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Sunday, June 12, 2005

They Work That Hard

With the North Koreans coming back to the six-party talks, one wonders if the North Koreans are pulling out all the stops to get loyal or gullible reporters in the West to report on how wonderful the PDRK is and that we would be lucky to get Pyongyang to agree to anything at all in exchange for accepting our aid.

Yesterday, I wrote about these two gems. Today I have another that is just astounding in its complete flight from reality. This guy thinks that North Korea is "prospering." He writes:

North Korea has the feel of China in the early 1980s, when the economic liberalization and market reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping were beginning to take hold, when people discarded their drab Mao jackets and began wearing brighter clothes, when commercial advertisements instead of political slogans appeared on the billboards.

I am too stunned to even reply. The country is literally shrinking with people starving and those still alive looking like 12-year olds at the age of 20, yet the author spots a man in a 1970s-era lime green leisure suit rather than the usual Mao jacket and calls that progress. But go ahead and read all of this gem from this towering intellect. And if you can't, just contemplate this conclusion:

Of course, any progress could be set back by a repeat of the famine of the early 1990s in which a tenth of the population may have died. International food donations are said to be way down because of worldwide opposition to Pyongyang’s nuclear program. More city workers than usual are being dispatched to the countrywide to work on farms.

But if the North can get through this harvest year it may continue to prosper. When one thinks about it, how could a country surrounded by three “miracle” economies -- China, Japan and South Korea – fail to prosper? They must have had to work very hard at it.

Kind of hard to avoid mentioning that whole famine thing. A tenth of the population died and people are being sent to the countryside to avert a repeat. Yet North Korea is prospering as it progresses.

Dude, North Korea is literally dying. And yes, the North Korean communists work very hard to destroy their country.

Let it die.