23 March 2010

Collective Spirit Update: Open News reports a rising number of kkotjaebi (homeless orphans) in North Korea, even as the elite continue to snap up expensive luxury goods imported from China. And this: “According to sources, Pyongyang has more than 1,000 millionaires.” Those sources may or may not be wrong, but what more evidence do you need than this that North Korea has a profound economic imbalance? You know, if Christine Ahn really hurries, she might be able to arrange a trip to North Korea soon enough to retract everything she’s said over the course of the last ten years and salvage some shred of her reputation.

Yodok survivor and Chosun Ilbo correspondent Kang Chol Hwan profiles the recent history of Kim Jong Il’s blunders, and the scapegoats who face firing squads for them.

For once, the State Department gets it right, saying that it will consider resuming food aid to North Korea if Kim Jong Il stops refusing to accept it. There is an important condition: “‘If we (provide humanitarian assistance) in the future, just as we’ve done that in the past, our efforts will be to make sure that the aid actually goes to the North Korean people who need it most and is not diverted to other groups such as the military,’ Crowley said.” I’d go a step further and support food aid to the soldiers, too, as long as international aid workers distribute the food.

I’ve been blogging about North Korea for more than five years now, and I’m still struck by the madness of a government that can’t provide for its people, yet which denies them both food aid and the means to provide for themselves.

Sixteen more North Korean refugees have made it to Thailand. Usually, refugees who get to Thailand are charged with illegal entry, interned briefly, and then flown to South Korea. Hopefully, this group is home free. The group, which includes three kids, had traveled for 20 days.

And speaking of refugees, the increasing effectiveness of their reporting on events in their homeland has inspired this KCNA masterpiece — truly, one for the ages:

The puppet conservative group, obsessed by an anti-DPRK confrontation ruckus, is using even human scum including defectors to the south as a shock brigade in escalating it only to be jeered by the public at home and abroad.

The group whipped together such riff-raffs as defectors to the south, calling them “future forces for unification”. It is busy fabricating what it called the “Alliance for the Movement of Free North”, the “Solidarity of NK Intellectuals” and other anti-DPRK plot-breeding organizations. It is even contemplating organizing a preparatory committee for forming a political party called the “Solidarity of Persons for Unification” and letting its candidate to run for the elections to “local self-governing bodies.” [….]

What should not be overlooked is that the puppet group has made no scruple of hurting the supreme headquarters of the DPRK, not content with raising a hue and cry over its situation while working with blood-shot eyes to spy it with human scum involved.

And this:

It is as clear as a pikestaff that betes noires will make only vituperation just as a crow will never be whiter for often washing.

Um, say what?

Further on, the article threatens the exiles as “living corpses” and warns that they will face “stern trials,” no idle threat for a regime that has abducted and assassinated people inside South Korea. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. On February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list. Discuss among yourselves.

Sure, it’s great to be featured in the Daily NK — it’s a favorite of mine, after all — but I will know I’ve arrived if KCNA ever talks about this blog. I could hope for no greater honor than to be called “brigandish.”