The Dragon Option
A New World Paradigm From North
Korea
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CONCEPTS
PAGE
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Dear Reader,
Welcome to my book, The Dragon Option. First, let me begin by saying that as far as any copyright issues are concerned, all rights are reserved (see the Copyright page for further information). With that out of the way, let me add that I strongly encourage you to save the book’s four chapters to your personal computer, so that you and others may read them off-line at your conveniences. My interest here is in sharing the information it contains with you, not in making money off of you. Now, to the book.
Is The Dragon Option fact or fiction? Well, it is both. It took me ten years to compile all of the data encapsulated in this text, the vast majority of which is pure fact. To have presented it in a non-fiction format would have made for mind-numbing and uninspired reading. That is why I have congealed all of these critical concepts into a fictional story-line that takes place in the year 2010. By this means I present you, the reader, with a birds-eye view into the dramatic and often terrifying realities we are faced with today, without abandoning you in a maze of seemingly incongruent and confusing details. To avoid drawing the book’s factual basis from obscure sources to which most people lack access, I have been careful to cross-check my facts against several easy to find Internet resources. Therefore, anyone interested in verifying, exploring, and/or challenging anything that I have written may do so through such means as Google, Wikipedia, and for those who can afford the nominal subscription fee, Encyclopedia Britannica.
I was inspired to write this book as a way of expressing my views of world affairs. I am not a historian by design, but by 9/11. I think that day affected everyone in their own way, and for me, it opened my eyes to the reality of who we are as Americans, what we have done in the world, and what we are going to do. Key issues, such as nuclear and biological warfare, global warming, Middle East oil, China and the U.S. national debt, the Palestinian Problem, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundation’s Green Revolution, and many political and historical facets concerning the United States' national interests are presented in a readable story-based format. But make no mistake. Though the book’s actors may be fictional, almost everything they discuss in this book is fact.
As a nation, perhaps the United States faced its greatest hours of unity and national pride during World War Two. Yet, anyone who reads both sides of history knows that it was a glory short lived, for the Korean War of 1950-1953 quickly followed. This conflict was actually the Second Korean-American War, and it was nothing short of shameful on our part. By comparison, few Americans even know about the First Korean-American War of 1871 (a.k.a. - Sinmiyangyo) and the many other acts that we have perpetrated against the Koreans since then, including our 1905 sacrifice of Korea to Japan by the Taft-Katsura Agreement. Today, we simply see them as North and South Korea - the bad and the good, respectfully - an artificial divide that we created with Russia in 1945. This book is not a justification for Kim Jung Il, communism, or war. It is an act of accountability for our country's actions, and how our bullying is driving other nations to acts of desperation. As in the 1936 translation of Sholem Asch’s prophetic tome The War Goes On, my text does not excuse our inhumanity to one another, it merely observes and records it.
A second book, a sequel to The Dragon Option, is currently underway. It is expected to be
completed by early to mid 2008, and it will take up where this first book leaves off. In the meantime,
if you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this book, please email me (see the
Contact page for further information). For those interested in a detailed description about The Dragon Option, a chapter-by-chapter outline follows.
Sincerely,
Robert Ben Mitchell
05/21/07
CHAPTER ONE begins by briefly presenting the protagonist, Seok Dae Jo, in an
American prison. It then quickly shifts back some sixty years to the story of Lee Dae
Ja, the mother of Seok Dae Jo. In her second trimester of pregnancy with her first
child, she loses her husband, Seok Jo Hee, in the Yosu Mutiny of 1948 (Yosu, South
Korea). This uprising of South Korean troops occurred in response to the American
sanctioned massacres on Cheju-do Island (1945-1948), in which some 30,000
islanders were killed. Alone, pregnant, and on foot, she escapes by making a two month long journey along the Korean Death Marches (1948-1950) from the southern end of the
peninsula toward sanctuary in the North. This was the period between World War
Two and the beginning of the Second Korean-American War (1950-1953) when
thousands of peasants were slaughtered as they tried to cross in both directions over
the artificially contrived Russian-American, 38th parallel Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
Along the way, she meets many people who, though not better off than she, help her
and her unborn child to survive. These acts of bravery and desperation include fleeing
from civilian militias, fighting off starvation through the harsh winter trek, surviving
an attack by a South Korean fighter plane (undefended peasant convoys were
routinely strafed by military aircraft during this period), and a harrowing final escape
around the DMZ by boat through the Yellow Sea. In the end, though she loses her
battle, her son, Seok Dae Jo, survives.
The second half of the first chapter tells of Seok Dae Jo's life, beginning with his
childhood in a North Korean orphanage. The Second Korean-American War
(1950-1953) plays out during his early years, most of which he spends below ground
to avoid the fighting. It is during this period that others become aware of his funny
sounding voice which causes him to speak Korean in a very harsh, broken manner.
As many children in the orphanage were missing arms and legs, nothing much is made
of his speech impediment. He lives, for the most part, a normal life until the age of
nine when he turns in a homework assignment titled American Imperialism - a
relativistic theory of freedom. Loosely based upon an article he read about Albert
Einstein's 1915 General Theory of Relativity, he tries to make the point that American
freedom is not the same for all of its citizens. Unfortunately, his teacher, a well
meaning but not highly educated man, misinterprets the boy's work as praise for their
enemy, a perceived act of treason for which he beats his pupil furiously and then
reports him to the local authorities. The higher-ups, however, understand that Seok
Dae Jo has a certain political astuteness that is rarely seen in children his age.
Therefore, the boy is transferred from his orphanage in Anju to the capital in Pyongyang
where he is enrolled in the People's Youth Elite Core (PYEC), while his teacher is
sent off to the Kaechon Concentration Camp for ten years.
In Pyongyang, Seok Dae Jo undergoes a series of tests to determine if he will be
enrolled in the PYEC’s diplomatic core or their spy agency. By error, a series of
verbal skill exams are included near the end of these tests, a fact which perplexes his
examiners (called handlers in the PYEC) as his speech impediment is well known.
In a series of nine humiliating and emotionally traumatic exams, he is forced to repeat
words in his awkward and embarrassing voice. Everything changes, however, during
the last of these nine exercises when he is asked to say the word 'dog' in English.
Seok Dae Jo does it so perfectly that his handlers, expecting only mangled
verbalizations from the boy, do not even hear his response the first two times. But
then, on the third try, they hear him clearly, for he can speak English just like an
American. What the funny sounding kid from Anju has is not a speech impediment,
but Foreign Accent Syndrome, an extremely rare medical condition first reported in
1919 in which one's voice sounds like that of a native speaker from a foreign land.
Because of this, he is immediately enrolled in the Pyongyang Foreign Language
College where he grows up to be one North Korea's foremost authors and speakers
of the English language. During this period, he marries, but loses his wife in the birth
of their first and only child. Yet, after a period of mourning, he recovers from his
loss, and in 1976 he is transferred to New York City as a diplomatic translator with
the North Korean Permanent Observer's Mission to the United Nations. This is also
where we find him at the beginning of the book, in prison.
Seok Dae Jo is imprisoned because he is the only North Korean diplomat left in New
York City on Monday, February 1st, 2010, all the others having been surreptitiously
recalled under the guise of a national celebration in Pyongyang. Earlier that morning,
however, the North Koreans had launched one hundred and forty-four nuclear laden
missiles onto Antarctica, in an effort to destabilize the continent and trigger a global,
environmental disaster that will undermine world economies and literally level most
nations. This is actually more scientific fact than fiction as Antarctica is covered by
so much ice - to an average depth of 1.5 miles overall - that it has been pressed some
2000 feet below its normal resting place. Should all that ice melt and its compressing
weight run off into the sea, then the entire continent, all five and a half million square
miles, would rise up out of the Southern Ocean, tearing apart much of the rest of the
world in the process. The North Koreans have taken this tactic in recognition that
they can neither defeat the United States militarily or economically. Instead, they
have chosen to change the world, forever. Given that their tiny country has been
invaded over 900 times during its 700,000 year history, the leaders of Pyongyang feel
more comfortable rising from the ashes, as they have done so many times before, than
being assimilated into America's capitalist-imperialist empire.
CHAPTER TWO begins with a review of Korean history from 700,000 BC to the present and includes one of their most spectacular creations: the Tripitaka Koreana. Special attention is given to the post World War Two nuclear option on the peninsula, including the deployment of atomic demolition mines along the DMZ. World events leading up to the North Korean advance to the South Pole unfold, after which a conversation between the President of the United States and the imprisoned Seok Dae Jo provides extensive details on the North’s ten year, five phase plan to attack Antarctica. It included the destruction of Iran (Operation Crisis) which also triggered a final solution to the Palestinian Problem, a peace treaty to end the 1953 Korean-American armistice (Operation Supplication), the sinking of one of their own research vessels in the Eastern Pacific (Operation Disaster), the conversion of three cargo ships into covert missile launchers (Operation Reconstruction), and the final attack on Antarctica (Operation Commencement).
CHAPTER THREE outlines the origins of our continents, from four and a half billion years ago until today, with a parallel outline delineating the evolution of life on the planet. Antarctica’s de-evolution over the past twenty-five million years is highlighted, including the imprisonment of the frozen continent’s oldest and smallest inhabitants beneath some eight thousand feet of ice and snow. The conversation started in chapter two continues between the American leader and the incarcerated North Korean translator, revealing why the United States does not counter-attack in retribution for the North's actions. In this process, Seok Dae Jo must force the President to admit the real reasons the United States declared war on Iraq in 2003. Korean spies unveil a clandestine, grand power struggle between American and Chinese forces, with the control of Middle Eastern oil at stake. A plot unfolds on how the United States plans to acquire as much of this oil as it can, and then destroy the rest using petrolphages - a new form of 21st century biological warfare - rather than let the Chinese take control of it. If America retaliates against North Korea, then Pyongyang will give Beijing proof of the United States' poisoned-well policy, throwing the planet into World War Three. In the meantime, with the help of the entire staff of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the real goal of the North Koran attack on Antarctica is unveiled: not to melt all the ice, but to unleash the genetically volatile bacteria which have lived undisturbed beneath the South Pole’s glacial ice for twenty-five million years. Such bacteria actually exist. Through interlacing, viral conservation and coordination, and viroception, these ancient organisms will trigger global pandemics killing most of the people on Earth.
CHAPTER FOUR, the last chapter of the book, discusses the history of petroleum, from Spindletop, Texas, in 1901, through the Ford and Rockefeller's Green Revolution, to Peak Oil and global warming today. The relationships between food, famine, fuel, and the future meltdown of our environment are explained. The history of the USS Pueblo and its role in the little known Third Korean-American War (1966-1970) are reviewed. Finally, in 2009, Seok Dae Jo returns to North Korea for the first time in thirty-three years to prepare for his final mission. While being trained there under the auspices of Kang Min Do, a special security agent in Pyongyang, he learns the truth about his family's past and of the estranged son he never knew. In the end, however, Seok Dae Jo returns to the United States where, from prison, he must explain everything to the President. Ultimately, he momentarily saves his tiny nation, but he cannot save himself, as the Middle Eastern and Antarctic biological warfare clocks keep ticking.