South Korean Navy patrol combat corvettes stage an anti-submarine exercise off the western coast of Taean. (Reuters)
It is true.
There was a massacre on the high seas.
Innocent men were murdered by a terrorist regime.
Of course, Seraphic Secret is talking about the 46 sailors, aboard a South Korean submarine.
It has been established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that North Korea, unprovoked, torpedoed and sank the South Korean sub.
Correction: … sank a South Korean corvette.
The UN sprang into action, condemning the North Korean regime.
Just kidding.
And naturally, the streets of Europe are choked with peace-loving activists objecting to this wanton act of murder.
Not.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that scores of, ahem, human rights activists have organized a flotilla to bring aid to the people of North Korea who are under blockade—by their own government.
Again, just kidding.
North Korea.
The most repressive regime on the face of the earth. During the 90′s a government-manufactured famine caused approximately 2.5 million deaths—probably more—from starvation and disease.
The notorious North Korean gulags make the Soviet gulags look like Club Med. Over a million prisoners, including women and children, subsist on tree bark and grass; for protein, they forage for worms and insects.
Infants born with physical and mental disabilities are not allowed to live in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Reports indicate that in some areas, infants with disabilities are murdered.
Satellite images of North Korea taken at night show a dark blotch. That’s because the electrical grids do not function. In contrast, South Korea sparkles like a diamond.
Ordinary citizens do not have refrigerators or stoves. They cook over open flames. Stationery—we’re talking about paper—is only available to government officials and trusted university students. The regime does not want people keeping diaries or writing letters to, well, anybody.
No computers or phones.
Of course, no internet.
North Koreans are caged, not just in their hermit country, but forbidden to travel from one city or village to the next without an official permit. Caught without a proper pass, North Koreans are tortured—and they do not bother with stuff like water-boarding, they just rip out your fingernails—and jailed for years, if not secretly executed.
One in five citizens works for state security in one way or the other. In short, North Korea is a nation of informers. Parents cannot trust their children, and husbands and wives can never really know if they are sleeping with the enemy.
There is no banking system.
No judicial system.
Religion is forbidden.
Everyone worships the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, a certifiable lunatic who commits mass murder every single day, and threatens a nuclear holocaust on South Korea.
The suffering in North Korea is beyond imagination.
So, you would think that all these peace activists and human rights groups would be storming the North Korean border in order to break the regime’s blockade.
But that’s not exactly happening.
In fact, the international left who are so shrill and self-righteous in their defense of the proudly Jew-hating, genocidal-yearning Hamas jihadists—their charter, partly based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, calls for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of all Jews—of Gaza, are curiously silent when it comes to the terrorist North Korean regime.
You know why?
1. The North Koreans would exterminate the protestors without apology. So, y’know, it’s actually kind of dangrous. Nork soldiers do not pack paintball guns.
2. Jews do not run North Korea.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
26 Comments
It turns out that there *are* computers in North Korea – quite a lot of them in the last few years. they are used for various kinds of business and so on. Computers – but none with an Internet connection for any even semi-ordinary people.
There is quite a business of smuggling through China.
Some people have begun to smuggle in information. There are some organzations in South Korea.
North Korea BTW used USB drives to hack into South Korean militarty and S Korean military has probably banned them on base etc.
One idea is a USB drive that APPEARS to be blank but isn’t.
Bribes for blank USBs are small and if caught the owner can say he didn’t know. The data are also erased after a while.
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Also, you seem to consistently mistake criticism of Israeli right wing war mongers for some type of position against Judaism.
If only it were a mistake. It’s not, though. The hatred is not just for Israel, but for Jews (Jews not Judaism).
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Rena,
You are far wrong about Koreas not mattering a bit to outside of Korea. Just say that to the next person you see in Koreatown, Little Seoul, or come out Iowa and see all the Korean faces out here.
Just don’t say that to my daughter. She has a Korean temper and has been snapping engine bolts this past week without a power tool. She is also 5′ 9″ and about 150, so stick that in your stereotype.
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Daniel:
Thanks so much for the kind words, corrections made.
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fantastic piece, Robert !! Your eloquence is remarkable. 2 small corrections: 1) the ship was a Corvette 2) paintball, not painball.
More important correction: the North Koreans did not torpedo the South Korean vessel, the Israelis did !!!! Yes, the wacko left conspiracy theorists are spreading this lunacy.
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Sammy, probably calling the leaders of N. Korea ‘egomaniacs’ is an insult to egomaniacs. To clarify, I do believe these leaders are completely evil, dysfunctional, sociopathic and at the very least, need to be locked up and sent to Mars. Just like Hamas, they don’t necessarily believe in their propaganda, but as long as it works, they’ll stick with the program. I find it quite sick for anyone to force their will onto others, as if they are G-d, which produces a sad, robot state. This is not the way human beings are supposed to live – but apparently, N. Korea believes in re-inventing human nature. One day soon, I hope the real G-d delivers justice to the truly oppressed.
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The dcumentary was shot in the year Juche (promounced Yuchi) 89, which starts on April 15, 1912, the date of birth of Kim Il-sung, as year 1. (the documentary mistakenly says he was born in 1911)
The calendar was introduced in 1997 according to Wikipedia. 27 June 2007 = Juche 96. So that would mean the year 2000, and the 55 years goes back to 1945. This documentary is 10 years old.
South Korea has actually built a wall, hidden from its own people, but propgandized in the year 2000 by North Korea, they say to stop an invasion, but mayeb the idea is to stop the flow of refugees if the Communist government falls. Of course I wonder if any South Korean government could really get away with doing that. The thing is they could try to help a North Korean government stay in power – secretly sort of.
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Ever since Vietnam I have been trying to uderstand the hard left. They are ostensibly for “peace” yet are blind and deaf top the murder of millions by the regimes they defend.
I remember Hue where the NVA lined up predetermined “enemies” and shot hundreds of them – civilians.
Not a word from the Tom Haydens and Jane Fondas.
John McClaren: “You cannot simultaneously pursue peace and prepare for war, you know..”
???? Those who aren’t prepared for war while pursuing peace get run over. Much of the world doesn’t think like that…
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Not sure what North Korea has to do with Israel unless you are arguing relativism. You don’t seem very interested in the North Korea issue in depth or in general, or resolving the conflict, only using it as justification for something else half a world away. Are you saying people should criticize North Korea as much as Israel, or that we should be as lenient of Israel as we supposedly are of North Korea (ignoring the US and Israel’s support of North Korea via China)? Also, you seem to consistently mistake criticism of Israeli right wing war mongers for some type of position against Judaism. Which also ignores progressive zionism. There are only two possibilities for people- more armed conflict ending inevitably in limited nuclear war where all causes and history are buried in blood and renewed hatred, or pursuing peace, acknowledging our complicity, and inheriting the facts of history intact. Do you know of something worth burying beneath a global conflict? You cannot simultaneously pursue peace and prepare for war, you know..
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It’s become intellectual wisdom in South Korea that the experience of West Germany in reuniting East Germany is something they don’t want to go through.
If they don’t want to end the dictatorship of North Korea, really, they got what they deserved. Do they really expect no trace of the cruelty of the North Korea to reach them?
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Some people high up in South Korean don’t really wnat to re-unite – all sorts of worries – really about the economy. They’d actually like to keep them seoparate countries. But legally anyway all North Koreans are South Korean citizens.
I consider these ideas also a form of North Korean propaganda.
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The interesting thing is you have Chinese Communism combined with remnants of idol worship.
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For me this broadcast is merely an update by people unaware of a lot of history.
Apparently, the noticeable thing is how absurd the propaganda is. Certain ideas, however, are just implausible even to would be fellow travelers and people are less likely to believe that people somewhere else are so different.
Interesting that they have a hotel, but no people staying; a library but no users, traffic cops but no traffic, and somehow the rulers don’t notice that the absence of elderly people are noticeable.
After a while they notice wherever they go they are the only visitors, and the only people there are guides, who speak English or some other foreign languages who have permission to talk to foreigners – a few vistors maybe every week.
Everything ia a stage front.
The subway apparently is used, although maybe not all stations, and the people there have strict instrctions not to make eye contact with any foreigners.
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rachel: How egomaniacs think they do a better job than G-d is beyond me.
What? You think they believe their propaganda??
The people running North Korea are evil. they are not tryingt o do a good job.
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I became aware very early that the news staff there is no different than other major newspapers.
That’s absolutely true. When I used to get the paper, I hated the news pieces, b/c of their anti-Israel slant. I loved the editorial page. And yes, it was a joyous day when Al Hunt left.
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Robert,
You inspired me to become educated on the history and situation in North Korea – so I searched on Youtube for videos and found this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6E3cShcVU Just the first 15 minutes is extremely eye opening and disturbing. Just depressing. No free will. How egomaniacs think they do a better job than G-d is beyond me. An entire country lives to mechanically & endlessly please their leader. A bad movie that never ends. May these citizens be saved, somehow….
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Obama and Clinton have for now bought into backing the UN position. I don’t know how much they moderated the UN statement but the UN is not where reasonable people look for a reasonable position concerning Israel.
I would like to think Obama is going to wait until he knows all the facts instead of going off like he did with the Cambridge police. But then I also assume our intel is good enough that he knew the facts 30 minutes after the boat was docked.
Maybe I woke in an alternate universe but Joe Biden has made the most sense of anyone in the administration. The fact that I trust Biden more than Obama, Clinton or Rice to stand up for Israel says a lot about why all sentient beings in Israel should be worried.
Robert, as a long time subscriber to the WSJ, I became aware very early that the news staff there is no different than other major newspapers. Without their editorial board it would be the same as the NYTimes or Wash Post. I am just grateful that there is a major newspaper that is not reflexively liberal throughout. Plus Al Hunt doesn’t have a column anymore.
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Jenny:
Israel’s Isolation Increases
That’s the headline in today’s WSJ.
There are massive anti-Israel/anti-Jewish demonstrations all over Europe and the Arab world.
President Obama’s response has been in lock-step with the UN, which is not good.
The anti-Israel forces have a plan and it is quite simple: create an international environment where the Israeli passport is not recognized, as was done to South Africa. This will completely isolate Israel and make it into a huge prison, ripe for destruction. This flotilla is just another grim stage in the long-term plan.
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I just scanned three YouTube videos regarding North Korea – certainly not a popular topic. I think that nobody cares about the people of North or South Korea. There’s just no shared history between the Koreans and the nations of Europe, America or the Middle East that evokes any feelings regarding the Korean conflict.
US policies, Iraq and Israel are topics for discussion, if you can call it that, in the Comments on North Korea videos.
Hate speech is certainly peppered throughout – but stupidity, paranoia and nutty conspiracy concoctions dominate the Comments, just as they do for videos regarding Jews and Israel.
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I like your second point. Here’s a comment left on my facebook page after I posted the video of Bibi’s speech:
“Bad news #2 For most Americans, Isreal is just another country and we are tired of Iraq and the M.East as just a bunch of crazy problems (majority opinion, not nec. mine). How do you get their support?”
The world is tired of hearing about the Jews, and yet they keep obsessing over us. I would love for the world to pick on someone else for a change (to paraphrase Tevyeh the Milkman).
The truth is the world didn’t give a crap about the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza during the 19 years they were occupied by Jordan and Egypt because they couldn’t blame it on the Jews.
Tell me again why the Palestinians live in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon?
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Cycle Cyril of Teaneck:
Thanks so much for the correction. My bad.
And regards to Dougie’s, my favorite eatery in Teaneck.
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A small correction. The Korean ship, the
Cheonan, that sank was a surface ship known as a corvette, not a submarine.
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Most of the presss I’ve seen about the flotilla has supported Israel’s right to stop the ships; the main objection has been to the inadequate planning which left the soldiers unable to defend themselves. Not so one-sided as you make out.
If I were their mothers I would feel the same way, and there would be beaurocrats in the IDF and Israeli government who would be hearing from me.
Jenny
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One can only wonder at the level of Jew-hatred when the usual suspects have the unbelievable temerity to compare Israel to North Korea.
And the world just sits there and says nothing.
Daniel Henninger’s piece in today’s Wall Street Journal was bang on – http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html (hope the link works OK)
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Look – the only reason Clinton went over there was that the fix was in. And North Korea probably kidnapped the two women just to get that meeting with Clinton.
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Robert, not only is the international community that is so concerned about Gaza silent about N. Korea, we actually sent an ex-president over there to grovel for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee when they were kidnapped by N. Korean soldiers. Did Clinton volunteer to go to Gaza and ask for Gilad Shalit’s release?
Just as Arafat realized he got more attention and aid when he stirred up trouble, N. Korea knows if they are nice and quiet the international community will never give them food and heating oil.
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