North Korea Publicly Executes Clandestine Citizen Journalist

In a world in which the word “martyr” has been profaned by those who do not even value life, word comes today of the death of a martyr for freedom. His name was “Chong,” and he worked in a factory in the miserable coastal city of Hamheung. You may well have read some of his reporting at this very site. That is about all we know about him, except for the manner of his death:

A North Korean firing squad publicly executed a factory worker for sneaking news out of the reclusive communist country via his illicit mobile phone, Seoul-based radio said Thursday. The armaments factory worker was accused of divulging the price of rice and other information on living conditions to a friend who defected to South Korea years ago, Open Radio for North Korea reported on its Web site.

The man, surnamed Chong, made calls to the defector using an illegal Chinese mobile phone, the broadcaster said, citing a North Korean security agency official it did not identify. The report didn’t say when the phone calls were made. The execution took place by firing squad in late January in the eastern coastal city of Hamhung, according to Open Radio for North Korea, a broadcaster specializing in the isolated country. The station broadcasts into North Korea, which tightly controls news. [AP]

This is clandestine video of a public execution from 2005.

North Korea’s perverse ghastliness has had no historical equal since at least Mauthausen, and perhaps since the crucifixion. Defectors have reported that when the condemned are executed publicly, the bowibu officers break out their teeth and fill their mouths with rocks to prevent them from shouting out their defiance. Then, the condemned are bound and wrapped in special white cotton sacks designed to highlight their blood for the onlookers, who are forced to watch.

I predict that “Chong” will merit no word of mention from Ban Ki Moon, and certainly won’t become a cause celebre to the Human Rights Industry to a fraction of the degree that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Moazzam Beg have. The closest thing he’ll get to a decent burial will be a footnote in our State Department’s annual human rights report. These are the international institutions that some would tell you are the guardians of life and liberty in our new, post-violent world. But the paucity and meekness of those institutions’ response to the martyrdom of Chong will show this for the lie that it is. I do not believe that it is an exclusively American right, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to alter, or to abolish it. No drum circle or non-binding resolution is going to help the people of North Korea do that. Only the fundamental human right to bear arms will.