By Bonnie Kristian
The liaison office which has served as a de facto embassy between North and South Korea since 2018 collapsed in ruin Tuesday, blown to pieces by the Kim Jong Un's regime.
Kim’s ostensible reason for the demolition was the distribution of anti-regime leaflets in North Korea by defectors who now reside in South Korea. “The recent foolish act of daring hurt the dignity of our supreme leadership,” the government said a statement published in North Korean state media. “The world will clearly see what severe punishment our people will mete out to the South Korean authorities and how they wipe the human scum off the earth.”
But the South Korean authorities neither distributed the leaflets nor supported their distribution, as Pyongyang surely knows. The Kim regime’s “punishment” is misapplied. We might blame this incoherence on the rot of despicable totalitarianism, but the recent history of North Korean behavior suggests another explanation: Pyongyang destroyed the liaison office because its diplomacy with South Korea and the United States has stalled. As a fundamentally weak regime with few options for getting what it wants, North Korea is attempting to shock negotiations back into motion.
This piece was originally published in Washington Examiner on June 19, 2020. Read more HERE.