North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il may be barking mad. Or, he may be a clever master of deception. As BBC News writes, “analysts are undecided whether his eccentricities mask the cunning mind of a master manipulator or betray an irrational madman.”
Kim Jong-il Abuses Human Rights
Balbina Hwang, was born in South Korea and is now a Senior Policy Analyst at the Asian Studies Center. In July 2006, she talked to The San Francisco Chronicle about Kim: “Do I think the man is immoral? Yes I do. Do I think he’s a despicable human being? Yes. But, that does not make him crazy.”
One aspect of his character is without dispute – the man is immensely cruel. He is responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses among current world leaders.
In February 2009, Kay Seok wrote in The Korea Times (that’s a South Korean newspaper) of “routine public executions or the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of people, including young children, in prison camps.”
North Koreans Endure Famine under Kim's Rule
Kim has misruled his country so badly that famines are frequent. One of the worst started in the mid-1990s and lasted until 1999, when The New York Times reported that more than two million people had died.
Kim’s response to the famine was outlined by Jerrold Post of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency when he directed the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. Post said that Kim ordered “several hundred thousand people displaced by the famine ... herded into camps where conditions allowed few to survive.”
And, while this was going on Kim, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, “feasts on menus that feature the finest sushi from Japan, caviar from Iran, and cheese and cognac from France;” apparently, according to other reports, quite large quantities of cognac.
Psychoanalysis of Kim Jong-il
Jerrold Post is now a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University and a former psychological profiler for the CIA. In his 2004 book, “Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behaviour,” he profiled people such as Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro. He also covered Kim Jogn-il.
In his earlier CIA dossier, Post wrote that Kim was the man who plotted an attempt to kill South Korea’s president in 1983 and the 1987 bombing of a Korean Airlines flight that killed 115 people. He added that Kim “is said to (have ordered) the execution of officials who displease him.”
In his analysis of Kim, Post says that Kim has a deeply ingrained inferiority complex in relation to his dad, and that, “Unlike his father, Kim Jong-Il grew up in luxurious surroundings, pampered, raised to be special. This is the formative recipe for a narcissistic personality, with a grandiose self-concept and difficulties with empathy…The characteristics he displays indicate that he has the core characteristics of the most dangerous personality disorder, malignant narcissism.”
Does Kim Have Napoleon Complex?
At five feet three inches in height, Kim Jong-il may also be a candidate for short man syndrome, sometimes called the Napoleon Complex.
Reporting on a study carried out by Professor Abraham Buunk, of the University of Groningen in Holland, The Telegraph wrote that “scientists have now proved small men do make more jealous husbands and lovers than their taller, more relaxed counterparts.”
In the article entitled “Short Man Syndrome Is not just a Tall Story” (November 10, 2008), Science Correspondent Nic Fleming wrote that, “The findings could help explain why diminutive males from Napoleon Bonaparte and Benito Mussolini to Tom Cruise and Dudley Moore have on occasion been accused of overcompensating for a lack of physical stature.”
