A visit to North Korea
I am risking my life to make this post. As we speak, a fully-fueled North Korean missile is getting ready to fire. Is it a test firing of an ICBM? A satellite? Or the beginning of an attack on Japan? If it is the latter, a North Korean warhead could explode near my apartment building at any moment, leaving Japanprobe dot com as a dead blog. But who really cares about that? Let’s watch some North Korea-related Japanese TV!
This is a clip from an ATV broadcast(June 21 2006) of a tape that was smuggled out of North Korea. Such programs are pretty common, and make for some really interesting television. Here are some highlights:
North Korea is a true craphole. The villages shown in this video look like they are back in the stone age( AKA pre-20th Century Korea). People live in dirty little hovels and handcarts and buckets are a major tool for survival. It seems that the only decent source of clean water for this village is a pipe that trickles a tiny stream of water.
North Korean villagers are crouched down, waiting for their turn to fill a bucket with the water. One woman walks up to the front of the line and asks for just a little bit of water, since she is thirsty. The woman in the process of filling a bucket angrly tells her no. The woman says she has been waiting 5 to 6 hours for her turn.
Next we come across a dirty-looking man. He is 21 years old and has recently been discharged from the military. He has no family and no source of employment: he is living as a beggar. One woman angrly confronts him and tells him that he should go to an orphanage. Since North Korean orphanages kick children out when they become 16, that is not much of an option for him. The woman insists that he go to one and say he is 15. He tells her that his face doesn’t look young enough.
Mooovviinnng on, we see the amazing North Korean transport system at work. These people are hauling firewood, the main source of heating and energy in this town.
Where does the wood come from? I don’t see many trees around here…
Well, the closest source of firewood is very far away. This truck leaves the village at 6:00am and doesn’t return with wood until after 7:00pm….
Wait, did I say truck? They have trucks in North Korea? Sure they do, but most are not powered by gasoline: these babies run on coal! Yeehawww!
Wow, North Korea is a terrible place to live.
