AMERICAN.COM

The near-simultaneous passing this weekend of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and former Czech president Vaclav Havel presents a remarkable study in contrasts. Consider:

1.    Kim Jong Il plunged his nation (literally) into the darkness of tyranny. As Jim points out, a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night shows the South awash in light, while the North is completely dark save a pinprick of light in Pyongyang. Vaclav Havel, by contrast, led his country out of the darkness of communism into the light of freedom and democracy.

2.    Kim Jong Il turned North Korea into the most isolated country on the face of the earth—no internet, no cell phones, just government radio spewing propaganda that cannot be turned off, only turned down. Vaclav Havel brought his country out of decades of isolation behind the Iron Curtain and integrated the Czech Republic into the NATO alliance, the European Union, and the institutions of the free world.

3.    Kim Jong Il presided over one of the most brutal systems of political repression in the world—running a network of gulags where dissidents are tortured, newborns are separated from their mothers and left to die, and prisoners worked to the bone in mines and logging camps.

Vaclav Havel not only freed the political prisoners held by his country’s communist regime, but made the Czech Republic into a Mecca for democratic activists across the world. He organized conferences for dissidents from repressive regimes, and championed the cause of freedom from Burma to Belarus and, yes, North Korea. As late as last week, while on his death bed, Havel took time to meet with his dear friend, the Dalai Lama, on a visit to Prague.

4.       Kim Jong Il plunged his country into such unspeakable poverty that it makes economic basket cases like Cuba seem like paradise in comparison. North Koreans are so malnourished that last year, the North Korean military had to once again lower the height requirement for new conscripts from 55.1 inches (4.6 feet) to 53.9 inches (4.49 feet). Vaclav Havel, by contrast, presided over free market reforms that turned his nation from one of the poorest to one of the most prosperous in the world.  By 2005, the Czech Republic was ranked 34th in the world in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Quality of Life Index. North Korea was so impoverished it did not even make the list.

There is one other difference: Kim Jong Il’s death got the banner headlines in most major newspapers this morning, while Vaclav Havel’s obituary was relegated to the back pages. Which is a shame, because Havel’s life story shows that even the most unspeakable tyranny can be overcome—and provides a poignant example of what is possible one day for the people of North Korea.