A Friend in Need

North Korea is regarded by some observers as not only a strategic partner for the Burmese junta but also a role model for the isolated and xenophobic Burmese generals.

According to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Brig-Gen Aung Thein Lin and Maj-Gen Htay Oo have both spoken in warm terms about the importance of the North Korean regime’s “Songun” or “Military First” policy.

The policy assured the Korean People’s Army the position of “supreme repository of power” after Kim Jong Il took over the leadership in 1994.

“One of the feats performed by Kim Jong Il in leading the party and revolution to a shining victory, shouldering upon himself the destiny of the country and nation is that he has strengthened and developed the WPK [Workers Party of Korea] into a guiding force of the Songun revolution,” said an enthusiastic Htay Oo at a Burma function celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Korean leader’s admission to the WPK.

Admiration for the North Korean model was also expressed by Aung Thein Lin, who said in November 2008 that he was deeply impressed by the way North Korean people were “dynamically advancing” under the Communist policy of Songun. 

In one comment that summed up the realistic outside view of the “dynamic advances” of these two isolated citadels of oppression, Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University’s Japan campus, said: “It is sad that in both countries a grasping, clueless leadership is maximizing the misery index and pushing too many of their people into the abyss of poverty.”