[texas_mrs]

Very interesting look inside N. Korea. The author ate a DOG & was a priveledged guest here! I can't even imagine how destitute these people are.

[Borges]

A friend of mine knew some people who were living in the old Soviet Union who decided to visit North Korea to see if the people there lived any better. Upon returning to the U.S.S.R. they decided that compared with what they saw they were living in Paradise. NK has no culture to speak of. Sleep for 8 hours, work for 8 hours and the other 8 you undergo indoctrination.

[davisfh]

This nighttime photo very graphically illustrates that something is seriously wrong in the north.

[saveliberty]

Thanks for the repost! Christopher Hitchens captures the situation in North Korea, with the one exception that this was a year ago, and the starvation is rampant.

Dear Leader is hanging on by a thin thread -- if his Army doesn't get fed, they will kill him.

[ncountylee]

But Ted Turner says they are only skinny people that love biking and treasure their ox carts.

[driftdiver]

First clue the story is garbage "In point of fact, Mr. Bush rather understated matters"

Its not Mr Bush, its President Bush. then of course since this comes from Slate we don't expect too much.

I also note from the picture that south eastern China doesnt have a lot of electricity usage either.

[silverleaf]

http://www.hrnk.org/TheHiddenGulag-press.pdf

Every member of the US Congress, and White House press corps, should be prepared to sign a statement that they read this, or why they chose not to.

[Winston Smith]

N. Korea is trying to blackmail their way back to prosperity. There are few words that would describe the evil that is leading that country.

[JimSEA]

Anyone with an interest in the Korean situation should read the chilling book Hitchens references:

The Aquariums of Pyongyang, by Kang Chol-Hwan

[reagan_fanatic]

Back when NK had that railcar explosion, there were North Korean citizens who, crying and screaming, risked being burned by the fire to remove the portraits of the 'Dear Leader' from the wreckage before they were consumed by fire.

North Korea is a weird, surreal place twiced removed from reality.

[Wuli]

The absoultely worse part of the situation at the moment is that nothing in the Slate article is "news" to the current government in South Korea, and yet when the North set off it's recent missile tests the South Korean government was more angry at Japan's response to the provocation than it was with the North.

Their fellow Koreans are starving, in chains and exist as mere property of the dictator in the North, yet they do not want to "offend" him. If ever there was a free and democratic nation on a course of national suicide, it is South Korea.

[Rodney King]

What are all those cities off the eastern coast of S. Korea?

[ozzymandus]

The comparison to 1984 isn't very apt. The citizens of orwell's slave state had food and shelter, if only minimaly.

I wonder why China couldn't absorb N. Korea's entire population. China has well over a billion people, N. Korea has what, 20 million?