Say it ain't sooooooo

Most people have been speculating that North Korea’s convention fan-version of Emperor Palpatine has been going overboard lately with gross displays of power because he’s on his last leg and thus does not have the decades necessary for an adequate PR campaign to ensure the always-smooth-going autocratic transition to his heir. I have been resistant to such postulations because I adore making fun of the man who seems more like the offspring of Wilhelm Pieck and Pol Pot than the late Kim Il Sung. Unfortunately for me, he apparently has cancer. Why do these things keep happening to me?

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, a news report said Monday, days after fresh images of him looking gaunt spurred speculation that his health was worsening following a reported stroke last year. The 67-year-old Kim was diagnosed with the cancer around the time he was felled by the stroke last summer, Seoul's YTN television reported, citing unidentified intelligence officials in South Korea and China. The report cited the officials saying the disease is "threatening" Kim's life. [Source: Comcast.net]

Pancreatic cancer is extremely aggressive, it is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death in the US, and the average life-expectancy of someone afflicted with the disease is less than a year (3 to 6 months). In fact, according to wrongdiagnosis.com, fewer than five percent of pancreatic cancer patients survive five years with the disease. And that’s in AMERICA, not the land before time/experiment in divergent social evolution that is North Korea. As my brother once put it, North Korea can’t be seen from space when the sun goes down. This is, of course, great news for South Korea who will ultimately have the task of incorporating this pre-Thunderdome Bartertown and its half-dead inhabitants into their society after the resulting coup, or civil war or whatever the hell lies ahead in that dystopian nightmare. Well, Seoul, you had fifty years or so of economic boom. It was a good run.