And the Rest of It

 On the Korean Peninsula:

Japan has extended an order to destroy any North Korean ballistic missile, rocket or debris that threatens the nation's territory, according to the Defense Ministry, after a satellite launch window announced by Pyongyang expired Sunday.

The destroy order would remain in place “for the time being,” the ministry said in a statement released Sunday.

North Korea attempted to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit on May 31, the first day of the launch window — briefly prompting Japan to issue an emergency alert for Okinawa Prefecture — but said the rocket had malfunctioned, crashing into the sea shortly after it was fired.

Despite the failure, the North said a second attempt would come "as soon as possible," potentially without prior notice.

The plan to put a satellite into orbit has been met with condemnation from Japan, South Korea and the United States.

In Tokyo on Monday, Japan's top government spokesman said it was possible that Pyongyang could seek to "push forward" with a second launch, this time without announcing a time frame, calling the decision to indefinitely extend the destroy order "reasonable."

"Such a launch, even for the purpose of launching a satellite, would be in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions prohibiting the use of ballistic missile technology by North Korea," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference, adding that Tokyo was taking steps "to be able to respond to any eventuality."

Pyongyang says the U.N. resolutions do not cover its nominally civilian space program. Japan, South Korea and the U.S., however, view the launch of satellites as a thinly veiled means of advancing its missile program, since similar technology is employed.

South Korea’s Presidential Office said Sunday that it was also paying close attention to a possible second launch.

"Though the notice period is over, North Korea can launch a long-range ballistic missile at any time without prior notice," a senior presidential official told the Yonhap news agency, adding that Seoul was continuing surveillance activity and sharing missile-warning information with the U.S. and Japan.

**

At home, it is rumoured that she has gone beyond merely issuing threats to life. She reportedly ordered several executions of high-ranking government officials for merely ‘getting on her nerves’. She is said to have banished those less disagreeable and their families to detention camps and gulags, to a life of forced labour, beatings, torture and starvation rations.

Ordinary North Koreans are said to refer to her as ‘Empress Dowager Cixi’, after the ruthless de facto ruler of China’s last imperial dynasty, in power for nearly 50 years.

The office Kim Yo-jong holds is not that of the head of state – but she is the only person in Kim Jong-un’s entourage who has his complete trust, able to approach him at any time without being summoned. On matters of statecraft, no other person has such ease of access to the Supreme Leader. And under him, her power has only grown.

The pandemic accelerated it, no doubt adding the pressure to build a succession plan should he become incapacitated. He is, after all, not in optimal health, and suffers from heart disease, diabetes and obesity like his father and grandfather.

Kim Yo-jong seems the natural choice, even in the rigidly male-dominated society: her elder brother Jong-chol has long been passed over as heir; her half-brother, Jong-nam, the eldest son, died in February 2017, aged 45, following a nerve agent attack in Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Though once tipped to be leader, by then he was an outspoken critic, living in exile. As for the three older half-sisters, none have held any significant government roles, or been given public acknowledgement.

Kim Jong-un himself is reported to have three young children. In November 2022, he publicly revealed one of them for the first time – a daughter, Ju-ae, aged about 10 – during the launch of a powerful intercontinental ballistic missile. Some North Korea watchers predicted that she had been chosen as his successor. But even if true, it will be some time before she is old enough, like Aunt Yo-jong, to issue formal statements in her own name or lead a delegation.

Kim Yo-jong is certainly best prepared to be the torchbearer. Over the past three years, she has remained her nation’s chief censor, spokeswoman, mocker, and threat-and-malice dispenser, with the country’s foreign policy at her fingertips and unfettered access to her nuclear-button-controlling brother.

As her power grows and tales of her ruthlessness spread, it would be dangerous to overestimate the goodwill of the Mount Paektu princess. Her brother willing, she will wield this unique power for decades to come, as his deputy or, perhaps one day, as the first female Supreme Leader in her nation’s history.

 **

What is this? Canada?:

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has issued a secret order to local authorities that would ban suicides, after data showed numbers skyrocketing, according to government officials who spoke to Radio Free Asia.

The exact number of suicides in North Korea is difficult to ascertain as the regime rarely offers insight into the country's shortcomings, but the South Korean National Intelligence Service estimated in May that suicides had increased by about 40% over the previous year, per WION.

Kim called suicide an "act of treason against socialism" in the directive, according to Radio Free Asia, stating that local government officials would be held jointly accountable for failing to prevent people from killing themselves in their jurisdiction.

The secret order was mentioned in a series of emergency meetings in North Korean provinces, an official from the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told Radio Free Asia on the condition of anonymity to protect their safety.

Data was provided on the number of suicides, which included examples of entire families ending their lives, the official said, per Radio Free Asia.

"[The attendees] were shocked by the disclosure of suicide notes that criticized the country and the social system," the official added.

In the neighboring province of Ryanggang, another official told Radio Free Asia that suicide was impacting the community more than starvation, while mentioning a similar meeting.

 

Naturally:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino are scrambling to reassure Canadians that they don’t approve of Bernardo’s transfer, that they’re going to demand explanations for it and that they might use ministerial powers to reverse the administrative decision. One can only wish these gentlemen the best of luck in getting to the bottom of “The Mysterious Case of the Incomprehensibly Flaccid Liberal Criminal Justice System.”

Oh, I beg your pardon: you’re not supposed to drop hints to a whodunit in the title. Maybe Trudeau and Mendocino are surprised to find that the therapeutic-penology beliefs that are now universal in polite liberal circles have troublesome logical and political consequences. If so, they’re going to be knocked clean over by Wednesday morning’s Canadian Press interview with Mary Campbell, a former political head of the Department of Public Safety’s corrections and justice directorate.

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Campbell tells reporter Stephanie Taylor that the corrections system isn’t designed to punish sadistic sex killers. The heritage of case law acknowledges criminal justice’s functions of denunciation, deterrence and social sequestration of extremely determined predators, but as soon as you mention any of these matters to Campbell, she hears, and begins robotically denouncing, “torture” and “revenge.” Assuming there’s actually a minimum risk of the Scarborough Rapist escaping and taking a bus back to Scarborough, Ont., the system seems to be exclusively dedicated to rehabilitation — i.e., what’s best for Bernardo. Who, after all, has been in maximum security for a mighty long time (and in solitary confinement for much of it).

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And so we get a little political playlet. The premier of Ontario asks why Bernardo isn’t locked up to “rot” 23 hours a day and exposed to inmate violence during the 24th; he’s basically advocating torture and vigilantism as an instinctive alternative to the (still very popular!) death penalty. A major architect of the penal system rightly replies that torture per se is forbidden. And there the debate stops. Prisons can either impose suffering or healing, and as a voter, maybe you have to take your pick. The idea that prisons exist to impose a humane alternative to private vendetta seems to have flown clean out of everybody’s brain forever.

The problem for the Liberals, of course, is that nine of 10 people at all familiar with Bernardo’s record will say, “I’ve got a blowtorch in the garage if you want to let me have a crack at the guy.” The onerous publication bans that surrounded Bernardo’s trial, along with the high profile given to his folie à deux with a beautiful wife, have slightly obscured the fact that Bernardo committed or attempted 19 documented rapes before transitioning to torture and murder. He has halfway confessed to another 10 sexual assaults, including sex tortures of some women who were freed but never identified, and the real number’s probably significantly larger.

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These are crimes with living victims, mostly unrepresented in the press. Bernardo anonymously held all of Scarborough, a place on whose behalf Ontario Premier Doug Ford is well qualified to speak, in a state of unrelieved terror for a period of three years. Innocent men were jailed for some of his crimes. Girls and women who weren’t born when Bernardo was on the loose have to learn endless little safety heuristics, just in case.

It’s not as though the Mary Campbell philosophy — anything savouring of punishment or retribution equals torture — is uncommon amongst liberals or people to their left. Many of these are, of course, “prison abolitionists”; more are just people who think prison abolitionists are right in theory and that they represent an impractical moral ideal toward which history is nevertheless crawling. (This is exactly how liberals felt about Soviet communism until 1970 or so; the prestige of liberalism still smarts from the self-injury without having learned the lesson.)

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The penal system we have was designed, and is operated, by this kind of liberal, and Bernardo being promoted to medium security is the design working as intended, not a glitch. Campbell all but explicitly tells you this, and she is in a position to know. If you have ever voted Liberal, this is part of what you were voting for, and you got it. Sorry if the reminder offends.

 

Remember who was prime minister when this went down.