Rupert Murdoch Helping Fund North Korean Regime of Kim Jong Il

Pursuing diplomatic engagement with rogue nations demonstrates hopeless weakness and naivite. Strengthening their tyrannical regimes just to make a profit, on the other hand, must somehow be good for America.

Bloomberg reports that a unit of News Corp. published mobile video games that were developed by North Korea’s General Federation of Science and Technology. Their work is part of a growing software industry cultivated by Kim Jong Il to pump money into the impoverished regime:

“From the government’s point of view, foreign currency is the main reason to nurture and support these activities,” said Andrei Lankov, an academic specializing in North Korea at Seoul- based Kookmin University.

The piece also points out that the development of North Korea’s programming capacities — aided by a growing industry in part funded by companies like News Corp. — may not be great news for the U.S.:

Better trained programmers may also bolster the regime’s cyberwarfare capabilities, said Kim Heung Kwang, who taught computer science at universities in the north for 19 years before defecting to South Korea in 2004. South Korea’s presidential office said July 28 the nation had received intelligence that North Korea may plan an Internet-based attack.

Won Sei Hoon, director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers last October that North Korea’s postal ministry was responsible for cyber attacks in July 2009 on dozens of websites in South Korea and the U.S.

President Barack Obama widened U.S. financial sanctions on North Korea on Aug. 30, freezing assets of North Korean officials, companies and government agencies suspected of “illicit and deceptive activities” that support the regime’s weapons industry.

On a related note, Media Matters has a run down of some choice words lobbed at North Korea by the foreign relations experts at Fox News:

Consider: (From Nexis)

Glenn Beck, on the September 1, 2010, edition of his Fox News show:

I have news for you. There are a lot of universities that are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or in North Korea. With the poll numbers continuing to slide for the new health care bill, our Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, just said and I quote, “We need a reeducation process on healthcare.

Bill Kristol, on the July 23, 2010 edition of Special Report:

What I think North Korea is a horrible regime that kills people and has gotten away with things in the past. Secretary Clinton and Gates have been strong. This is a situation the Obama administration came into office disliking what the Bush administration had done vis-a-vis North Korea, and announcing a new relationship with China, strategic reassurance. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg giving a speech on this.

They were mugged by reality. The problem wasn’t Bush, it was North Korea. And the big underlying story is China has not helped us make North Korea a responsible state.

Neil Cavuto, on the May 25, 2010 edition of Your World:

CAVUTO: But I guess what I would curious, do you think that it compromises our national security? I mean, I wonder if it`s just an accident that the nut in North Korea isn`t showboating the way he is precisely because he knows the world is kind of distracted.

(CROSSTALK)

EAGLEBURGER: Good for you. Neil, again, you will remember, I think, one time some time ago when we were talking about this and I said to you that I was afraid that people like the North Koreans were going to take a look at the wimpishness of this administration and decide it was a very opportune time to do some tough things.

I think what — what the people in Pyongyang are now seeing is a president of the United States who largely has lost out in terms of anything in the way of some sensible approaches to foreign policy issues, to defense and to anything else in this budget.

And, yes, I think it`s made a difference, and it`s not just with the North Koreans, by the way. I think it has affected the Russians. I think it has affected the Chinese. And every single time this goes on like this, we end up with a foreign policy problem, which is going to be more and more difficult to solve, because everybody has judged us as no longer ready to do the things that, for a very long time, they all knew that we Americans would do if we were tread on.