When the new South Korean administration built an economy based on the successful strategies of Japan, North Korea began to lose the race for supremacy on the peninsula. Japan, modeling its structure on Western successes, with American assistance, was not the guide that the Kims of the North wished to follow. That's why the South from 1966 on outpaced the North every year, and by 1976, they had passed them in per capita income.

Kim Il Sung, himself leading a very un-communist lifestyle, nevertheless pushed his socialist/militarist ways on a people heading downhill. He also pushed them further into isolation.

Later in the decade, seeing the U.S. was involved and over-extended in Vietnam, it could be that Kim decided to take advantage of the situation. Much like NK is manipulating a similarly busy America today.

First, in 1968, there was the (aborted) assassination attempt on South Korean President Park Chung Hee.

In that same year a Uniteed States ship in international waters, the Pueblo, was fired upon, taken in, and its crew of 82 men was arrested. "Confessions" -in the way of the Communist- were forced, and the crew was released. Amazingly, North Korea "got away with it."

So, they struck again. In 1969, an American reconnaisance plane was shot down.

Appeasing an enemy does not work. But I will leave political and military solutions to the governments involved. My job is to inform God's people of the situation in North Korea so that they will know how to pray and how to love this nation.

However, believers can learn about their spiritual lives from this lesson. When the enemy of our soul suggests compromise and offers rewards, we must remember that appeasement won't work. His purposes in us must be destroyed altogether.