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BBC MUNDO RADIO
North Korea has banned its own citizens working in Libya from returning home, apparently out of fear that they will reveal the extent - and final outcomes - of the revolutions that have shaken the Arab world.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il Photo: AP
Pyongyang had a close working relationship with the regime of Moammar Gaddafi
before the popular uprising that unseated him. That revolution was completed
with Gaddafi's death at the hands of insurgents last week - leaving Kim
Jong-Il as one of a dwindling band of old-fashioned dictators on the planet.
An estimated 200 North Korean nationals are in Libya
and previously worked as doctors, nurses and construction workers, according
to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. They had been dispatched to the country
in order to earn the hard currency that Pyongyang requires to fund its
missile and nuclear weapons programmes.
Yonhap reported that the North Korean nationals have been left in limbo,
joining their compatriots who are stuck in Tunisia, Egypt and other
countries with orders not to return home.
North Korean media has so far failed to report that Gaddafi is dead and the
government has made no moves to officially recognise Libya's National
Transitional Council as the legitimate governing authority of the country.
The decision to ban its own nationals from returning indicates just how
concerned the North Korean regime is of the news leaking out to its
subjugated people.
An editorial in The Korea Herald stated that the one per cent of North Koreans
who are aware of the Arab Spring uprisings will be top-level party and
administration officials, as well as the trusted few who are permitted to
travel to China on business.
"Pyongyang’s silence about the fall of the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and the bloody death of Gaddafi reveals Kim Jong-il’s awareness of the vulnerability of his regime in the process of a third-generation dynastic succession of power," the paper said.
"Despite their boasting of the perfect loyalty of the 23 million people to the party and the leader, the ruling elite are afraid of what effect the information on the fates of the overseas dictatorships will have on the oppressed people of the country."
The paper suggested that recent conciliatory moves towards the government in South Korea and the United States may indicate an increasing pragmatism about the problems that beset the regime, ranging from economic stagnation to widespread hunger for a large part of the population.
"Kim Jong-il should know how precarious his situation is since the global league of dictators has continued to shrink more speedily this year," the paper stated. "Violent demonstrations are raging in the two Middle East nations and it is a matter of time before the North Korean people reach the limit of their endurance of hunger and repression and rise up against Kim’s rule."
"Pyongyang’s silence about the fall of the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and the bloody death of Gaddafi reveals Kim Jong-il’s awareness of the vulnerability of his regime in the process of a third-generation dynastic succession of power," the paper said.
"Despite their boasting of the perfect loyalty of the 23 million people to the party and the leader, the ruling elite are afraid of what effect the information on the fates of the overseas dictatorships will have on the oppressed people of the country."
The paper suggested that recent conciliatory moves towards the government in South Korea and the United States may indicate an increasing pragmatism about the problems that beset the regime, ranging from economic stagnation to widespread hunger for a large part of the population.
"Kim Jong-il should know how precarious his situation is since the global league of dictators has continued to shrink more speedily this year," the paper stated. "Violent demonstrations are raging in the two Middle East nations and it is a matter of time before the North Korean people reach the limit of their endurance of hunger and repression and rise up against Kim’s rule."
