IT was the 57th birthday of Kim II Sung, Premier of North Korea. The downed U.S. Navy aircraft and the 31 American victims were in a way a grim birthday present from his own armed forces. Some analysts believe that he requested the present—that he issued instructions for another incident at the right moment, a sort of flying Pueblo. What makes Kim and his regime act that way?
Partly it is opportunism. Kim understands what might be called "Small-Power Power." Minor countries can now act recklessly toward each other or major nations because, given the nuclear stalemate, the superpowers do not dare retaliate violently lest they set off a general holocaust. Thus Kim II Sung dared attack the U.S., and there is evidence that he also defied Russia—which does not desire a new Korean war any more than does Washington. For all their power, the U.S. and Russia found it difficult if not impossible to restrain him.
Impressively Armed. Kim chafes because 16 years after the end of the Korean War, the U.S. maintains two divisions in South Korea, a shield behind which the Seoul government has developed a strong army and a thriving economy. Kim has promised to reunify Korea by 1970. He must know that he is not likely to achieve that goal. But he is evidently willing to let a number of men on both sides die while he maintains the myth—and makes it increasingly uncomfortable for the U.S., deeply engaged in Viet Nam, to keep up its position in Korea.
A small country (the size of Mississippi) with a population of 13 million, North Korea is impressively armed and viciously anti-American. Over the past few years, Kim has singled out the U.S. for opprobrium unmatched by any other Communist nation: "Tear the limbs off the U.S. beast," he urged last year. "Behead it all over the world."
Visitors to Pyongyang are impressed by the prevalence of uniforms on the streets—and the constant stress on the need to hate the U.S. Yoshi Hisano, a Japanese businessman who was in Pyongyang the day that the U.S. plane was downed, reported that for a few hours last week the capital was in a surprisingly cheerful mood. There were numerous parades, fitted out with the standard banners and placards in honor of Kim's birthday. Early that evening, however, radio and television announcers spat out bulletins on what they called North Korea's "brilliant battle success," and the birthday cheer was replaced by the all-too-familiar shouts of "Liberate the South!" and "Down with U.S. Imperialism!" During Hisano's two-week stay, he visited a nursery for preschool children in the capital and was astonished to hear them chanting hate-America slogans. Their drawings, pasted on the wall, featured burning American planes and tanks.
For older children, military training is part of the curriculum. In Pyongyang's Youth and Student Culture Palace, visitors watched primary-school children firing at wooden targets on which pictures of American soldiers were pasted. At a high school, Japanese newsmen observed an air-raid drill. "You never know when those Americans might wage war on us," said one of the teachers.