North Korea makes rare public appeal for flood relief
Source: CNN
According to a report published Sunday by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) -- North Korea's official state media -- the country's northeast has been affected by the "heaviest downpour" since 1945, with "tens of thousands" of buildings destroyed and people left homeless and "suffering from great hardship."
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Citing North Korean government data, the report described how heavy rains resulting from Typhoon Lionrock had triggered flooding in areas such as Musan and Yonsa counties and Hoeryong City in North Hamgyong province. So far, 133 people have been killed, 395 people are missing and 140,000 people are in "urgent need of assistance."
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Williams told CNN that the flood-ravaged areas were known for being particularly impoverished, with prison camps and forces considered hostile to the regime found there. Williams suggested that rather than care for the well-being of the people in the area, the WPK's concern was for the perpetuity of the regime, and that their only concern for the region would be if this could "feed into wider social discontent" that could provoke an uprising.
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"Considering North Korea made this call in English, perhaps there is a distant hope that given the scale of the disaster, maybe the international community might respond," said Williams.
"But these hopes are undermined by their recent nuclear test -- it's hard to pinpoint the psychology behind it."
Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/12/asia/north-korea-floods-admission/
Nuclear Superpower and worker's paradise North Korea, under the wise leadership of chairman Kim Yong Un, is hereby asking for international aid.
= new reply since forum marked as read
These anecdotes do not support the suggestion that there is widespread discontent. There are ex-Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Mormons, and you-name-it, who will likewise report that there are people in those religions who are dissatisfied. The vast majority are not.
The US government passed this law in 1989:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/700
"
1) Whoever knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both."
When the US government made it illegal to burn the flag (albeit with an unenforceable law), did you conclude there was widespread discontent with the US government? Was that a sign that the Reagan administration "was not safe"?
Yes, they are really close to a famine. They have been through one before. Persons who were children during that time remain shorter than other North Koreans. They did not revolt then, and they will not revolt if the screws are turned tighter.
Quite obviously your "didn't work" observation is incorrect. It is, observably, working.
I don't think you got the drift of my mention of Japan and Germany either.
Allied bombing of Germany did not inspire the Germans to rise up against Hitler, neither did US bombing of Japan inspire them to rise up against their leaders.
Any suffering which is endured by the North Korean people is not attributed to the actions of their leader, and the corresponding reaction of the outside world, but is attributed - and apparently effectively so - to the continued scheming of the nefarious United States and its allies.
With few exceptions, there is no indication that the people of the DPRK disbelieve what they are told. They have been raised from infancy to believe these things, and except for the few which take extreme risks to watch smuggled or ballooned-in videos on USB sticks and other things for which they can be killed for possessing (and the entire family's Songbun put at risk), there is no indication whatsoever that they question it.
We like to believe they "know" it's all a put-on, based on the usual one-week-lets-look-at-the-monuments-and-ask-our-minders-tricky-questions documentaries, but those visits are conducted in a bubble with the minders who are there to make sure there is no foreigner contact with unauthorized North Koreans. At some level, the minders themselves know they are putting the "best face" on things, but that's also true of, say, students who lead parents on tours of college campuses. When, as a grad student, I led such tours of the engineering department at my school, it's not as if I said, "And, oh by the way, a couple of the tenured faculty lost all interest in keeping up with technology or teaching undergraduates years ago."
Aside from which, even if the internal social conditions in DPRK proceeded toward some kind of tipping point, it is pretty clear that li'l Kim would certainly provoke international conflict in order to have a larger external boogeyman to blame. Crisis unites people like nothing else. After 9/11 did we, as a country, rebuke the W administration for being asleep at the switch (as the 9/11 Commission found)? Aw heck no. He grabbed a bullhorn and his approval rating went into the stratosphere.
The DPRK remains useful to China, but only up to a point. I haven't checked, but I'd be willing to bet that the economic relationship between China and Samsung alone has a greater value than that between China and the DPRK. Although it is pretty clear that as the TPP proceeds, li'l Kim seems to get crankier, and that may have something to do with China needing him as a foil. But there are limits to what China can do with him as well.
All I'm saying is that those folks who went up in flames with David Koresh weren't being forcibly held in that compound. Neither were most of the people in Jonestown. What precipitated the Jonestown mass suicide was a relatively small number of folks who wanted to get out, and Jones was afraid of the consequences if his little circus came apart. We don't call it "drinking the Kool Aid" for nothing. They were true believers, and there is no reason to assume that the overwhelming majority of North Koreans - who have less exposure to anything outside of the bubble than the residents of Jonestown did - are not likewise true believers to the end. Even when they could see that people were dropping dead, and it was no drill, more of them lined up to get their drink than ran off into the jungle.
Look at what you can get people to do on, with very few exceptions, a completely voluntary basis:
They were not crazy people. They were not secretly believing it was all a big scam. They were acting on their own beliefs which had been manipulated with less control over outside influences than the people of the DPRK.
Enjoy the music. Watch the video background:
