North Korean contrasts

It is so ironical, reading within a matter of days, the report that North Korea continues to spend an exceedingly high part of its GNP on developing missiles and other tools of war while horrific evidence emerges on the real state of hunger and poverty in NK notwithstanding their government’s efforts to suppress this.

One can get a good idea of the unimaginable level of destitution which exists in that country from reading ‘Lunch with the FT’ with Jihyun Park (Financial Times, weekend September 24/25). Park and her family suffered greatly in her home country and managed to escape to China on her second attempt.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (centre) walking near what state media said was a new type of inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). Photo: Korean Central News AgencyNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un (centre) walking near what state media said was a new type of inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). Photo: Korean Central News Agency

From there, she sought refuge in England where she was granted asylum. She is now happily settled in Bury, married with two children and even became a Conservative Party candidate.

She cited a litany of horrors about life, especially in rural NK, and said, during her lunch interview, that what added to her determination to seek to continue her life elsewhere was when she witnessed a young, severely undernourished boy picking up bits of rice from a sewer. This is no exaggeration as it typifies the level of extreme hunger and poverty in NK, a country ruled by a regime that places no limits on its expenditure on the arms race while ignoring the common good.

What a tragedy.

Anthony Curmi – St Julian’s          

A ‘call to arms’

Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, described the “war criminal” Vladimir Putin as a “miracle of God”.

Secolo XIX magazine reported that, at a ceremony with the Russian armed forces, the patriarch spoke of a “veritable ‘call to arms’”.

“Back in my early childhood,” recalled Marlene Dietrich, “I had learned that God doesn’t fight on an army’s side. Nonetheless, before every battle, prayers were read, all kinds of incantations were recited, staged by all sorts of preachers. We attended these ceremonies and I saw how the soldiers stood in place, as though they couldn’t believe their ears.”

Albert Einstein described “the odious militia” as “that vilest offspring of the herd mind. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism – how intensely I despise them!

“War is low and despicable and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings.”

As for the autocrat Putin – the so-called “miracle of God” – Einstein was “convinced that degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors”.

John Guillaumier – St Julian’s

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