Blood and Libel

Some 500 people in North Korea attended a public execution of a man and a woman caught reading South Korean propaganda, an activist claimed Sunday citing sources in the North. Choi Sung-yong, the head of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea said security services rounded up some 500 people including 50 family members of South Korean prisoners of war and abduction victims and made them watch the execution.

The victims were a 45-year-old woman accused of reading a South Korean propaganda leaflet and failing to notify authorities and a high-ranking regional military officer charged with pocketing the dollar bills that were sent along with the leaflets. [Chosun Ilbo]

Naturally, their families were sent off to prison camps afterward.

North Korean defectors said anyone who picks up an anti-communist leaflet must notify the authorities on pain of severe punishment. They said North Koreans are taught from a young age that eating South Korean-made cookies causes gut rot while picking up pens or lighters made in the South will make the hands decay.

Also, the cookies contain food coloring made from the blood of racially pure Korean children. And not the “bad” children left to die in front of railroad stations all over North Korea, either.