Kim Jung Il of North Korea was not a good leader

Kim Jung Il was the dictator of North Korea from 1994 to 2011, North Korea under his rule was one of the most inhospitable places in the world for people to live in. North Korea is inferior to many other countries in many categories of human rights, political freedoms, and basic health. Stats about North Korea 2% of GDP goes to health (189 overall) 3 doctors per 1000 people (32nd worst) 13 hospital beds per 1000 people (2nd worst) 21% children under 5 underweight (33rd worst) 40 Billion GDP (99th best) $1,800 GDP Per Capita (191st best) 11% Expenses funded by tax income (201st overall) North Korea is also universally accepted as having chronic economical problems as a result of isolationist policies and overly central control over it by the government. Other issues include, Large scale military spending diverting funds away from basic services Chronic food shortages sometimes leading to famine Extensive malnutrition and poor living conditions Chronic fuel shortages (19bb oil produced for 13,000 bb oil consumed) bb = billions of barrels A known site for human trafficking Government corruption Low Life expectancy compared to the rest of the world Massive suppression of civil rights by the totalitarian regime Labor camps and a very large number of political prisoners https://www.cia.gov... http://www.nationmaster.com... http://www.nationmaster.com... http://civilliberty.about.com... http://www.hrw.org... http://freekorea.us... All of this could be argued to have been caused by other things besides Kim Jung Il or that these have all been outside of Kim Jung Il's power. However there is a large amount of evidence that Kim Jung Il's decisions and grip over the country have certainly lead it into dark times. the first of which is Kim Jung Il's cult of personality he built around himself to make himself look like a god. For example the state of North Korea officially claims that "Official North Korean biographies state that his birth occurred on February 16, 1942, in a secret camp on Mount Paekdu along the Chinese border, in Samjiyon County, Ryanggang Province, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)" All that seems a little weird considering he was born in a secret camp, however it gets stranger when you realize that Mount Paekdu is supposedly a sacred mountain and now the government claims that Kim Jung Il was born in a secret camp on a sacred mountain. It also doesnt help that the reports also state that "claims that his birth was foretold by a swallow, the appearance of a double rainbow over Mount Paekdu, and a new star in the heavens" http://www.biography.com... http://www.biography.com... What does this Cult of Personality do to North Korea? North Korea uses a ridiculously large amount of tax dollars and money it doesnt have to glorify his rule, which ranges from suppressing criticism against him, to letting him to decide everything, to taking any mistake he does make and forcing it to the people that it was not a mistake. Some of Kim Jung Il's decisions are a little more visible in evaluating how he has wrecked North Korea. In 1995 North Korea witnessed record floods that crippled agriculture, a year later in 1996, same thing happened. In 1997 a drought struck the region which along with two years of ravaging floods plunged the nation into famine. The famine was so bad that foreign aid had to poor in to prevent people from dying, but the famine still killed 1 to 4 million people. So with 3 years of devastating natural disasters devastating food production, millions of North Koreans had died from starvation, millions more were starving, and a huge amount of food supplies had to be quickly moved to North Korea to prevent a castrophe from getting even worse. So how did North Korea's dear leader do to try to handle the situation? A) Use emergency funding to boost agriculture, food production, etc B) Rearrange funding of programs to focus more on ending the famine C) Openly appeal to foreign countries asking for help D) Reorganize health and sanitation departments to handle the famine better with the tools they already had E) Create a "Eat two meals a day" campaign and pour billions of dollars into military funding instead. If you picked E, you have a really bad idea of how to fix a country, but you picked the option that Kim Jung Il decided to go with back in 1997. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://cup.columbia.edu... So to summarize why King Jong Il was not a good leader 1 - Created a cut of personality around himself to glorify his own actions to a ridiculous amount 2 - Statistics about the country rank very low in health, sanitation, etc for years under his rule 3 - The effects of a famine in the country were exacerbated due to Kim's handling of the crisis 4 - The country faces chronic shortages in fuel and electricity daily due to poor economic policies 5 - The country under Kim's rule suffered very badly from corruption 6 - Kim poured billions of dollars into a military budget after a famine broke out following 3 years of bad harvests Ill end here for now