Posted on 10/15/2006 9:02:22 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
NOT even in the lowest moments of the Third Reich, or of the gulag, or of Mao's "Great Leap Forward" was there a time when all the subjects of the system were actually enslaved.
In North Korea, every person is property and is owned by a small and mad family with hereditary power. Every minute of every day, as far as regimentation can assure the fact, is spent in absolute subjection and serfdom.
The private life has been entirely abolished. One tries to avoid cliche, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il-Sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint ("Hmmm - good book. Let's see if we can make it work").
Actually, North Korea is rather worse than Orwell's imagined world. There would be no way, in the capital city of Pyongyang, to wander off and get lost in the slums, let alone to rent an off-the-record love nest in a room over a shop.
Everybody in the city has to be at home and in bed by curfew time, when all the lights go off (if they haven't already failed).
A recent night-time photograph of the Korean peninsula from outer space shows something that no "free-world" propaganda could invent: a blaze of electric light all over the southern half, stopping exactly at the demilitarised zone and becoming an area of darkness in the north.
Concealed in that pitch-black night is an imploding state where the only things that work are the police and the armed forces. The situation is actually slightly worse than indentured servitude. The slave owner historically promises, in effect, at least to keep his slaves fed.
In North Korea, this compact has been broken. It is a famine state as well as a slave state. Partly because of the end of favourable trade relations with, and subsidies from, the former USSR, but mainly because of the lunacy of its command economy, North Korea broke down in the 1990s and lost an unguessable number of people to sheer starvation.
The survivors, especially the children, have been stunted and malformed. Even on a tightly controlled tour - North Korea is almost as hard to visit as it is to leave - my robotic guides couldn't prevent me from seeing people drinking from sewers and picking up grains of food from barren fields (I was reduced to eating a dog, and I was a privileged "guest").
Film shot from over the Chinese border shows whole towns ruined and abandoned. It seems mines in the north of the country have been flooded beyond repair.
Kim Jong-il and his fellow slave masters are trying to dictate the pace of events by setting a timetable of nuclearization, based on a crash program wrung from their human property. But why should it be assumed that their failed state and society are permanent? Another timeline, orientated to liberation and regime change, is what the dynasty most fears. It should start to fear it more.
Isn't that definition of marriage?
Oh, I thought this was about America under Hitlery....a good Marxist regime. :-)
I thought it was about New York.
This article deserves better than the joke responses it's gotten so far. It's frightening that the Left in America continues to cling to the belief system that leads to this kind of Hell on Earth.
And that would be in addition to air-dropping food with American flags on the wrappings.
Send batteries to power the equipment. Start with the areas near the border.
Saw Christopher Hitchens last week at the Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids. As a man of the Left, I thought he was amazing. The audience of four hundred was heavily liberal and loved his stuff on Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. All was fine until he was asked about the Iraq War. He is completely, pro Bush. Thinks we are in a world war, and need to really get serious.
Got a huge ovation from about one-third of the audience (think I clapped loudest), my liberal friends were appalled.
I love this guy. (You know what I mean).
You are in sooooo much trouble! :-)
You are right. It sickens me to no end when I hear political ads mentioning GWB's name in such a sneering tone as if he is the greatest evil in the world. The lefty dirtbags ought to reserve some of their hate and vitriol for Kim and the vile circumstances under which the unfortunate people of NK must live.
Very good article. Terrifying to think of a life like that, one that the Left would gladly hand us if they were able to.
My best friend from my Army days ended up in Korea for two tours, too. (I was in Germany.) The stories she had to tell about everyday life in NK were sometimes chilling.
America is still The Greatest Place on Earth. I am sooooo blessed to have been born here, and I don't take it for granted for a single day.
Welcome to FR, BTW. :)
I hadn't thought of that. You could very well be right.
Easier said then done. It is hard to revolt in the ultimate police state. Many already know what is in the outside world, but they have no way of changing their condition.
http://www.linkglobal.org/
Check out the video.
That can be said of about 90% of the articles posted to Fr, unfortunately.
DPRK is simply the progressive program taken to its logical conclusion.
One thing is sure about this. Sanctions have not worked. North Korea has 60 years of this totalitarian regime to overcome, and no matter how it is approached, it will be a long, hard slog. But if it's a 10-year process, it won't be done until 10 years have expired.
North Korea is Al Gore's wet dream.
NK will seem like paradise if Hitlery ever becomes President.
How bout let's start with Cuba.....
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