Monday, April 6, 2015

"Kippumjo" - The Joy Group

     The word kippumjo is a North Korean creation, a combination of Korean for joy or happiness, kippum, and a group of people, jo.  It has been given a more catchy name and translated as "pleasure squad" by the Western media.  The existence of kippumjo or "pleasure squad" in North Korea has been suspected for many years.  Periodically word would filter out that Kim Il Sung and later his son Kim Jong Il, had women that were specifically recruited and kept for the purpose of providing pleasure to the Kims and other leaders of North Korea.  However, all of these reports were unverified and there never were any witnesses.  All of that changed when in 2010, an attractive North Korean female defector divulged to the South Korean authorities that she had been one of the kippumjo, a member of the "pleasure squad" who was one of Kim Jong Il's favorites.
     According to Mi Hyang (only her first name was revealed), she was recruited as a very young girl specifically for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure to Kim Jong Il or other leaders.  She said that there were many other young women recruited from all over North Korea.  Perhaps "recruited" is not the right word, "drafted" would be more appropriate, since neither the young women nor their families had any say so in the matter.  A special department exists in the North Korean government that is charged with finding attractive young women for kippumjo.  They scour the cities and the countryside and pick young girls for the "pleasure squad." 
     Apparently there are three categories of kippumjo.  The prettiest, the most attractive ones are called manjoku and they are for sexual pleasure.  Another category known as haengbokjo are the ones who are trained to be skilled in giving massages, and the third group is the gamjo, those who are skilled in singing and dancing.  Of course all are attractive and required to provide sex if called upon.
      The whole business of kippumjo is so surrealistic that it is generally waved off by some as just another fiction or anti North Korean propaganda.  After all, in that controversial movie about North Korea, The Interview, which caused such a stir not long ago, the "pleasure squad" was prominently displayed.  The movie being a comedy, most viewers no doubt felt that the whole business of "pleasure squad" was just an invention of a Hollywood script writer.  But as strange and far-fetched as it may be, the "pleasure squads" did exist and have been resurrected recently.
     Initially, when Kim Jong Un took power, he got rid of the kippumjo.  He was paranoid and felt that these women knew too many state secrets, sensitive information about various leaders.  Also, Kim Jong Un initially shunned the extravagant life style of his father.  But it didn't take him long to develop a taste for the high life, which he had originally lived, but abandoned briefly when he took power.  Now, being fully in power, he has reinstituted the kippumjo or "pleasure squads" and has been living a decadent, bacchanalian life style.  What a country!
     North Korea seems to be on another planet, in another world.  Through the years, it has been almost impossible to deal with them.  Their mentality, their way of thinking is so far removed from that of the rest of the world that it is impossible to have a meeting of the minds.  In 2005, after many years of trying, finally an agreement was reached on the nuclear issue.  The United States, Russia, China, South Korea on one side, and North Korea on the other, came to an agreement, a deal was struck and sanctions were lifted.  A year later, in 2006 North Korea had its first successful nuclear bomb test, completely ignoring and negating the agreement that it had made earlier!  Now, some nine years later, North Korea has had several successful nuclear bomb tests and it is believed that they will have about 20 nuclear devices within a short time.
     The danger is not that they will fire missiles with nuclear devices at South Korea or Japan, although they are perfectly capable of doing that.  The more imminent danger is that they will sell the nukes to earn money, which they desperately need, to terrorist states!  North Korea has a record of selling weapons to terrorists.  All of those scud missiles that Saddam Hussein fired at Israel during the first Gulf War were purchased from North Korea!  Now imagine those same North Korean scuds with nuclear warheads!  The missiles that North Korea now produces have a much longer range, so, with nuclear warheads, they become extremely dangerous not only in North Korean hands, but in the hands of terrorists that will purchase them!  We have a problem, and I am surprised that there is so little talk about the situation with North Korea and their nuclear weapons.
     Our latest deal with Iran smacks of the deal that we struck with North Korea.....Washington appears to be confident that Iran will keep its word and will not develop nuclear weapons surreptitiously.  That's a lot of faith in a regime that has shown nothing in the past 35 years of its existence to merit such trust.  It is a regime that has vowed to destroy Israel and refers to the United States as the "Great Satan!"  In general, Iran has shown no tolerance towards any none Muslims!
Are we to believe that they changed overnight and will not pull the same thing that North Korea did?
Washington appears to have that confidence in Iran, let's hope they are right.  One North Korea is more than enough!

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