on the back-burner,” and isn’t “doing things that somebody who’s paying attention would do.”
 
Kim Jong-Il is an easy target for jokes, based on his strange behavior and his uncanny resemblance to a shorter, fatter Elvis Presley, but Chang insisted he’s very cunning. “He and his dad run this really miserable little country, and we’re a superpower, and yet they always get the best of us,” Chang said. “For six decades they’ve been prevailing over us, so these guys have got to be pretty clever.”
 
This most recent skirmish will likely disappear, Chang said, but he predicted continued aggression by the North Koreans until somebody stops them. Imus, however, was stopped mentally by an unfortunate image of Kim Jong-Il and his son and successor, Kim Jong-Un, “sitting around with their pants around their ankles, watching porno, and the world’s spinning out of control!”
 
Hilarious!
 
-Julie Kanfer