Connecticut children are relatively lucky compared to the gulag kids

Whilst the US and other mainstream Western media continue to interview children going to school in Connecticut following the shooting, milking the sadness and showing concern for how they cope with the stress of the appalling crime (which is fair enough), I thought it was time to get some perspective.

At the moment in North Korea there are over 150,000 people in gulags. This includes children.  It is impossible to know how many are children, but it is likely to be in the low thousands.

They are slaves.  They get little food.  The temperature averages at -10 Celsius, the gulags are unheated.  They are awoken at dawn and expected to work every day, doing menial tasks.  Those too young to work get beaten, neglected, sexually abused and tortured for sadistic pleasure.  They are told every day how useless they are, as sons and daughters of counter-revolutionary traitors, lackeys of Americans and Japanese.  

"Id just turned twelve, and I remember wishing I would die soon”  (Kang Chol-Hwan "Aquariums of Pyongyang")

So note that whilst the world paid attention to the DPRK's rocket and its now failing satellite, and the propaganda around the first anniversary of Kim Jong Il's death (and placement in a mausoleum), it doesn't ever pay enough attention to the children in the gulags there.

As I've said before the prisoner children in the DPRK are:

Forced to live in prisons high in the mountain valleys, from babies.  They receive rations that are starvation level, those who survive do so by eating bugs, mice and other things they can forage or hunt for.  Many are physically abused, some sexually abused, when old enough they are forced to work from dawn to late in the evening, every day.  It is one step removed from Nazi concentration camps, in that it isn’t gassing used to eliminate them, simply hard work, cold and malnutrition.

So this Christmas, whilst you may naturally spare a thought for the parents of the children who were killed in the shooting, and the kids left behind, you'd do worse than to be distressed and angry at the ones in North Korea.  Angrier still at the willing idiots in the West who defend it, and angry at the Western politicians who have been too scared to bring this issue up at every appropriate opportunity.

As cute and amusing as North Korea is, it really isn't.  It's unspeakably vile, and at this time of year that vileness will seen many many children die of malnutrition, hypothermia and torture, because of a state, a philosophy and a system that devalues life and dehumanises in a way that is difficult to exaggerate.

Naughty Brisbane Metro

Don't joke about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The owners and staff of Brisbane Metro (and Melbourne mX) will be first up against the wall if the world revolution comes embracing the Juche idea...

The use of language is astonishing and has to put most journalists to shame.   I've highlighted a few choice pieces.  I doubt very much if this event will go down in history for longer than about a week, but what is more astonishing is that someone picked up on this either online or in Australia to get the apparatchiks at the KCNA fired up over it.  North Korea's internet presence is progressively growing.

From the Korean Central News Agency - Pyongyang

Naughty Brisbane Metro Challenges Olympic Spirit: KCNA Commentary Pyongyang, August 7 (KCNA)

The Australian newspaper Brisbane Metro behaved so sordid as to describe the DPRK as "Naughty Korea" when carrying the news of London Olympics standings. 

This is a bullying act little short of insulting the Olympic spirit of solidarity, friendship and progress and politicizing sports. Media are obliged to lead the public in today's highly-civilized world where mental and cultural level of mankind is being displayed at the highest level. 

Brisbane Metro deserves criticism for what it has done. The paper behaved so foolish as to use the London Olympics that has caught the world interest for degrading itself. 

The paper hardly known in the world must have thought of making its existence known to the world by joining other media in reporting the Olympic news. Then it should have presented its right appearance to the world. 

Editors of the paper were so incompetent as to tarnish the reputation of the paper by themselves by producing the article like that. There is a saying "A straw may show which way the wind blows". A single article may exhibit the level of the paper. 

Many people were unanimous in denouncing the small paper for defaming the mental and moral aspects of the players of the DPRK who earned recognition from several appreciative world famous media. Even hostile forces toward the DPRK heaped praises on its players' successful performance at the London Olympics, saying that "Korea whirlwind" sweeps the world. The Australian paper cooked up the way of moneymaking, challenging the authority of the dignified sovereign state. The paper deserves a trifle sum of dirty money. 

As already known, it was reported that a lot of petty thieves sneaked into the London Olympics together with tourists. Players fight to the finish in the stadium, but those petty thieves demonstrate their "skills" outside the stadium. The paper Brisbane Metro is little different from those petty thieves. In a word, the paper discredited itself. How pitiful it is. 

The Brisbane Metro will remain as a symbol of rogue paper for its misdeed to be cursed long in Olympic history. The infamy is the self-product of the naughty paper Brisbane Metro which dared challenge the spirit of Olympic, common desire and unanimous will of mankind. 

North Korea's bad? The Sun thinks it's about circus animals

Regular readers will know I have a particular interest in North Korea (aka DPRK).  The reason being that it is, in my view, the most totalitarian regime the world has seen for any extended length of time, having now existed for 64 years, and is now the only successful three generational personality cult.  It is, as one writer described it, as if George Orwell’s novels “1984” and “Animal Farm” were taken not as warnings, but as instruction manuals.  Moreover, I’ve been there, although I am legally bound to not publish anything regarding that visit, and it is in the interests of my guides (who were exceptional), for me to do just that.

The sheer horror of the all pervasive denial of individual freedom and rejection of any objective consideration of reality, in favour of an “official view” is difficult to get across.  It is dehumanising, debilitating and life is cheap there.  It has all but scrubbed capitalism away, with private property rights virtually non-existent beyond a few personal chattels, with all employment defined and prescribed by the state.  Where you live, what job you do and your spare time are all almost entirely determined by others, and is a mixture of chance, favour and whim.   For those who insult the personality cult heads, or are deemed to be counter-revolutionary, the future is grim for them and their entire families.  If a man is said to have said something illegal, or folded a newspaper the wrong way (creasing an image of one of the leaders), or the like, it is to the gulags that he goes, with his wife or girlfriend, his parents, siblings and children.

You see in the DPRK, children can be political prisoners.  Forced to live in prisons high in the mountain valleys, from babies.  They receive rations that are starvation level, those who survive do so by eating bugs, mice and other things they can forage or hunt for.  Many are physically abused, some sexually abused, when old enough they are forced to work from dawn to late in the evening, every day.  It is one step removed from Nazi concentration camps, in that it isn’t gassing used to eliminate them, simply hard work, cold and malnutrition.

That horror isn’t easy to visit in the DPRK, for obvious reasons.  However, DPRK watchers have been adept at mapping, in great detail, where such camps are, with a brilliant Google Earth overlay.  For actual visitors to the DPRK, the horror is more subtle.  It isn’t in the power cuts, the propaganda, the relatively barren streets, crumbling infrastructure or the regimentation, it is what is not so obvious.  For there is a surfeit of videos and pictures of the DPRK’s key spectacles, none of which is that new.

It is the lack of children playing spontaneously, for their before and after school and weekend time is all taken up by state organised clubs and associations, all designed to promotion loyalty to the leaders, the party and the state, including dobbing in their parents for not being sufficiently loyal.  It is the orphanages where infants are shown off singing and dancing a song like “Kim Jong Il is our father”.  It is the constant climate of fear among citizens about who sees them, who listens to them and what will be said.  People who have had much history and information about the outside world kept from them, and what they do get is frequently heavily distorted.  People who are anxious to know about the outside world, to understand and to be free of fear.  Of course you never see those who are taken away, imprisoned, tortured or simply starving to death because of a regime that imprisons them and steals from them all to maintain a true 1% elite of privilege, gained by force, birth-right and fraud.

So what did Sun journalists Alex Peake and Simon Jones think was most important to focus on?  The treatment of circus animals.  The two of them lied their way into the country for a rather asinine story, probably wrecking future business of the tour company Lupine Tours, and quite possibly risking not only the end of the career, but also possible imprisonment of their tour guides.  A bit of research with DPRK experts (and there are a number of noted academics) would have told them the real cost of their “story” lies with others.

Now I’m all for thwarting dictatorships and embarrassing them, I’m particularly keen on getting more information into them and engaging with people who live there.  I’m also interested in raising the profile of the most serious atrocities of such regimes.  For the DPRK it must be the use of Stalinist type Gulags to imprison and enslave the children of political prisoners (though one can count the banishing of the disabled, uncounted public executions of political prisoners and the mass starvation of millions whilst the leadership dined like oligarchs).

However, for the Sun, it no doubt figured its readers were more interested in finding a country where they don’t know Michael Jackson is dead (hardly surprising, since the moon landings were never ever reported, and the Holocaust isn’t commonly known to have happened either), and where circuses involve the undoubted cruel treatment of bears and baboons.

Sad though it is, the treatment of the bears and baboons is not unusual outside Western Europe, and would also be found in many former Soviet Republics and China.  Quite simply the cultural norm of treating animals with compassion is alien to many cultures, and hardly a surprise for a state which retains structures and systems little changed from the ones the USSR transplanted onto it in the 1940s.

However, for the Sun to regard this to be the real tragic story of the DPRK is a travesty.   Although I would not be surprised if the human hating fraternity called PETA thinks the treatment of bears is more of an issue than the treatment of humans in the country, and that compassion for animals in the UK tends to rank higher than that for people.

I don’t belong to the feeding frenzy of hate-mongers who think any media owned by Rupert Murdoch is somehow evil – far from it.  However, this sort of “journalism” is not only rather facile, but at best is not useful, and at worst counterproductive.

For a start, if it means less people get to visit the place and expose it to foreign ideas and questions, because Lupine Tours is shut out of the market, then that is unfortunate.   I expect Lupine Tours to sue for breach of contract (presuming it was clever enough to include a contract that restricted the journalists).

However, the likely reaction of the DPRK is going to be more simple.  It will stop including the animal circus on tours visited by Westerners.  It wont save the animals.   However, it will give the impression that this is what matters the most – the treatment of circus animals.  It shouldn't be.

You see the impression most people have of the place is ludicrous dictators and nuclear weapons, with big monuments, mass regimentation and all other sorts of spectacles.  The unadulterated evil behind it all is largely ignored, particularly by the likes of Amnesty International and the leftwing protest movement - all too keen to damn the USA on its treatment of Islamist terrorist suspects, but never raising a protest against the torture of children by the DPRK.

A far more useful article would have sought out defectors, and discussed what they saw and experienced, and talked about the gulags with children in them.   This is what must be raised, again and again – the gulags must be opened up, letting the ICRC in and get closed down.  Children should not be political prisoners – ever (even though, in reality, virtually everyone in the DPRK is a political prisoner).

Better reporting on the DPRK is here in the Economist, about the horrors of the gulags, pointing out it is easier to lampoon the regime as freaky than to confront the true horror of the place.

This video of a starving orphan girl in the country is far more harrowing and disturbing than grotesque circus animals.   Although, I doubt PETA really thinks so.

100 years ago today - a disaster in the making

Today millions of people will be commemorating an event that happened on 15 April 1912.  It wasn't uncommon in itself, having similarities to occasions that happened before and since, but over many decades it passed into legend.  Movies, books and songs have been written about it, and more than a few people have made it an obsession and a fascination.

The people who were injured and killed as a result of the chain of catastrophic errors that followed are themselves largely forgotten, except by the remaining relatives and friends of those who were lost. 

However, the hype that surrounds the event today is ridiculous.  It isn't something to be commemorated, for it has caused millions to be wrapped up in a romanticised version of events, that underplays (and even glorifies) the horrors that can't be denied.  Although it has sustained the careers of thousands feeding the industries surrounding it all, is it right that this be such a focus for so many?  

I was tempted to go to the place which is the epicentre of the commemoration of the event this year, because I know it would not be repeated on the same scale given it was a centenary, but decided not to feed this monstrous caricature of reality.

No it's not the 5th largest peacetime shipping disaster, more an event that spawned a man whose decisions killed millions and enslave millions today.  

A dictator was born.

The star in the sky commemorates the event for these folk

North Korea plays its usual game

The news that the DPRK had decided to freeze its uranium enrichment operation in exchange for food aid from the USA is not surprising.

For it is part of the pattern of behaviour that the regime has followed since the end of the Cold War.  It goes like this:

-  Have talks with the USA;

-  Agree to "be good" in exchange for money, aid.  "Being good" could be to allow nuclear inspections, allow family reunion visits, stop missile testing.

-  Receive the aid, be it anything from food, to technical expertise, to assistance in building a light water nuclear reactor;

-  Avoid being totally transparent about nuclear inspections, or stopping testing, and blame the US for not providing all that it promised;

-  Allow all statements from the US that the DPRK has not met promises to be rebuffed with vituperous invective;

-  US cuts aid and support;

-  DPRK starts being "bad" openly, saying it is for self defence.  e.g. send off a missile over Japan, test a nuclear weapon,  shell an island, threaten to create a "sea of fire";

-  A few years of stalemate;

-  DPRK uses back-channels to seek face-saving agreement to get given a bribe to stop being bad;

-  Have talks with the USA... Insist there not be talks with South Korea (the "south Korean puppet clique") or Japan or include Russia or China, because you want to be treated as an "equal". 

This time the reason for capitulation is two fold.

Firstly, Kim Jong Un has barely been in power 2-3 months, and needs to keep the army and the party nomenklatura happy.   His power is entirely dependent on satisfying those in the military who enjoy a comfortable lifestyle due to black market trading in arms, drugs and counterfeit currency printing.

Secondly, 15 April 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth, and the masses need gifts to prove the state remains "generous".  In addition, Kim Jong Il promised that in 2012 the DPRK would be a wealthy country.  Some food aid will help with this.

So whilst some in the media see it as a breakthrough, it remains business as usual - the USA facilitating the continuity of a totalitarian regime.

Kim Jong Il's economic legacy

Let's test two of the great theories as to why North Korea is in poverty:

1.  North Korea has really only suffered since the end of the Cold War saw it lose markets and cheap oil.

2.  North Korea has also really only suffered due to the introduction of UN sanctions on trade with the country due to its nuclear programme.

Nonsense.  The effect of the end of the Cold War was to make things worse, but the relative decline is inbuilt in the system of rigid state socialism.

Look at this, from the Washington Post:

Source: Washington Post

Stagnation has been the norm in North Korea for 40 years.  The gap between rich and poor has been a gap between South Korea and North Korea.  From 1972 to 1987 South Korea was under the rule of a military led dictatorship and subsequently transitioned to a vibrant and very open liberal democracy.  However, South Korea's dictatorship allowed far more economic and personal freedom than North Korea.  Today the average South Korean has 20 times the income of the average North Korean, with freedoms and a way of life as distant from North Koreans as New Zealand does to Haiti.  

As the Washington Post notes.  East Germany had one-third of the per capita income of West Germany at the time of reunification.  North Korea has one-twentieth.

By contrast, South Korea is a pinup example of roaring success in economic development.  From 1953 when after the Korean War it had per capita income akin to that of Bangladesh, it is today effectively a developed country. 

Do we really need any more case studies of capitalism vs. socialism?

Kim Jong Il - A life of terror

It is difficult to exaggerate the absolute vileness of what Kim Jong Il presided over since the death of his megalomaniac father Kim Il Sung, he is perhaps only exceeded by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao in sheer numbers of those murdered, but the whole superstructure of the regime is such a layer upon layer of fiction that is defies easy understanding.  Almost everything about him and his regime was a lie, the reality evasion was on such a scale that millions died of mass starvation, hundreds of thousands lived and died in prison camps, including young children and the rest of the population lived under an ever present terror of facing oblivion due either to failure of the totalitarian state to deliver food and shelter, or because it would take them away.   

Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 in the USSR by his father, a small scale anti-Japanese guerilla leader who fled Korea with his wife Kim Jong Suk after a number of small successes in repelling Japanese imperialism and its cruel rule of Korea.  In the USSR Kim Il Sung learned of Marxism-Leninism and was impressed by the order and discipline imposed by Stalin.   Kim Jong Il would have been an insignificant small boy if his father hadn't been hand picked by the Red Army and Stalin's regime to be Moscow's plant in Korea.  He was brought along whilst the Red Army marched into the northern half of Korea at the end of World War 2.  Kim Il Sung had Soviet advisors and military assistance, as he set up a Korean communist party with Soviet alignment, which initially worked with and then purged and destroyed the indigenous Korean communist movement.  His ruthlessness, friendliness to Moscow and youthful charisma saw Kim Il Sung picked to lead the new state set up by Moscow to rival the UN/US backed Republic of Korea established in the south.  The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was born, and Kim Jong Il was 7 years old.

Kim Jong Il faced several childhood issues.  One was death of his younger brother to drowning, another was death of his mother in 1949 - allegedly exacerbated when she found out about Kim Il Sung's serial adultery (the "Great Leader" title not quite appearing yet though), and then the Korean War causing Kim Il Sung to evacuate with his children and new wife to be Kim Song Ae.

The world heard absolutely nothing of Kim Jong Il till 1973.  By then he had completed school and university, and was being groomed to be the successor.  Kim Jong Il had by then gained a penchant for expensive liquor, fast cars, young pretty women (he used his father's pleasure troops to recruit pretty young girls from age 13 to be trained to please him once they reached around age 15-16, in large numbers), guns and movies.   He lived the high life, drinking heavily (Hennessy especially), smoking and partying.  He never flew, and would happily arrange execution of those who displeased him.  His movie fetish became legendary.  He led establishment of a major film studio in Pyongyang, with multiple sets for different eras and countries.  He arranged kidnapping of actors, chefs and directors of Korean descent from south Korea and Japan, he also arranged for prostitutes to be brought in from various countries including Sweden.   It is notable his father died at age 82, but he couldn't manage past 70.

Yes, 70.  He is 70, not 69.

Between 1973 and 1980 he was referred to publicly in all media and books as "the Party Center" as he led day to day administrative business for his father.  In that exercise he successfully led various purges and ensured only loyal followers progressed to support him and his father, he also helped spear the unprecedented personality cult around his father, which after 1980 was duplicated for him personally.   The personality cult saw the glorification of a vacuous national ideology called "Juche", the constructions of statues and monuments across the country, and the completion of the cultural revolution that meant virtually all songs, films, books and art were focused on glorifying Kim Il Sung, the party, the state, Juche and all that was done by them.   Everything good was because of his father and later himself.  Everything that went wrong was due to the US imperialists, the south Korean puppet clique and the Japanese.

By the 1980s, Kim Jong Il had become the Dear Leader to his father the Great Leader and both operated as a pair.  Yet Kim Jong Il's high squeaky voice meant he was largely a recluse, living the high life, whilst ordering stories and tales to be written about his exploits.   Like his father it is claimed he gave "on the spot guidance" to hundreds of sites across the country.   What he did was perpetuate a system that create possibly the biggest and longest lasting prison state in history.

North Koreans have largely lived planned lives.   There is no private ownership of land, or indeed anything other than personal possessions.  Regular re-issuing of currency destroys savings.

Overseas travel was strictly prohibited, as was travel from one's own town or village.  Internal passports strictly regulated where anyone could travel, and life beyond one's home town was available only to few.  

News media was strictly under total state control.  All media reported to the people how lucky they were to live in the country and that people worldwide envied them.  They were told that South Korea was a state of slaves where Americans raped girls and kept Koreans as servants and mistreated them, starving them.  They were told everywhere else in the world was full of crime, starvation, war and deprivation.  Satellite TV was unavailable.  Foreign broadcasts were unavailable.   Radios were banned except for locally made devices with no tuning dial so that only local signals could be picked up.   The life in North Korea in the 1980s was hermetically sealed from the world.  Foreign popular culture was unknown.  Elvis Presley, Mickey Mouse, the Beatles and almost any movies, songs, fashions and brand from elsewhere were unknown, except to the elite.

Every day was planned.  Jobs included political education every day, people were constantly told to work harder and longer and never complain, be grateful and be frugal.   Every week every adult would go to criticism sessions where they must confess their own limitations and then accuse others of the same.  Every week one would fear being made a scapegoat.  Photos of both Kims were mandatory in every home, office, school classroom and public transport vehicle.  They had to be kept in perfect clean condition or punishment would be meted out.  Destroying newspapers with their images on them was forbidden.   All children were taken from their parents several hours a day into creches to learn their first words "Kim Il Sung (and latterly Kim Jong Il) is your father".  Children taught to owe everything to the Kims, and to put loyalty to them above their parents and friends.  Taught to be snitches for the leaders.  Taught to be part of the Police State.   Red Guards from their young teens, loyalty to leader and party first, and they would be rewarded if they reported on relatives and friends who were disloyal.

Kim Jong Il was a part of that and changed nothing when his father died.   When Soviet oil and aid ceased to flow, the economy was not reformed.   It remained centrally controlled and managed, entrepreneurship remained illegal, no freedoms were granted.   As a result, he continued to maintain a policy of terror.   Individuals feared that if they were found to be disloyal, they and all their relatives would be imprisoned in gulags - slave labour camps where they would work 16 hour days, 7 days a week, eating next to nothing.   Children from babies up would be included.  Abuse, sadism and torture are rife - reports have also come out of chemical and biological weapons tests being applied to some inmates.  

Even outside the gulag system the mass starvation of the late 1990s was due entirely to the failure of the entire economic system to be productive and let people respond to demand, supply and reason.  Adopting "non-juche" farming techniques was forbidden, so millions starved, desperately trying to eat wildlife, bark, soil, weeds, whilst propaganda signs urged them to "only eat two meals a day".   Kim Jong Il ate lobster, drank liquors and remained obese.

He could have reformed his country, what he did was next to nothing.  The biggest revolution has been the introduction of a mobile phone network that pre-selected elite can use, but which is effectively allowing people to network without easy state surveillance.  He has also seen, informally, the borders become more porous, as corruption and awareness of the outside world has spread among the more privileged classes, especially as technology has slipped into the country, with very cheap CD and DVD players, and CDs, DVDs from south Korea via Chinese sources.  He stopped a military coup by raising the status of the military into the most powerful force in the country, essentially usurping the party.   

North Korea today is a military state led by a personality cult family.  Its main businesses are arms, narcotics, counterfeit currency and minerals.   Kim Jong Il visited China several times and China showed him the results of its dramatic reforms, but he was unmoved - believing that it was too risky to allow Koreans to set up their own businesses and interact freely.  The result is a dark, polluted, cold, state of terror, horror, starvation and fear.

Unlike official propaganda, and the parroted propaganda from Pyongyang's useful idiots in the Korean Friendship Association, who stick their deluded evil tongues up their figurative fundament of Kim Jong Il, he will be remembered as a short inadequate playboy murdering tyrant whose policies and approaches resulted in the deaths of millions, and suffering of tens of millions.

What is left is a country with exhausted broken infrastructure, an enormous military armed with weapons of mass destruction, unproductive agriculture, massive untapped mineral resources, a police state and a people whose lives have been wasted through ideological education and decades of lies and terror.

Reforming, modernising, freeing and re-educating this country is a monumental task.  Consider fixing East Germany to be like helping an overweight smoker to become fit and normal size, fixing North Korea is like helping a senile centenarian become an Olympic athlete with a Ph. D.

Kim Jong Il's death facts and sources UPDATES

I was driving near Taupo when I heard the news about Kim Jong Il's sudden death, and missed turning off.  Perversely you might think, I have a relationship with the DPRK, given it is the most totalitarian regime the world has ever seen - and know people there.  I studied it extensively in the 1990s and travelled there.   I am overwhelmingly joyous about his passing, but am thinking a lot about those who I know are there and who are looking for reform to come, knowing there must be change.  However, I am going to be driven nuts by reporters who are going to get a lot wrong about the place.

Let's get some points clear:

1.  Kim Jong Il was 70 NOT 69.  He was actually born in 1941 in the Soviet Union, not 1942 on "sacred" Mt. Paektu whilst his father was leading the liberation from the Japanese.  The 1942 birth year is a fabrication which appeared in the 1970s in publications.  The sole reason was to match his father, Kim Il Sung's, birth year of 1912.  So when Kim Il Sung turned 60, Kim Jong Il turned 30 etc etc.  The point of his birth in the USSR (near Khabarovsk I believe) is that Kim Il Sung had fled to the country due to the Japanese takeover, along with his mother Kim Jong Suk (who died in 1949 under circumstances that have multiple versions).

2. Kim Jong Un is expected to succeed him, but reality is likely to be quite different.  There is a significant power struggle about to happen (there was one when Kim Il Sung died as his second wife, Kim Song Ae sought to overthrow Kim Jong Il), and the list of members of the National Funeral Committee is very significant (see article here).  Kim Jong Un leads the list, number two is the rather  elderly Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly Kim Yong Nam, Choe Yong Rim is third, and is Prime Minister and an ally of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un.  Those two are close allies and expected to ensure Kim Jong Un leads.  Ri Yong Ho is number four, and is effectively now de-jure head of the military as a whole, and his ability to ensure loyalty to Kim Jong Un is likely to be critical.  At 69 he is not too old to achieve that, but his name will be one to watch.  Kim Yong-Chun is alongside him and may be expected to be a challenger as head of the army.

3.  Kim Jong Il's closest living relative is his sister Kim Kyong Hui, the most powerful woman in the country.  She may well seek to shadow Kim Jong Un because she is sole remaining issue of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Suk.  Kim Jong Il's half sibling Kim Pyong Il is not listed in the funeral committee, and was reportedly in Pyongyang earlier year because his mother- Kim Il Sung's second wife Kim Son Ae, is terminally ill.  He may seek to challenge Kim Jong Un, but has not be around in the country sufficiently to do so.   Kim Pyong Il and Kim Kyong Hui are the two people best placed to mount a civilian challenge of the leadership.

4.  North Korea is not as isolated as it once was.  The elite have mobile phones and are extensively aware of life in the outside world, with DVDs, CDs and other material circulating among the ruling classes.  Yet, the mass of the population do not have a clue, and may think the world is mourning with them.  They haven't the slightest clue of the wealth prosperity and freedom of South Korea.  Internet access is not available to anyone except a tiny elite, satellite TV is only available to that elite and in three hotels in Pyongyang, and it is a crime to own a radio that can receive foreign broadcasts.

5.  He died TWO DAYS AGO, which is astonishing.  It is telling that so much time passed compared to news of the death of his father.  Kim Jong Un will have sought to ensure he was not directly threatened.  However, it will be far more interesting in coming months.

The latest report is that the country is under curfew, under actual visible martial law.

If you want the most useful coverage of events then you will find it hard to beat the following sites:

- Daily NK - Providing the most regular, up to date and informed coverage of events.  In English, but originally Korean.   If you use any single source to follow events in coming weeks, use this.

- North Korea Econ Watch - Russian academic Andrei Lankov's excellent blog on events in the DPRK, with many sources of those who do business, travel and visit there.  Lankov is one of the world's leading DPRK watchers, with some fluency in Korean, as well as English and Russian, and a long history of visiting the place over many years.

- North Korea Leadership Watch - Self explanatory blog by Michael Madden, includes a great Kim Jong Il family tree

North Korea's own state monopoly news agency (no others allowed, absolutely no free speech or independent media or publishing of any kind) the Korean Central News Agency is here in English.

North Korea's international radio station, Voice of Korea in English

More will be added in coming days

UPDATE 1:  No foreign delegations allowed to Kim Jong Il funeral or for mourning.   Big questions regarding existing Western tour groups in the country.

UPDATE 2: TV3's Nightline coverage (New Zealand) is sloppy.  First, Kim Jong Il has NOT been the "Dear Leader" for over 10 years, but rather "Leader".  Secondly, the "military first" policy (Songun) is not "60 years old".  It dates from 1995 although is claimed to have arisen in 1961.

UPDATE 3: Daily NK is clearly managing to get unofficial reports from the DPRK presumably through a mix of sources.  Markets closed, night curfews, people prohibited for being outside.  Particular issues in the town of Musan.

100% result in DPRK election

North Korea held its local, municipal and provincial elections.

It had 99.97% turnout (disgraceful yes, but it was noted that some were working on oceans or abroad - haven't they heard of absentee ballots?)

and 100% of those who turned out voted for the single candidate.

Even the ephebophile, megalomaniacal, pathological liar.

Meanwhile, there are still tens of thousands in gulags, including hundreds of children, and Amnesty International still has no campaign on the place, oh and Reverend Don Borrie of Porirua still remains Kim Jong Il's useful idiot in New Zealand.

Bravery extends to Pyongyang

The so-called "Arab Spring" has produced unexpected ripples.

One is in the world's most totalitarian state.

Graffiti was found in Pyongyang saying:

"Park Chung Hee and Kim Jong Il are both dictators; Park Chung Hee a dictator who developed his country’s economy, Kim Jong Il a dictator who starved people to death"

Graffiti in North Korea is so rare that known incidents of it since the Korean War are countable on one hand.  To criticise Kim Jong Il in this way is unheard of, and would get anyone associated with it a summary execution.

Read Daily NK to see how the regime is reacting, by closing universities over the summer.

The cracks are appearing, it's just a tragic and pathetic shame that most of the self-styled promoters of human rights in the West ignore it.

Meanwhile, when WILL New Zealand's brainless and inane news media hound North Korea's willing idiot in Porirua - Reverend Don Borrie - for his decades of sycophantic apologies to a regime that holds babies and small children as political prisoners to be enslaved, raped, beaten and starved?

About the same time as it will ask probing questions of Cuba-philes like Matt McCarten and Keith Locke about treatment of psychiatric patients in Cuba, or should I say people deemed by the regime to be mentally ill because they don't embrace the regime.

By the way, I'm heading to New Zealand today... it's been two years...

The slaves commemorate their dead leader

Today is one day in the year when I can always feel thankful.  For it is the day that 24 million people who live in the world's largest prison are required and expected to celebrate the birthday of their dead, but still constitutionally empowered, President.

The cold soulless omnipresent photo of Kim Il Sung

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (you need that name to top off the entire effect of this vile absurdity) has Kim Il Sung as "eternal President" as he lies in state at his immaculate marble and granite palace in Pyongyang.  Koreans unfortunate enough to be on the northern side of the DMZ pay tribute to this wily murdering warmonger every day, bowing four times to his embalmed corpse.  They all have this very photo in their homes, offices, schoolroom, looking down upon them all, everywhere.  Yes Orwell was prescient. 

The prisoners are all expected to give gifts, but in turn they also get small gifts for their children.  They are, of course, expected to be grateful for they have "nothing to envy in the world" according to state media.  However, whilst they get gifts for their children, they are not foolish - they now sell them on the black market because food rations are so meagre.

What is particularly tragic is that the country is so closed that most of the slaves actually like him.  Why?  Because he maintained such a totalitarian grip on media, publishing and in completely rewriting history (and removing those who inconveniently know the truth) that he has painted himself as a hero.

His tale is that he founded a revolutionary army in his teens and he led that army to defeat the Japanese and expel them from the Korean peninsula by 1945.   The truth is that he led a small brigade in his late 20s who fought the Japanese in a few battles, but then fled to the Soviet Union.  Korean was liberated from Japanese enslavement because the US defeated Japan, helped by Chinese partisans (nationalist and communist) and the latecomer Red Army at the last minute.   

His tale is that he arrived in Pyongyang to crowds celebrating his return as a famous hero, when he was virtually unknown and installed by Stalin as a compliant local who would help mould Korea into a client state.  

His tale is that the US invaded in 1950 and he and his army fought back the imperialist invasion, despite US use of biological weapons and heinous atrocities committed against Koreans.  In fact, he invaded south Korea, brutally took over nearly the whole peninsula before the UN Security Council authorised a US led multilateral counteroffensive that would have defeated him, had Mao not gotten frightened by MacArthur's rhetoric and saved his skin.  There is no credible evidence of biological weaponry being used in the Korean War, and tales of US atrocities are grossly and obscenely exaggerated (but not completely without foundation).

His tale is that he rebuilt the country into a workers' paradise whilst south Korea lived under the tutelage of US capitalist slavedrivers using south Koreans as subjects, oppressing them under a brutal military dictatorship.   The south Korean people's single hearted desire being to reunify the country under Kim Il Sung's leadership.  The truth is that while dictatorship DID reign in the south until 1988, and working conditions in the 50s and 60s were harsh, the dictatorship was nowhere near as pervasive as Kim Il Sung's.  Living standards in south Korea soared since the Korean War, materially surpassed the north by the late 1960s and virtually no one in the south have any time for Kim Il Sung.  He is widely hated in the south.

His tale is that he developed a unique special ideology, called Juche, which empowers humanity and has millions of followers and acolytes around the world, who look upon him as their leader, a genius, "peerlessly great man" and numerous other sycophantic titles.  The truth is that he had academics concoct a contradictory and vague philosophy of isolationism, nationalism and pseudo-monarchical hypocrisy, which is virtually unknown in the world except for a strange handful of peculiar malcontents found in the likes of India, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Stoke on Trent.

His tale is that his people have nothing to envy in the world, that the world is full of famine, disease, exploitation, oppression, war, slavery, crime, depravity and death.  The truth is that he has created a country that has lost millions from famine, imprisons people in their home towns, tells them where and when to work, denies them privacy at all levels, demands their constant unquestioning obedience, lies to them on a scale and extent that is almost incomprehensible (virtually nothing positive about the outside world is ever reported, and with the exception of a tiny elite, little is shown of foreign culture, news or major events - such as the moon landing).  

His tale is that he has always worked long hours, tirelessly for the people, always giving them wise guidance and helping in all fields, and his knowledge and skills are unbounded in their brilliance and breadth.  He being a modest man who demands little, but gives all.  The truth is that he lived the life of a wealthy king with numerous well appointed palaces, food, drink, clothing and consumer goods from around the world, enjoyed his own "joy division" of especially selected beautiful young women to enjoy orgies that would make Berlusconi jealous, and by the mid 1960s had so ruthlessly purged any challenges to his rule that he could relax. All the time he called for his enslaved people to work ever harder, more tirelessly than before, filling up their "spare time" with activities either to defend the country, or extra-curricular activities for the monthly "celebrations" of him, his inarticulate playboy son, the party, the country, the army or Juche  Meanwhile, there has never been room for anyone disabled in the workers' paradise.

So whilst Libyans fight to depose their megalomaniacal ruler  (who has long been loved by the Kim gang), and others go about their daily life.  Be grateful for a moment that you're not in a country led by a lying murdering corpse, where you can't leave, where you are denied the truth of his life and his rule and are told to sacrifice more every day and you have nothing to envy in the world.

Laugh at Kim Jong Il day? (UPDATED)

Be glad you can, for around 24 million people who live north of the Korean DMZ, they can't because they are forced to celebrate his 69th (actually 70th) birthday on February 16.  They are forced to buy "gifts" to give to senior party cadres, in order to avoid being singled out, ostracised, criticised, punished and taken to a gulag to celebrate the birthday of the Great Leader and the boundless feats he has performed for the country.   Usually birthday includes extra rations, this year it appear they are not going to happen.

Kim Jong Il is short, apparently has a speech impediment that would have made King George VI seem confident, losing his memory, is ill from various chronic illnesses due to a life of alcohol, rich food and lazy living, and absolute hates the Team America movie.   Because it makes him look ridiculous.

So does this blog, which is simply called "Kim Jong Il looking at things", and is exactly what is says, and if it came from North Korea the person producing it would get executed.

So spare a thought for the folk who have to endure a public holiday, being forced to celebrate a man who they cannot hope to express their views about, who lives a rarified existence of sumptuous luxury paid for by the virtual slave labour of the prison state inherited from his murderous, megalomaniacal, mendacious, mediocrity of a father.

You see, the main trend of the international media is to ridicule and think absurd this prison state, with far too little attention given to the atrocious way of living they endure. 

Outside this place, you might like to ask a couple of questions.

First, consider this phrase from a North Korean broadcast and think how alike it seems from its unwitting intellectual companions in the West who share a hatred for capitalism:

"The youth of Eastern Europe, who were at the forefront of the destruction of socialism, were soaked in the rotten, sick culture of capitalism, and this resulted in the destruction of the fruits of the revolutionary war previous generations had accomplished...When the young became soaked in the ideology of a capitalism that knows nothing beyond money, they came to fall into a materialism that thought not of the Party and state’s benefits, not even the people’s benefits"

It takes little to see what an absolute absence of capitalism results in - mass starvation, totalitarian brutality, mass regimentation and an almost complete culture of reality evasion, suppression, denial and manufacturing.  Bear in mind this place provided inspiration for Nicolae Ceausescu and Mobutu Sese Seko.  What happens when you suppress capitalism?  It is fairly obvious.

Secondly, what gift were New Zealand taxpayers forced to give to Kim Jong Il, via Winston Peters, when the last government was the first Western country to improve relations with North Korea after the nuclear test? I'd like to know without having to visit the Kim Jong Il International Friendship Exhibition.

UPDATE: Funny how today the NZ Parliament has been debating whether students should be allowed to choose whether they belong to student unions.  No issue in New Zealand today quite so starkly exposes the hypocritical empty hatred of individual freedom, the craven self-interested desire for power and control and the mealy mouthed "wider interests, greater good" excuses the left can roll out.   It boils down to whether individuals have freedom of association.  If you can't get that, then you can't talk about human rights or anything of the like, when you think it is ok to make people belong to and pay for an organisation that they do not agree with, and for that organisation to persistently claim it somehow is representative.  It is immoral, it is fraudulent, and Kim Jong Il would approve.

Kim Jong Il is losing his memory, as collapse inches forward

Whilst the mainstream media understandably focuses on Egypt, signs that the world's most totalitarian and brutal dictatorship by far is slowly unravelling are becoming more prevalent.

The latest being a series of reports of Kim Jong Il's increasingly erratic and unpredictable behaviour, including losing his memory.  The most profound example being one when he forgot his father - "Great Leader" and officially eternal President Kim Il Sung - has been dead since 1994.

Daily NK reports:

“In December, 2009 when he visited Sungjin Steel Manufacturing Complex in Kim Chaek, North Hamkyung Province, Kim received a report on the ‘Completion of the process for the manufacturing of Juche steel.’ Taking up the report, he said, ‘Report this fact immediately to the Suryeong!’ The people there were totally embarrassed.”

Suryeong is Korean for "Great Leader" and was a commonly used pronoun for Kim Il Sung. 

The same article cites Kim Jong Il being angry in 2009 about the name of a college having been changed, even though it was he who did it in 2003.  He also was angry at the dismissal of a man who he had fired the year before.

There are plenty of example of dictators losing the plot due to drug use (Macias Nguema, Ali Soilih), but this would indicate Kim Jong Il 's day are very much numbered.

Meanwhile, the elder brother of designated successor Kim Jong Eun, Kim Jong Nam has held a press interview with Tokyo Shimbun where he hopes his brother opens up the country to reform., but acknowledges it could bring systemic collapse of the entire political system.   Kim Jong Nam reportedly lives in China or Macau, and has been fairly open with foreign press about the situation in the country.   He personally opposes his brother succeeding his father and claimed Kim Jong Il himself opposed it, but has proceeded to ensure "political stability".   He has also claimed no interest at all in returning to North Korea to have a political life.

Other reports are:

- Black market DVDs of South Korean films, music and TV programmes are seeping in showing for the first time life in South Korea, which has been officially depicted as poverty stricken and brutal.  Youth of higher officials and Party members have this material.  Such material entering the country was unheard of a decade ago.

- Leaflets denouncing the regime are circulating, as more and more people bravely seek to undermine the regime.   Be clear that this was completely unheard of for the last 60 years in a country that has consistently had the worst or second worst press freedom in the world.

- Video of a group called Young People's League for Freedom openly defying the regime, desecrating images of Kim Jong Il (video not online).

Meanwhile, 154,000 political prisoners are held in the most brutal gulags on the planet in North Korea.  You'd think human rights organisations and so called peace campaigners would be holding placards outside North Korean embassies and demanding change.  However, given the US has always been an implacable enemy of the country, and virtually no foreign companies have a presence there, I don't think their heart would be in it - which tells you a bit about what that agenda really is about.  After all if torturing and enslaving children as political prisoners can't get you agitated, then can you really be said to be interested in human rights?

Unlike the organisations like HRNK, North Korea Freedom Coalition and Liberty in North Korea which campaign openly about the atrocities in North Korea, and actively provide help for refugees who flee via China, where officials happily hand refugees back to the regime to be executed or brutalised. 

Egypt is a holiday camp compared to North Korea.  Yet although North Korea has nuclear weapons and a destructive ideology, it is not as destructive and aggressive as Islamism.  Nobody gets called a racist for damning those who think Kim Il Sung was great or that Marxism-Leninism is destructive and pernicious.  Nobody thinks that criticising the North Korean political system is a criticise of people themselves or derogatory towards them.  

In that respect, whilst North Korea's collapse will be interesting and highly relevant to its neighbours, and potentially dangerous in the short term.  Egypt's future has a far more existential influence about our lives.   I am not too worried about the handful of useful idiots in New Zealand who sympathise with North Korea, but Islamists are another story altogether.

North Korea's winter of starvation, discontent and being ignored

While the usual suspects hop on the trendy bandwagons of embarrassing the USA, there remains a story of horror, death and misery they largely ignore. 

Oh and by the way, she's dead now.  

If this has upset and angered you then go tell Professor Tim Beal, who takes the North's side on the recent attack on Yeonpyeong Island, and claims that his own observations of how well things look in Pyongyang (which is true) are representative of the whole country.  He is closely associated with North Korea's useful idiot in New Zealand, the Reverend Don Borrie who has visited the country frequently and given glowing paeans about Kim Il Sung.   This NZ-DPRK Society campaigns in favour of the US withdrawing from South Korea, against New Zealand supporting the liberal democratic capitalist South Korea in the event of a military conflict and for the full legitimisation of this slave state at an international level.  

Who knows if these men are simply useful idiots, incapable of understanding the fundamental evil and vileness of a regime that complete and utterly destroys individual thought, initiative and goals, whilst sucking up enormous resources into a combination of empty lie-infested personality cults and a futile partly racist ultra-militarism towards the south, USA and Japan.  Maybe they are themselves sucked into the propaganda and the thin veneer of niceness that pervades and surrounds what North Korea presents to outsiders.

By the way this is one reason I no longer give any financial support to Amnesty International.   Its website almost ignores North Korea.  It campaigns against many things quite rightly, but virtually ignores North Korea.  A search of its website shows it campaigns in FAVOUR of more UN agency based aid going to North Korea despite extensive evidence of such aid being co-opted by the state for the army and party.  It's only press release about North Korea this year was about the health system collapsing and the need for the regime to get help to save it.  Why would it nearly ignore a country that is second bottom in press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders and ranked in the bottom country by Freedom House?  How hard is it to get around your heads that this country imprisons small children for the political "crimes" of their parents?  

What sort of human rights organisation campaigns for aid that assists a totalitarian dictatorship the likes of which is almost unparalleled in human history for its Orwellian enslavement of an entire people?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, that the UN should provide aid to the regime's "health system"?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Holocaust, that there should be aid to help ease the plight of the Jews?

So ask yourself this?  Why is this starving, murdering slave state continuing to be treated with kid gloves by the left-oriented supporters of human rights (the same ones who damn Burma to hell and damn China far more now than they ever did when Mao was in power)?  I don't believe any of them embrace the Juche Idea or the North Korean regime (although some do like the UK based Stop the War Coalition), but their continued unwillingness to actively campaign against it speaks volumes .  Is it because virtually no foreign companies (the true evil in their heads) have a commercial presence there?  Is it because damning North Korea would appear to put one on the side of the relatively free, open and capitalist South Korea and the US?

DPRK anoints Kim Jong Un with some murder and vandalism

That is my explanation for the murderous and vandalous assault on Yeonpyeongdo (do = Island) (37°40'N,125°41'E), by the Korean People's Army.  Yeonpyeongdo is an island well north of the 38th parallel and is far closer to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)  mainland than the Republic Of Korea (ROK).  So it was an easy target.  The Korea Herald reports one marine is dead and four seriously injured, but also there have been 60-70 homes damaged of what is largely a community of fishermen.  Chosun Ilbo (in Korean) is reporting that 1772 residents of the island are in shelters, with others fleeing on fishing boats south towards the mainland.  Certainly the destruction has been overwhelming and overshadows the usual occasional skirmish of gun fire that is the DPRK's means of "practicing".

There is little doubt that the DPRK will claim it is a response to the military exercises started on and around the island in the weekend, which the DPRK threatened would not go without a response.  Typically the DPRK response would be the odd shell falling well short just to send the signal that the "military demarcation line" is nearby, although the exact location in the two seas either side of Korea is always disputed.   This time it is real, perhaps the greatest incident in Korea since the war, in terms of sheer damage.   It may well be simply part of the process of demonstrating to the people that Kim Jong Un is a great general (he was anointed the status of 4-star general in September), fending off the "provocative" imperialist forces.   Yet it also shows the tension in that regime, as recent rhetoric and activities have been far more peaceful, with exchanges between families and a toning down of DPRK rhetoric.   The truth being that the Korean People's Army has some leaders who see no interest whatsoever in a reduction in tensions, as transformation of DPRK-ROK relations could only result in a lowering of military expenditure.

The only appropriate response is to respond militarily to this response in kind and then freeze aid and further discussions.  The DPRK deserves to be condemned forthright not only by the ROK government, but by the US, Japan, China and other countries.   Hopefully the rather lackadaisical attitude of many ROK citizens will have been shocked open by this to realise the real threat from the north.  Sadly most in the DPRK either know nothing about the news (the story of which is being carefully crafted for the Korean Central News Agency as I type this) or will have the usually manufactured story about the DPRK having been the victim of provocation, and responding boldly to a threatened attack under the wise guidance of General Kim Jong Un.

It would be funny if it didn't cost lives. 

However, in the spirit of "if you can't shoot 'em laugh at them" you too can create a DPRK propaganda insult with the DPRK Random Insult Generator you "half-baked philistine".

By the way, if you want the latest and best intelligence on the DPRK that is published, you will find it hard to beat North Korea Economic Watch.  It is responsible for by far the best overlay of detail on Google Earth of the country called North Korea Uncovered.   Bear in mind that much of that overlay shows what 99% of citizens of the DPRK do not know, and think of how much it irritates the DPRK that it is known by everyone else.

UPDATE:  The Korean Central News Agency does its job with typical "unique" use of language.  Merciless strikes that don't quite note the destruction of the homes of families on the island.

Hwang Jang Yop's passing deserves more coverage

If you watched or read most of the media in the last day or so you'd think the key news about North Korea was the appearance of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un at the 65th Anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang.  After all, the authorities in Pyongyang invited foreign journalists and TV crews to cover it.

Sadly on the same day a man died in South Korea who sheds more light on the regime than the spectacle of military parades in the (surprisingly small) Kim Il Sung Square and pictures of an ailing autocrat and his youngest son (with a face allegedly reshapen by plastic surgery to look like his grandfather).  

Hwang Jang Yop was President of the Committee for the Democratisation of North Korea, and the highest ranking defector ever from North Korea.  He was International Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly from 1972 to 1983 when he was removed and "softly" purged (criticised and demoted rather than incarcerated and condemned).  He subsequently defected in 1997 by walking into the South Korean Embassy in Beijing whilst on an official trip, after which he spent his remaining years in South Korea, writing books and memoirs of the regime in North Korea.

He passed away at his home in Seoul due to a heart attack on 10 October 2010, the day North Korea commemorates the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea.   Thankfully his passing does not appear to be suspicious, as it was well known that he was a leading target for North Korean agents  to assassinate.

His defection was bitter for the regime, and he was aware of this, as he fully expected his wife and children would suffer enormously as a result.  North Korea imprisons entire families for the political crimes of one, including children and the elderly with no limits on age.  His letter to his wife expressed his belief that he had to defect for the people of North Korea and could not go on with things remaining as they are.

He wrote 20 books after his defection, about the regime, the Kims and strategies to bring its downfall and reform.  In his memoirs he claims to have written the Juche Idea (the national ideology associated with Kim Il Sung), he tells about the long history he lived through from Japan's brutal colonialism, the Korean War, the rise and fall of socialism, the death of Kim Il Sung and the so-called "Arduous March" when mass starvation saw Kim Jong Il prepare for war whilst millions died.

His excellent regular column in the Daily NK website was one of the most incisive commentaries on the regime and its nature.  His final column mentioned the annointing of Kim Jong Un as Kim Jong Il's successor:

“Kim Jong Il has turned his entire country into a huge prison; a place where a few million people starve and he enslaves the rest...Kim Jong Il is the worst kind of thief; a man who stole a whole country...Now he is making fun of and humiliating the North Korean people, making them shout ‘Hurrah!’ and ignoring the world after conferring a boy with the title, 'general'."

He is being commemorated in South Korea now as a great man whose defection helped challenge the views of many who supported North Korea, and highlighted much about the reality of the regime in Pyongyang. 

The Daily NK visual tribute is here.  His memoirs were published, in serial form, on Daily NK here.

Sadly his passing is likely to get only a brief mention in Western media, compared to the military display and show of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang yesterday, for which the BBC, CNN and other major TV broadcasters were invited.   I note none of Stuff, TVNZ and RNZ websites are carrying this news (NZ Herald carries an AP report), but all carry the story, video and pictures of North Korea the regime want to show.  Even CNN doesn't have the story on its Asia page.  While the BBC does, it puts greater headlines on Michael Law's being an attention-seeking airhead.

Journalism? Ha!