Kim Jong-Il's Funeral

Mass hysteria at the death of the old bastard Kim Jong-Il but I doubt it's for him. They're probably worried that with changes at the top their tenancy in Pyongyang might be cut short and relocation to the fresh air of the countryside beckons. Together with a rural diet of rat and unripe corn. If they're lucky.

North Korea faces famine: 'Tell the world we are starving'

Kinder to admit to being a Christian. Almost.

"A young woman, in her twenties, was washing clothes in a tributary to the Tumen River (the border between China and North Korea). When packing up the clothes, she dropped what was believed to be a small Bible. The actual words used by the North Korean authorities were “Christianity book” (kiddokyo chaek). Another washer woman reported the girl to the police. According to Interviewee 4, the informer may not have known that the book was a Bible, but all suspicious activity had to be reported to the police. The young woman and her father, looking to be roughly sixty years old, were arrested and held by the local Gukgabowibu police for some three months. During that time, the woman and her father were presumably investigated and interrogated. Apparently, they were deemed guilty of a capital offense. On a summer morning in 1997, the two were taken to a market area near where the Seong Cheon River runs into the Tumen River. The two were accused of trafficking and condemned as traitors to the nation and Kim Jong Il. Interviewee 4 was unaware of any other judicial procedures prior to the announcement of the crime, verdict, and sentence in an extremely brief public “show trial,” which consisted of no more than announcements of the charges and verdict immediately prior to the execution. Teachers and students from elementary (4th grade and up), middle, and high school were assembled, along with persons who had been sent over from the nearby market. Seven police fired three shots each into the two victims, who had been tied to stakes a few meters from the “trial” area. The force of the rifle shots, fired from fifteen meters away, caused blood and brain matter to be blown out of their heads. Interviewee 4 was in the fifth row. She sketched from memory a schematic drawing of the execution scene."

When Communism goes wrong.