Evil Rises in North Korea:The Hunt for Chosin’s Lost Treasure: A Novel

By Michael W Sunner

EVIL RISES IN NORTH KOREA: The Hunt for Chosin’s Lost Treasure begins with the North’s invasion of South Korea on June 25th, 1950, which initiated the Korean War. The war resulted in the lasting enmity and mutual distrust between North and South Korea up to the present day. Kim Jon-un’s rogue state represents a harsh reality for the Western world. This book uses the historic framework of the Korean War to launch a fictional tale of a vast treasure lost during the famous battle at North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir in 1950 and discusses the evil of the North’s familial leadership and their unending quest for power and control of the Korean peninsula. EVIL RISES IN NORTH KOREA presents many heroic figures, including a synthetic man who saves the free world from an imminent nuclear threat posed by North Korea and her allies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546212492

Michael W Sunner

Dr. Michael William Sunner worked in various federal, state, regional, and local government programs for over 40 years. He also served as an Officer in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. He holds a Master’s and Ph.D. in Political Science with specialties in Public Administration, Constitutional, International, and Public law. Prior to retiring from the U.S. Treasury in 2011, he published many articles on debt collection and Treasury debt financing (1985-2007). From 2012 to 2016, he was a financial consultant to a Pennsylvania software company. His last book, Borrowing through the U.S. Treasury’s “Fast Money Tree:” The Need to Balance Austerity and Growth in the 21st Century was published in 2012. EVIL RISES IN NORTH KOREA: The Hunt for Chosin’s Lost Treasure is his first foray into historical fiction.

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EVIL RISES IN

NORTH KOREA:

THE HUNT FOR CHOSIN’S LOST TREASURE

A Novel

MICHAEL W SUNNER

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© 2017 Michael W Sunner. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/27/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1248-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1249-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017915622

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CONTENTS

One

Post-World War II: Korea Divided

Two

Kim Il-sung’s War of Conquest

Three

Evil Rises in the East

Four

Kim Jong-un’s Tour de Force

Five

2019: More Nuclear Bombast

Six

Genius Failed

Seven

Pyongyang’s Collapse

Eight

Chu’s Treasure

Nine

Massacre at the Pyongyang Airport

Ten

Chu Flees Pyongyang

Eleven

Doomed Flight

Twelve

Escape to Beijing

Thirteen

Colonel Slade’s Legacy

Fourteen

Quelling the Triad Menace

Fifteen

The Triad’s Revenge

Sixteen

Destination Hong Kong

Seventeen

Planet Earth’s Slow Demise

Eighteen

Macau, A Gambler’s Haven

Nineteen

Raid on the Macau Casino Royale

Twenty

Asi Entity Experiment

Twenty-One

The Hunt for Chosin’s Lost Treasure

Twenty-Two

A Dangerous Underground Facility

Twenty-Three

Galactic Horizon

Twenty-Four

Evil Contained

Author’s Note

Conditions Prompting Evil’s Rise in North Korea

Acknowledgements

Epilogue

Select Bibliographic Reading Materials

Now imagine a world in which everyone, but especially people with power and influence, holds an expanded view of our place in the cosmos. With that perspective, our problems would shrink-or never arise at all-and we could celebrate our earthly differences while shunning the behavior of our predecessors who slaughtered one another because of them.

-Neil Degrasse Tyson, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense

If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.

-President Donald Trump, in his maiden speech to the United Nations delegates on Tuesday, September 19, 2017.

ONE

POST-WORLD WAR II: KOREA DIVIDED

Kim Jong-un’s Nuclear Threats

North Korea remains a deep mystery or an enigma to many who were not yet born by the late 1940s and early 1950s. Today’s news reports are jam-packed with hysterical reports about North Korea’s totalitarian government and its current leader Kim Jong-un. The North Korean leader’s truculent verbal taunts have promised that his mighty nuclear arsenal will be unleashed at those of us living in the free world if we attack his country.

In response to Kim’s verbal threats, the United States President Donald Trump took to the world’s stage, and in his maiden speech given to the United Nations delegates on September 19, 2017, he issued a defiant warning to North Korea and other rogue states. President Trump declared forcefully and unequivocally that the world faces great peril from rogue regimes with powerful weapons and terrorists with expanding reach across the globe. The United States President broadcasted a clarion call to his fellow world leaders to join the United States in the fight to defeat what he called failed or murderous ideologies and loser terrorists.¹

In his speech, President Trump cautioned Kim Jong-un that he is on a suicidal mission by threatening the United States and its allies, and if forced to defend our nation and its allies, the United States would totally destroy North Korea. President Trump counseled that the United States has great strength and patience, but if forced to defend itself or its allies, there would be no other choice but to totally destroy North Korea. He then declared, Kim Jong-un is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.²

The American people have been led to believe via our government’s official statements and the news media that Kim Jong-un is a madman incapable of reason, and that his rule must come to an end because he is a clear and present danger to everyone living on the planet. However, some analysts have opined that the caricature of a madman underestimates Kim’s intellectual capabilities. One analyst has concluded that people like him are not crazy, and they are not erratic, but they are carefully calculating.³

Each day the world learns more about North Korea’s technical prowess in the development of nuclear weapons and its concomitant ability to deliver those weapons to the United States via long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Economic sanctions have been relatively unsuccessful with regard to forcing North Korea to discontinue its nuclear development program and refrain from its ICBM tests. North Korea is absolutely committed to its nuclear program and has stated forcefully through its Foreign Ministry that it will not denuclearize.

Despite the Trump administration’s economic sanctions and recent threats to unleash fire and fury on the peninsula, North Korea has placed its military on war footing and responded harshly to United Nations’ sanctions, while pledging to continue on its current path to be a full-fledged member of the world’s nuclear club. There is little doubt that if Kim launches an attack on the United States or its allies, hellfire and brimstone will rain down mercilessly upon North Korea, followed by total annihilation.

Understanding President Trump

According to unofficial sources, North Korea has sought to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington to better understand the confusing and contradictory messages from President Trump and those messages emanating from Trump’s leading cabinet officials, particularly Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.⁴

The United States military continues to espouse non-military solutions in contrast to President Trump’s heated rhetoric at the United Nations and his unabated stream of tweets that have taunted Kim Jong-un. Unofficial sources have reported that in an annual meeting organized by the Geneva Center for Security Policy, a Swiss government-linked think tank, government officials in attendance were from China, Russia, North and South Korea, the European Union, Switzerland and Mongolia. The Swiss invited the United States to send an official, but it did not.⁵

Choe Kang Il, deputy director of the American Division of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, led a small delegation to the Swiss sponsored conference. Attendees were extremely surprised at the North Korean delegation’s grasp of American politics and acute knowledge of Trump’s behavior since he was elected. Those attending were impressed with North Korea’s young delegates’ intellectual analyses and perfect American-accented English.⁶

Continuing Missile Tests

On July 4, 2017, North Korea successfully tested its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-14, and boasted that the regime was now capable of hitting the heart of the United States with large heavy nuclear warheads. The launch, according to the Central State News Agency, successfully tested the functions of the missile’s two propulsive stages and the warhead’s ability to endure the intense heat and vibrations as it entered the earth’s atmosphere.⁷

During Kim Jong-un’s five-year reign,⁸ he has built a reputation as an evil, unflinching murderer of his enemies. His cruel and calculated public persona has been frequently revealed in a manner ranging from siccing wild dogs on those who have somehow offended him to literally blowing away prisoners with antiaircraft guns meant for shooting down planes. These tactics have served to instill fear in those who might oppose his rule and to deter any potential coups.

The numerous public executions have been closely watched by many North Koreans, who then spread the gospel of death to their countrymen. Such methods have served to terrorize the population into a submissive, genuflecting mass of subservient, obeisant supporters. It’s no wonder that the commoners of North Korea have remained quiescent in their daily struggle to survive governmental oppression and invidious poverty.

Many Western analysts have orated that Kim’s rule will someday end violently at the hands of either his own people or an external source. But if not, as long as Kim rules North Korea, it will remain a nuclear outlaw or rogue state, unabashedly opposed to Western values and seemingly willing to throw its army and weaponry at South Korea and beyond. However, if Kim is foolish enough to start a war, he and his poverty stricken people will be annihilated. It’s unlikely that this horrific scenario will ever come to pass.

The questions of how, when, and why this at times erratic and bellicose dictator ascended remain unanswered. The first chapters of this work offer an explanation for Kim Jong-un’s rise to power and how his familial predecessors ruled Korea with an iron fist. This is a work of fiction, but many of the historical references to Korea and attendant background information depicting the Korean War are principally factual.

Historical Antecedents

From a historical perspective, the Korean peninsula has been routinely invaded and subjugated by foreign powers from the 1700s until Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945. This depressing socio-economic condition understandably gave rise to a leadership that successfully propounded a fervid nationalism that shaped post-World War II Korea’s political realities, especially in the North.

Korea was a Japanese colonial possession after being forcibly annexed by the Japanese Empire in 1910. After Japan’s World War II surrender, Korea was divided into zones of occupation. The United States took control of southern Korea, while the Soviet Union accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in northern Korea. The division of the country into two separate political entities was conceptually similar to what occurred in Germany after its unconditional surrender to the Allies at the close of World War II.

Subsequently, civil unrest engulfed the peninsula, and two separate but contiguous governing entities or states emerged in 1948.⁹ South Korea was established as a quasi-democratic protectorate of the United States and was provided ample resources to rebuild its war-torn civil infrastructures. On the other hand, North Korea was established as a communist protectorate of Moscow and Beijing, and, in turn, was granted a healthy amount of resources by its allies to rebuild its civil infrastructures.

Huge quantities of military hardware and equipment were also subsequently provided to the North. Moscow and Beijing immediately gave their undivided support to a former major in the Soviet Army, Kim Il-sung. Once Kim took the unchallenged leadership role of North Korea, he pledged to his allies that he would faithfully rule the country under the communist banner.¹⁰

However, the temporary division of the Korean peninsula soon became permanent in a fashion similar to the east and west division of Germany that occurred after World War II.¹¹ The Soviets were very active in ensuring the establishment of a communist regime in North Korea, while the United States became the main source of financial and military support for South Korea. Hence, out of the ruins of World War II, a democratic form of government ultimately emerged in the South while a communistic system was installed in the North.

Many prominent historians and political scholars have concluded that at a critical juncture in Korea’s post-World War II history, both China and the Soviets fully supported Kim Il-sung’s plan to conquer South Korea. As the Cold War evolved after World War II, Stalin wanted a far West buffer zone, and he vowed to further expand the communist movement in Europe and Asia as long as his aggressive moves did not result in a ‘hot war’ with the United States. In 1949, Kim Il-sung visited with Stalin to discuss his plans for the conquest of South Korea. At that well-documented meeting, Kim presented his aggressive plans to his mentor, Stalin, and argued forcefully that his superior military forces could subjugate South Korea quickly or within several weeks.

Stalin and many of those in his ostensible brain trust feared that the United States would certainly intervene militarily if the North conducted a naked invasion of South Korea, so Uncle Joe refrained from giving his blessing to Kim Il-sung’s plan to unilaterally invade South Korea. While Stalin initially forbade Kim from unilaterally attacking the South, he did support Kim’s ability to fight a war only if his homeland was invaded by the South.¹² However, after visiting with China’s leadership, Kim Il-sung received the full support and blessing of China’s Mao Tse Tung regarding his plans to invade the South and unify the peninsula under his rule.

In 1950, Kim again returned to Moscow to press Stalin for permission to attack the South, asserting that if China could be unified under Mao, then Korea could be unified under Kim’s rule. Because the Soviets had now developed atomic weapons capabilities, Stalin believed that he could deal decisively, firmly, and assertively with the Western powers, and more specifically with the United States and President Truman. Stalin also saw the meteoric rise of Mao’s celebrity in the communist world and feared that Kim, with Mao’s financial and military backing, would go ahead with his plan to conquer the South without his blessing and military support.¹³

Therefore, sometime during the April to May 1950 time period, Stalin finally sanctioned Kim’s plan to attack the South. It was apparent that at this juncture both Mao and Stalin were convinced that the campaign to conquer South Korea would be short, swift, and successful.¹⁴ Subsequently, Stalin responded with a heavy increase in the supply of arms, munitions, and equipment via the Trans-Siberian Railway to North Korea. Kim Il-sung now felt vindicated in his plan to unify the peninsula under communist rule.

While Kim Il-sung’s proposal to invade the South had received the blessings of both Stalin and Mao, there was another reason that Kim Il-sung wanted to immediately invade the South. Kim was angered and provoked by comments from the South’s leader Syngman Rhee, who had foolishly announced that he planned to have the South’s forces attack North Korea in order to democratize and unify the Korean Peninsula under his rule. Rhee’s bold but imprudent public comments gave Kim additional motivation to launch a surprise preemptive strike against the South.

TWO

KIM IL-SUNG’S WAR OF CONQUEST

Surprise Attack

On June 25, 1950, elements of the armed ground forces of communist North Korea moved into South Korea in a surprise blitzkrieg attack, which initiated the Korean War. Approximately seventy-five thousand veteran soldiers of the NKPA (North Korean People’s Army) crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and moved into South Korea at an incredibly rapid pace, overwhelming South Korea’s ill-prepared army and a small five hundred man United States military advisory group.¹⁵

Subsequent to the North’s brazen invasion of South Korea, Stalin’s secret intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MGB), provided him with critical and reliable information that President Truman was unwilling to bring nuclear weapons to the endgame on the peninsula. Stalin’s well-placed government agents in both the British and United States governments had previously transmitted crucial intelligence to the Soviets regarding Truman’s concerns about not expanding the conflict into China and his unwillingness to use nuclear weaponry in Asia. However, Stalin’s ill-advised support of North Korea’s and China’s war plans risked a possible third World War with the real possibility of nuclear weapons being used in the conflict.¹⁶

The West was stunned and enraged by the North’s quick-strike invasion of South Korea. However, both Stalin and Mao failed to accurately foresee future political and military events following the sudden entry of the Allies into the conflict. Both Stalin and Mao showed an amazing lack of perceptivity as to the willingness of the United States to risk its fighting men again so far from its shores based on political realities and ideological principles.

Truman’s unequivocal response was to meet force with force on the peninsula. Hence, the United States delegation went before the United Nations, and, given the absence of the Soviet representative, gained a favorable vote in the Security Council to initiate armed intervention in South Korea.¹⁷

It was reported that Stalin’s personal grip on world affairs had begun to slip in the early 1950s. While his grasp of world politics may have been somewhat tenuous during this period, he nevertheless continued to surreptitiously provide war materiel to Kim’s forces. In fact, after the North invaded the South, the Soviets no longer attempted to be furtive about providing fighter pilots and military armaments to Kim Il-sung. Soviet military support of North Korea was no longer a secret, and Stalin was openly and fully supportive of the North’s war efforts against the South and the Allies.

All the while, the Korean War gave the wily but somewhat intellectually declining Stalin the opportunity to openly support Mao’s strategic plan to throw his considerable forces into the conflict. Mao’s goal was not only to turn the tide in favor of the North, but also to completely annihilate the allied forces on the ground as they moved toward the Yalu River. Juxtaposed to China’s introduction of a massive three hundred thousand man army to support Kim’s war effort, Stalin’s support for North Korea continued to be in the form of armaments, equipment, and planes that were flown by Soviet pilots dressed in Chinese uniforms.¹⁸

THREE

EVIL RISES IN THE EAST

A Legacy of Death and Destruction

The almost indelible result of the immense human carnage and treasure lost during the Korean War has been the lasting enmity and mutual distrust between North and South Korea up to the present day. This historic and well-documented state of affairs has resulted in the North’s unmitigated hatred and contempt for the United States, especially under the North’s current leader Kim Jong-un. Kim, the grandson of Kim Il-sung, was born on June 8, 1983. Undoubtedly, young Kim learned his murderous persona and dictatorial behaviors well from his father, Kim Jong-il (1941 to 2011), who, in turn, learned much of his sadistic and cruel behaviors from his father, Kim Il-sung (1912 to 1994), the North’s great leader during the Korean War.¹⁹

The rise of this maleficent evil began with Kim Il-sung’s brutal and homicidal ways, and has remained until today as a staple of his grandson’s political and ideological modus operandi. The ultimate aims of this evil legacy are to become a recognized nuclear power while holding on indefinitely to the reins of power in North Korea, and to someday rule over the entire Korean peninsula.

North Korean defectors have given the West some previously unknown insights into the family’s firm grip on the governance of the North. Instead of a peaceful and smooth transition of family leadership, it was reported that power was not harmoniously transferred upon Kim Il-sung’s death in 1954 to his son, Kim Jong-il. The son had long before usurped his father’s leadership role with the tacit support of the clandestine Organization and Guidance Department (OGD). Kim Il-sung spent his last years under virtual house arrest under the watchful eyes of his son, Kim Jong-il. While these assertions may or may not be true, they gave further credence to the growing narrative that the son was actually a bigger thug and murderer than his father, as he ably directed the lethal OGD to consolidate his powerful hold on the government and military.

Under his leadership, the OGD legitimized every act of murder and mayhem that further concretized Kim Jong-il’s unquestioned position of power after his father’s natural death. However, upon Kim Jong-il’s death in 2011, the transition of power and leadership was somewhat more nebulous. The position of his son, Kim Jong-un, was initially more symbolic as the OGD took charge using the legacies of his grandfather and father to consolidate their unbridled power under the young son.

Insiders who have defected or escaped from the clutches of the OGD and survived have reported that the secret police was and still is the entity that has a heavy hand in policy making in the government as Kim Jong-un continues to consolidate his growing power base. Consequently, the real power and leadership structure have not really changed much since the days when Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il ruled the country.

Yet the OGD is such a secret and compartmentalized organization that it is only fully comprehended by the North’s most senior leaders and is well understood by less than a dozen of the approximately twenty-six thousand refugees that have fled North Korea since Korea was partitioned after World War II. That lack of transparency has meant that most outside observers have traditionally omitted any reference to the OGD’s existence, basing their views on diplomatic notes, refugee testimonies and political theories that Pyongyang has successfully promoted with propaganda about the family’s god-like omnipotence while obscuring the North’s real power structures.

Kim Jong-un’s shrewd, calculating, and brutal personality became much clearer to the world when he ordered the execution of his uncle Jang Song Thaek in 2013. At that time, Thaek was viewed as the second most powerful leader in Korea under Kim’s father and had remained at Kim’s side during the transitional period that followed after his father’s death.

Jang Song Thaek had been responsible for guiding the youthful Kim and assisting him in consolidating power. Once the young tyrant concluded that he had taken control of the government’s political apparatus, observers theorized that Kim decided to eliminate any and all potential challengers to his rule. Unfortunately, his uncle became expendable in Kim’s eyes and was summarily executed for a number of so-called crimes against the State, which were reported in the Western press as fabrications.

Many observers interpreted the purge of Jang Song Thaek as the new leader getting rid of his old guard to create his own power network. Others more familiar with power purges in North Korea theorized that Jang Song Thaek’s execution was really the work of the heinous OGD bent upon liquidating an internal rival for supremacy in the North Korean hierarchy. Also, it was rumored that another one hundred fifty high-level officials were summarily executed as Kim consolidated power.

In February 2017, it was reported that Kim had his half-brother Kim Jong-nam assassinated removing a potential sibling rival from the secretive North Korean power game. The half-brother was killed by a substance called VX, a banned, highly deadly nerve agent that causes death within minutes if absorbed through the skin. The investigation conducted by Malaysian authorities pointed to Kim Jong-un’s regime in North Korea as perpetrators of the brazen and public attack on Kim Jong-nam, which South Korean officials described as an apparent move by the young, narcissistic, North Korean leader to get rid of a potential rival.

The incident, which took place at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, also muddled the previously existing friendly diplomatic relationship between Malaysia and North Korea, given that the regime in Pyongyang was accused of using a certified chemical weapon on Malaysian territory.

The public assassination of Kim Jong-nam was perceived as a huge embarrassment to the Chinese because they had provided Kim Jong-un’s half-brother a safe haven and income for many years after he and his family had fled North Korea. Analysts speculated that this was a not-so-subtle message but a slap in the face to the Chinese that signaled North Korea was moving away from its dependent relationship with China.

Also, the assassination of Kim Jong-nam was coupled with another provocative North Korean missile launch. These actions prompted China to announce that it was suspending all coal imports from North Korea until the end of the year in a move which dealt a major financial blow to the Pyongyang regime. The surprise announcement by the Chinese Commerce Ministry was a sign of Beijing’s frustration and increasing reluctance to prop up the North Korean regime if it continued its outrageous and provocative actions. Some officials in the Chinese leadership have been so angered by Kim’s behavior that they have proposed abrogating the 1961 Friendship Treaty that authorized the two nations to undertake all necessary measures to oppose any country or coalition of countries that might attack either nation.²⁰

Hence, the North Korean totalitarian regime led by Kim Jong-un has again lived up to its legacy and is regarded by the outside world as a murderous, brutal, unstable, and unpredictable regime that poses a continuing threat to the peace in the western Pacific region.

Throughout his rather short tenure as North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim has closely followed the footsteps of his father and grandfather in continuing to threaten the world’s balance of power by advancing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Using periodic tests of international ballistic missiles, Kim has engaged in a deadly show of force intending to communicate to the world that his country has the capability to respond with nuclear weapons if the United States is foolish enough to launch a preemptive first strike.

Kim’s cunning, calculated threats are regarded as a clear and present danger to world peace. The international community has responded to these and other menacing threats by imposing tough sanctions on North Korea. The ostensible goal of economic sanctions is to hurt their economy and halt any external funding