Free Republic

North Korea has executed a ruling party official blamed for a botched currency reform, in a desperate attempt to quell public unrest... The execution by firing squad in Pyongyang last week of Pak Nam-ki, Labour Party chief for planned economy, was for the crime of "a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy..." The unrest, triggered by sharp price increases in the marketplace amid confusion caused by the late November currency revaluation, forced the North to take some steps to roll back its effect. Analysts said that showed the North was...

Cubans defect in Toronto Leave patriotic choir on tour By TOM GODFREY, TORONTO SUN More than 20 members of Cuba's world-famous national chorus are singing songs of freedom today after defecting in Toronto. Members of the National Chorus of Cuba dodged security officers and jumped into waiting cars, some on Sunday and others yesterday, said Cuban exiles who planned the defections. "These people are scared for their lives," said Ismail Sambra, president of the Cuban Canadian Foundation. "They are worried about their families back home. "It took a lot of planning to get this far." The highly acclaimed 40-member group,...

In his first U.S. television interview, the former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea speaks for the first time about the abuse and control inflicted on him by the communist dictatorship over his nearly 40 years there. Charles Robert Jenkins tells Scott Pelley he Êhad a "U.S. Army" tattoo sliced off without anesthetic and was even told how often to have sex by his communist "leaders" in a 60 MINUTES interview to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 23 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. In 1965, Jenkins was posted along the hostile border between North and South...