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Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine--some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone--but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him.
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death
1997
1996
1998
aid
famine
north-korean-famine
kim-il-sung
kim-jong-il
north-korea
propaganda
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Christopher Hitchens |
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7d454ae
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Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number of spies and journalists traveling under second identities), I was handed that day's edition of the . At first glance it seemed too laughable for words: endless pictures of the 'Dear Leader'--Little Boy's exalted title--as he was garlanded by adoring schoolchildren and heroic tractor drivers. Yet even in these turgid pages there were nuggets: a telegram congratulating the winner of the Serbian elections; a candid reference to the 'hardship period' through which the country had been passing; an assurance that a certain nuclear power plant would be closed as part of a deal with Washington. Tiny cracks, to be sure. But a complete and rigid edifice cannot afford fissures, however small. There appear to be no hookers, as yet, in Pyongyang. Yet if casinos come, can working girls be far behind? One perhaps ought not to wish for hookers, but there are circumstances when corruption is the only hope.
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casinos
koryo-hotel
prostitution-in-north-korea
serbia
serbian-election-2000
pool
espionage
prostitution
north-korea-and-wmd
journalism
north-korean-famine
pyongyang
the-pyongyang-times
united-states
kim-jong-il
north-korea
propaganda
diplomacy
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Christopher Hitchens |
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dc36301
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A local phrase book, entitled , has the following handy expressions. In the section 'On the Way to the Hotel': 'Let's Mutilate US Imperialism!' In the section 'Word Order': 'Yankees are wolves in human shape--Yankees / in human shape / wolves / are.' In the section 'Farewell Talk': 'The US Imperialists are the sworn enemy of the Korean people.' Not that the book is all like this--the section 'At the Hospital' has the term ('I have loose bowels'), and the section 'Our Foreign Friends Say' contains the Korean for 'President Kim Il Sung is the sun of mankind.' I wanted a spare copy of this phrase book to give to a friend, but found it was hard to come by. Perhaps this was a sign of a new rapprochement with the United States, or perhaps it was because, on page 46, in the section on the seasons, appear the words: ('We have a bumper harvest every year').
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korean-language
phrase-books
famine
north-korean-famine
imperialism
united-states
language
kim-il-sung
north-korea
propaganda
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Christopher Hitchens |
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485899f
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North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as 'duck.' One evening I gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew, which at least tasted hearty and spicy--they wouldn't tell me the breed--but then found my appetite crucially diminished by the realization that I hadn't seen a domestic animal, not even the merest cat, in the whole time I was there.
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dogs
dog-meat
famine
hotels
korean-cuisine
north-korean-famine
pyongyang
the-pyongyang-times
starvation
north-korea
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Christopher Hitchens |