Why North Korea is Number One.(Brief Article)

A couple of months ago, the White House held a screening of a movie about the life of Varian Fry, the great prewar humanitarian who rescued innumerable artists and writers from Nazified Europe. Several current leaders of humanitarian and relief organizations were invited and one of them was presented to President George W. Bush. "What," inquired the chief executive, "is the worst country in the world?" "Congo, Mr. President," came the reply. "Oh yes--I had that Paul Kabila visit me recently. So, what's the second worst country?" "Afghanistan, Mr. President." "Right--where them loonies shoot up the statues."

Picking the worst country in the world is not unlike choosing rogue nations--a parlor game that is open to interpretation, whether informed or not.What goes to make up a real hellhole? The chief ingredients are tyranny, chaos and corruption, but in most countries, the lack of one tends to mitigate the presence of the others. An authoritarian state can bring stability and order; on the other hand, chaotic countries are more likely to have governments that are not very good at repression.

In Baghdad I have been sickened by the pervasive feeling of fear while feeling reasonably confident that, if I was knocked down by a car, an ambulance would come. In the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, I realized there would be nobody to call. Some dictatorships, like China, are tough on crime as well as any form of disorder; Tiananmen Square on an average day is very controlled but also very safe. Whereas in Zimbabwe, which used to be my favorite African nation, the state now uses criminal elements for "law enforcement." Nor should one forget the systems and societies that are perfectly open, unless you happen to be a member of the wrong "race" or religion.

Yet there is one place on earth that is home to all these forces of misery: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Into this tiny space has been packed the worst combination of absolute despotism and utter breakdown--a weird coincidence of totalitarianism with state failure.

It's the totalitarian aspect that strikes you first, as it did me when I visited North Korea last winter. Fifty years of ultra-Stalinism have made the very idea of a private life almost unthinkable. Every move and utterance is planned and scripted, with an entire people endlessly mobilized for a cult of hysterical adulation. The president of the country is a dead man named Kim Il Sung, whose rotund visage glares from every wall. All other official leadership posts are held by his son Kim Jong Il, whose birth is said to have been attended by miraculous signs and portents. All films, all books, all newspapers and all radio and television broadcasts are about either the Father or the Son. Everybody is a soldier. Everybody is an informer. Everybody is a unit. Everything is propaganda.

There are no minorities in North Korea, but that doesn't mean its society isn't intensely chauvinistic. Children are drilled to think of Japanese and Americans, in particular, as monstrous. It is forbidden for citizens to have any ...