BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!

My drive to work this morning was slowed by flashing lights and traffic cones. As I approached the accident scene I looked with morbid fascination to see the extent of the damage. The car didn't look in too bad of shape but the bicycle that was probably 80-100 feet away was crumpled quite badly. I can only speculate about and hope and pray for the health of the cyclist.

It is a crazy world out there. Please be careful!

"NOTHING TO ENVY"

LA Times reporter Barbara Demick's new book gets a nice review from her own newspaper. I haven't read the book yet (it is on my ever growing list of "must reads") but it sounds like gripping reading. A snippet from the review:

A doctor named Kim Ji-eun, another of Demick's primary sources, dealt with famine victims firsthand and provided testimony eerily paralleling Mi-ran's: As a 28-year-old pediatrician at a small district hospital, Kim noticed severe wasting (in which the body eats its own muscle tissue) among many of the children. "They would look at me with accusing eyes. Even four-year-olds knew they were dying and that I wasn't doing anything to help them," Kim told Demick. "All I was capable of doing was to cry with their mothers over the bodies afterward." Her hospital became so strapped that it remained unheated, bandages were fashioned from cut-up bedding, and beer bottles substituted for IV pouches.

I wish I knew the best way (or any way) to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people, particularly those who are unlucky enough to have a bad sôngbun.

NOT WHAT ONE MIGHT EXPECT

if one subscribes to the typical stereotypes many outsiders have of North Korea. In a place where (according to said stereotypes) the leaders are regarded as perfect deities who never admit to error, where material prosperity is regarded as a capitalist vice, and a place where reform and talk of reform is verboten, what to make of this: a report in North Korea's Rodong sinmun in which the Supreme Leader laments his country's failure to achieve his father's goal of a society in which all citizens have rice and meat soup to eat, silk to wear, and a tile-roofed house to live in. Here's the key Korean phrase:

지난날 수령님께서는 늘 우리 인민들이 흰쌀밥에 고기국을 먹으며 비단옷을 입고 기와집에서 살게 하여야 한다고 하시였는데 우리는 아직 수령님의 이 유훈을 관철하지 못하고있다.

Is this a Deng Xiaoping, "To get rich is glorious" moment? At minimum, it appears we need to reconsider our stereotypes.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The DPRK has recently designated "Rason" as a special city. Not familiar with the name "Rason," I had to read a bit of the article to discover that it is simply an abbreviated mix of Rajin and Sônbong, the site of a long-lasting but not terribly successful FTZ. Sounds a bit like old wine in new bottles.


More pics of "Rason" here.

TRAFFIC WOES

Anyone who has driven regularly on I-95 can attest that folks in many other parts of the country don't have much to complain about when it comes to traffic. But, as always, there is something worse, far worse, out there. In this case, it is the traffic in Delhi, India, which by virtue of being so unmanageable, has given rise to some interesting, individual-based solutions.

REALITY MIRRORS FICTION

Anyone who has watched the film, Joint Security Area (JSA) will remember the Choco Pie scene. When the ROK soldier Sgt. Lee tries to entice his DPRK counterpart Sgt. Oh south, he dangles the prospect of all the Choco Pies one could eat. Sgt. Oh was in the middle of eating and enjoying a Choco Pie (brought surreptitiously from the South) when the offer was made. He promptly spit the half-eaten pie out and declared that he looked forward to the day when his beloved DPRK would make the world's best Choco Pies. After making this patriotic declaration, he proceeded to put the half-eaten mess back into his mouth and swallow it.

Now, apparently, Choco Pies are flooding into North Korea via the Kaesông Industrial Zone.

“Choco Pie collectors have popped up [across North Korea],” said an official at the Unification Ministry in Seoul. “In Sinuiju, a northern city near the Chinese border, there is even a retail market.”

Perhaps this tantalizing confection will be more influential than the visits of orchestras or the dropping of propaganda leaflets. Perhaps not.

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE?

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