America is so hated around the world that people go against us just on principle.
Everyone laughed when George Bush , inspired by whatever Flash Gordon comic he had been reading that morning called Iran , Iraq and North Korea " The Axis of Evil ".
Then the truth came out.
While it's still debatable whether or not Iran, Iraq and North Korea have a monopoly on evil, I have no doubt that where you will find Kim Jong Il, Grodd , Captain Cold and Solomon Grundy won't be too far behind.
North Korea is so fucked up that China as recently September had to send 150,000 troops to stand along the border to stop North Koreans defecting across the border, then rioting looking for food.
I read a story in the Washington Post from a few interviews that they had recently conducted with several North Korean defectors.
Han who only agreed to be interview if the Post only used his pseudonym was one of them.
Han defected from North Korea . He had to. He was a criminal. What was his crime? He smuggled in a radio from China .
Someone had busted on him. He doesn't know who. Maybe it was his kid. Maybe it was his best friend. He's not sure. But when he found out that "they" were coming for him he had to break out.
The penalty for listening to a radio in North Korea was certain torture and a life sentence in a hard labor camp.
Han says he feels bad for his family that he left behind. He should. Family members of defectors are refused food rations. They are left to starve to death.
One wonders why then, if he knew what could happen would he have ever brought the radio in the country in the first place.
Another North Korean defector who spoke to the Washington Post recalled seeing cannibalism in the country where an estimated 2 million have died of starvation since 1995.
"When one is very hungry, one can go crazy. One woman in my town killed her 7-month-old baby, and ate the baby with another woman."
She goes on to elaborate even though a part of me wishes that she wouldn't have . she says that " I can't condemn cannibalism. Not that I wanted to eat human meat, but we were so hungry. It was common that people went to a fresh grave and dug up a body to eat meat. I witnessed a woman being questioned for cannibalism. She said it tasted good .'
Another women, a former member of Kim Jong Il's government who escaped prison in North Korea told congress during her visit to the United States that during her years in prison there "I have seen so many different ways to kill and torture people. I still see them in my dreams."
Then there is Pak Do Ik, who used to work for Kim Jong Il as a playwright.
The only thing had had to do is write shit that made Kim Jong Il look cool.
How hard can that be right? Sounds like that is the cake job? Just plagiarize the fuck out of old "Gunsmoke" serials and give all Matt Dillon 's lines to Kim Jong Il's character.
Instant bad ass.
You could probably get away with a 20 hour work week if you did it right.
Well evidently it's more difficult that you would think. Pak Do Ik was sent to a mining labor camp for a month once for being "too creative".
Apparently he had written a comedy.
Kim Jong Il doesn't like comedies. Particularly if they are about him.
So Pak Do Ik returned to work once he'd gotten out of the labor camp thinking he had learned his lesson. So he wrote a play where in it he had a scene where Kim Jong Il's mother was pressing a gun into little Kim 's hands and giving him seven bullets. Each bullet had a certain purpose.
"The first bullet is to crush the United States ! The second is to achieve our revolution. . . ."
Sounds pretty flattering right?
Bzzzzph. Wrong!
Jong's people still weren't impressed. Although the audience applauded every bullet, the National Security Agency said that the account wasn't "factual" and therefore a default on revolutionary achievements.
For whatever reason, they allowed him to go home that night.
By morning he had run off into the mountains never to return.
Well as you know there are two sides to every dictator.
Kim Jong Il is a film buff with over 15,000 films in his collection.
In 1978 he loved the films of South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok, known as the Orson Wells of South Korea so much that he had Shin Sang-ok and his actress, Choe Eun-hui kidnapped and brought to him, held as prisoners in his home and forced to make "good films" for him.
What does he call good films?
Initially Shin Sang-ok didn't know what was Kim Jong Il's idea of "good films".
He soon found out when Shin Sang-Ok found himself making bad Korean, pro-communist "Godzilla" knockoffs.
Both Shin Sang-ok and his wife both said that several times they contemplated suicide.
After nearly 8 years of being held captive in North Korea Shin Sang-ok and his wife convinced Jong Il that they were really his friends and so they were allowed to attend a film festival in Vienna.
As soon as the opportunity presented itself they ran to the American Embassy and begged the Americans there for political asylum.
Shin Sang-ok says that Kim Jong Il refused to believe that they had willingly fallen into American protection and had actually managed to get word to them while they were in the American Embassy that he would try to bust them out.
Kim Jong-il was convinced that the couple must've been kidnapped by those evil Americans, so far from his mind was the possibility that being kidnapped and forced to make pro-communist "Godzilla" knockoffs for the rest of your life could be a bad thing.
Well at least they got fed.