OPINION:
North Korea and Iran are charter members of “the axis of evil.” President George W. Bush anointed them as such in his State of the Union address in 2022, when he slipped in the phrase as befitting America’s enemies on opposite ends of the Asian land mass.
Iraq was included in the original axis, but Mr. Bush’s order to invade that country the next year removed the threat of whatever he and Vice President Dick Cheney, among others, claimed was Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program.
The term “axis of evil,” coined by Bush speechwriter David Frum, author of books on the presidency, endures as a prescient commentary on the bond between North Korea and Iran, which have aided and abetted each other’s nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea is said to have shipped missiles to Iran, as well as vital know-how and components for the nukes Iran was on its way to producing before President Trump ordered the destruction of its nuclear sites in June.
Over the years, Iranian experts have witnessed North Korea’s missile launches as well as all four nuclear tests ordered by Kim Jong-un, the last one in September 2017. North Korean experts have gone to Iran to advise and assist in its nuclear program, just as they aided the Syrians in building a nuclear facility that the Israelis bombed to oblivion in 2007.
Now, North Korea and Iran lead the list of America’s adversaries, along with the two great powers they can always count on for support, China and Russia.
Mr. Kim thinks he has nothing to fear as long as he keeps sending North Korean men and arms to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russia, in return, proffers much-needed food and technology for North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.
For Iran, oil is the lure. China is the biggest market for Iranian oil. Russia also buys oil from Iran while providing weapons that Iran has forwarded to terrorists, including Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The Israelis, with strong American support, have blocked the flow of weapons. Now, Iran is focusing on internal security amid marauding protesters.
Comparisons between Iran and North Korea break down when looking at each one’s ways of stifling dissent. While tens of thousands have filled the streets and squares of Tehran, no one has lifted a finger in North Korea. Iranian forces have killed thousands of their own people, and many more will be executed after quick trials.
If Islamic rule in Tehran is violent and dictatorial, however, it doesn’t begin to compare in cruelty with the ruthless repression of the slightest opposition to Kim dynasty rule in Pyongyang.
The thought of anyone demonstrating on the streets of a North Korean city is a fantasy. Kim Jong-un’s grandfather Kim Il-sung — installed by the Russians in Pyongyang in 1945 after the division of the Korean Peninsula between the Soviet Union and the U.S. — ordered the executions of those who opposed him, including some of those foolish enough to have defected to his side from South Korea.
Having failed in the Korean War to unite the Korean Peninsula, he ruled as harshly as ever before. He turned over power to his son, Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, leaving Kim Jong-un to inherit the throne.
If Islam is the state religion in Iran, then worship of the Kim dynasty is the central faith in North Korea. Christians, worshipping in secret, are executed, as are those caught watching South Korean films. Criticism is grounds for torture and imprisonment if not death.
More than 100,000 people are in political prison camps, with new prisoners replacing those who die after years of forced labor. A small elite of the ruling Workers’ Party, of which Mr. Kim is chairman, live comfortably in Pyongyang while millions go hungry in the countryside.
The difference in the harshness of the dictatorships in charge of North Korea and Iran is one of degree. Both are ruled by one man at the center. In Iran, the power of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, is analogous to that of Kim Jong-un.
Mr. Trump attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities as Iran was about to develop its first nuclear weapon. North Korea is thought to have fabricated at least 100 nuclear warheads. Rather than plead to see Mr. Kim for another summit, Mr. Trump should consider wiping out the North’s nuclear complex north of Pyongyang, plus its test sites.
Just as Iran has long threatened Israel, arming and advising Hamas and Hezbollah, among others, so North Korea threatens South Korea, Japan and the U.S. with long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
It takes more than diplomatic overtures and sanctions to eliminate the threat from either end of the “axis of evil.” If Mr. Trump is willing to order a strike against Iran, then he should consider no less for North Korea.
• Donald Kirk is a former Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the old Washington Star.
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