Korea: A former N. Korean soldier writes to his company commander (Gripping Tale)

N. Korean defectors' Association ^ | Jan., 2003 | Kim Chol-Min

[TigerLikesRooster]

One man's personal recount of his disillusionment with N. Korean reigme, written in a letter format.

[TigerLikesRooster]

My translation of the original article in Korean.

[Miss Marple]

When they say people are starving in North Korea, it is rather abstract, since we have no experience with it.

This letter illustrates the horror of the situation.

[paulsy]

bump

[paulsy]

so has there ever been a succesfull dictatorship in either new or old world history? (really curious, has there been?)

[RightOnline]

Depends on your definitions of "successful" and "dictatorship"........and from whose point of view.

[RightOnline]

Until or unless the military of N. Korea decide to turn on their Glorious Leader and string his fat, sorry ass from a street lamp, that country is doomed to mass starvation or even more unimaginable horrors. It really, truly is just that simple.

[listenhillary]

So incredibly sad. It is a good feeling to know that one man at least was able to throw off the chains.

No better illustration of the danger of authoritarian governments.

I had heard a report on NPR about a S.Korean planning to drop millions of solar powered radios in NK. Sounded like a good idea to me. Truth will set you free, if you don't starve first.

[wastoute]

Read Herodotus. Read the Bible. Xerxes was pretty successful. When you thik about it, David and Solomon were dictators. Read Thucydides. Full of dictators. That was pretty much the way it was done back then. The whole "democracy" deal was kinda new in Athens. Herodotus talks about an earlier experiment in democracy that "ended in chaos". This is why our forefathers created a REPUBLIC and not a democracy. One of the problems today is nobody studies the Classics anymore...

[SauronOfMordor]

so has there ever been a succesfull dictatorship in either new or old world history? (really curious, has there been?)

What's your definition of success? Stability, welfare of the people, living standard and longevity of the dictator? If you define dictatorship as an autocracy, then all the old monarchies were dictatorship, and they lasted a long time.

[Nitro]

North Korea is not a country...

it's a cult!!

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #11

Yes, it is a cult commune.

[solzhenitsyn]

TigerLikesRooster, thank you for taking the trouble to translate that letter and post it for us. It was very moving. It gives me great pity for the people of North Korea. They need and deserve freedom, and all the blessings that come with it.

[Ranger]

Thanks for the post and translation. It is rare for us in the U.S. to get a ground level perspective that this heartrending letter supplies. Why is it that the S. Koreans don't seem to be seething with righteous indignation about the starvation of so many in N. Korea? Yet at the same time the presence of U.S. troops are widely protested?

[AmericanInTokyo]

Excellent job TLR.

I encourage you (if you are likewise inclined) to use the words " 'Freepranslated' by ________" in such research posts so we can get that as a regular word in the Freeper lexicon. There is a growing number of Freepers who read critical foreign languages, who synopsize here in English like you have, thus providing stuff that may never otherwise see the light of day in the English, Western press. Thanks for your service!

Now, on this side, recently I sent an e-mail letter, trying to appear apolitical, as an academic 'researcher', to a so-called Korean rights organization which is part of the International A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-Bush, anti-America umbrella.

This group claims to stick up for the 'human rights of Koreans.' Nearly everything they have is so-called atrocities by US troops in Korea 50 years ago.

I stated specifically in my message that I had a growing concern and could they help me and confirm: the locations of several concentration camps in NORTH KOREA, and I pointed to the Fall 2002 Far East Economic Review magazine article with clear aerials of one of those North Korean death and work camps near China for political prisoners/Christians, and asked them to briefly help me research (or provide other information resources) re: the rumored terrible human rights situation there in the DPRK.

I wrote it clearly, politely and respectfully asking for them, as Koreans and Korean experts who are also concerned, to help me.

I sent it over nearly TWO WEEKS AGO.

Do you think this communist front job for that scumbag, phony "pro-peace" shill of an organization International A.N.S.W.E.R. ever got back to me or otherwise showed the slightest concern?

[OahuBreeze]

Ranger -- you hit the nail on the head. The South Korean people have been so bamboozled by their govt (among other influences) they have no idea what is going on in N/S relations anymore. The "Sunshine Policy" is ultimately a policy to link tentacles into NK through unofficial channels, exposing NK to outside influence (SK) and making them dependent on those tentacles. Ideally (according to the plan) it would all work out in a slow, peaceful transition. If it didn't, it would at least: 1)give SK a bargaining chip -- the rug to pull out (or threaten to) if NK got too out of line; 2) expose NK to some degree to outside influences; and, 3) forestall an immediate collapse of NK(and ensuing financial crisis for the SK economy as well. The biggest problem with 'Sunshine' was that they never prepped the SOUTH KOREAN people to deal with it. The SK's think it is really a policy about caring and persuasion; it's not -- it's an SK defense policy which assures that the NK's will be up there starving for at least another ten years. Truth is, the SK politicians don't really give a damn about that - not at all.

[IronJack]

Does anyone know WHY N. Korea is starving? I mean, is it the usual communist bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency? Is it nationalization of private property and the accompanying death of individual incentive? Is Kim Sung-Il confiscating grain and foodstuffs and hoarding them as weapons of control? Is it just natural occurrences like drought and flood?

I've heard a lot of talk about hunger and privation in that country, and it's always laid at the doorstep of the president. But nobody ever explains why it should be.

[Peach]

What an unbearably sad situation. America is probably the only nation in the world where even the poor people are fat; we just don't understand what desperately poor people go through in other countries.

[Alamo-Girl]

Jeepers. Thanks for the heads up!

[MeekOneGOP]

Thank you so much for sharing this letter and for translating it. My dear friend Ming (the second part of my screen name) is from mainland China and has been to North Korea. She has related to me how very poor North Korea is and how terrible it is to see so many poor people starving to death. This letter expresses so much and so well . . .