Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families, said Mr Micawber. But of course, Dickens’s idea of familial accidents was formed in Victorian, which is to say pre-Marxist, times.
The Communist Manifesto was only two years old when Wilkins Micawber stepped into literature and, though the pamphlet had helpfully laid out the theory of bestial brutality, Marxists hadn’t yet had enough time to act on it.
Now they have, and they’ve been taking full advantage ever since their historical debut in 1917. This hasn’t been adequately covered in Western historiography, possibly for brevity’s sake or else out of squeamishness.
Thus accounts of Bolshevik ghoulishness tend to mention that so-and-so (or thousands of so-and-sos) was ‘sentenced to death’, ‘executed’ or ‘shot’. However, as often as not this was merely shorthand for rather more Baroque excesses.
Russian historians, especially those who themselves barely avoided finding themselves on the receiving end of such excesses, were more forthright. Perhaps the first, and certainly the most influential, of them was Sergei Melgunov.
His book The Red Terror, published in the West while Lenin was still alive, documents thousands of such niceties as skinning people alive, rolling them around in nail-studded barrels, driving nails into people’s skulls, quartering, burning alive, crucifying or castrating priests, turning them into pillars of ice by pouring water over their naked bodies in freezing temperatures, stuffing officers alive into locomotive furnaces, pouring molten pitch or liquefied lead down people’s throats – and of course torturing thousands to death.
Western intellectuals shrugged and, for the most part, went on describing the Bolsheviks as fellow liberals out to stage a highly commendable social experiment. It took decades for them to remove some benefit of the doubt from the Russian Marxists and acknowledge grudgingly that, well, perhaps they weren’t as nice as all that.
North Korea’s hereditary dictator Kim Jong-Un was never given such a benefit, at least not to the same extent. Yes, he was often described as a utopian, what with words like ‘evil’ having been more or less excised from journalistic or scholarly vocabulary. But it has been acknowledged that his version of Marxism gives a bad name to the version practised and preached on every Western campus.
That has had a liberating effect on Kim: unlike Russian Marxists yesterday, or those on Western campuses today, he needs no subterfuge. He can openly act on his typically Marxist cannibalism without worrying what the world will think.
It’s against this background that Kim set out to vindicate Mr Micawber, but adding a more modern twist.
You see, he had a bit of a problem with his uncle (by marriage) General Jang Song-Thaek. The good general was widely regarded as second only to Kim in the North Korean pecking order, but in Marxist dictatorships being second is a miss as good as a mile. Only Number One matters, and he was growing increasingly unhappy with Jang, particularly his being in China’s pocket.
China is of course North Korea’s greatest (only?) ally, and it was Jang’s job to keep the friendship going. However, he wasn’t to forget which side his bread was buttered – by all means, get close to the Chinese, uncle, but not so close as to make Kim doubt where your real loyalties lie.
Somewhere, somehow Jang overstepped the line and so had to go. But, to extend literary parallels, Kim is no Lady Macbeth. He’s a Marxist.
Therefore he was never likely to tell his uncle, “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.” It was he, Kim, who was to decide both the order and the manner of anybody going anywhere.
Clearly, a man with his own power base couldn’t just be dismissed. He had to go rather permanently, to make sure he’d never come back. Thus Jang was charged with treason, tried by a kangaroo court, or whatever animal lends its name to a travesty of justice in Korea, and sentenced to death.
A quick bullet was called for, but where’s the fun in that? Like in pre-Christian Rome, death can be turned into nice family entertainment.
To that end Jang and his five associates were thrown to be devoured by 120 dogs starved for three days. Kim, his brother and 300 senior officials were enjoying the show, with all but Kim also learning a lesson about the likely consequences of bad behaviour.
It took the animals a full hour to sate themselves and complete this combination of business and pleasure. Kim’s reaction wasn’t recorded, but I’m sure he thoroughly enjoyed himself, proud of adding a whole new dimension to the idea of dog food.
Now I’ve heard of family squabbles, but this is special. I wonder what Mr Micawber would have said had he witnessed the fun.