The winner of the 2001 International Emmy award for Best Documentary, Welcome to North Korea is a grotesquely surreal look at the all-too-real conditions in modern-day North Korea.

This is one of the best up close and personal documentaries about North Korea you will ever see.

Join Lisa Ling as she captures a rare look inside North Korea – something few Americans have ever been able to do.

A horrific look at the many crimes against humanity the Stalinist regime in North Korea is guilty of. “Children of the Secret State” focuses on orphan children in North Korea.

Kim Jong-Un

This video can be deceiving. Yes, many are upset. Yes, many really do believe Kim was a great man. However, don’t believe all the hype. North Koreans must constantly keep an eye on one another and inform on neighbors and family members who excibit behavior that could be deemed “disloyal” to the regime. In other words, the tears had better be flowing over the death of Kim Jong-Il or you might find yourself in a concentration camp. North Koreans are required to visit the tomb of Kim Jong-Il’s father, Kim Il-Sung, on a regular basis. Crying when you visit is an unspoken requirement. Government minders keep a close watch on people as they visit and a failure to express the proper amount of emotion could be the end of your family.

The incredible closed nature of the Stalinist DPRK (North Korea’s official name is the “Democratic Peoples Republic Of Korea) makes it very difficult to know how much of the hero worship BS is real and how much is acting. But, you can bet a fair amount of it is geniune. North Koreans are subjected to unrelenting propaganda and zero outside sources of information from the time they are born until death (a death that is usually quite premature). An entirely new phony history is being created even as I type this about the new leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. Absurd tales of his magical birth, etc are being spun right now. I can’t wait to hear what kind of God-like powers the 29-year old “General” has. According to DPRK news reports, the new Kim is fond of wearing the kind of simple black suits that Chairman Mao made famous. We will have to wait and see if he’s fond of starving his people to death like Mao too. His father certainly was.

If you want a taste of what everyday life is like in North Korea you should read, “Nothing To Envy” by Barbara Demick. It will shock the conscience.

From Vancouver Sun:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died aged 69 of a heart attack, state media announced Monday, plunging the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation into uncertainty as it faced a second dynastic succession.

The leader “passed away from a great mental and physical strain” at 8:30 am on Saturday (2330 GMT Friday), while travelling by train on one of his field tours, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

It urged people to follow his youngest son and heir apparent Kim Jong-Un, who is aged in his late 20s and was last year made a four-star general and given top ruling party posts despite having had no public profile.

May he rot in hell.

This is good. The ignorance of these people knows no bounds. North Koreans paid a living wage? They’re dying by the thousands of starvation. You really have to troll the darkest recesses of the Internet to convince yourself that Stalinist North Korea is better off than Capitalist South Korea. Or that the DPRK is better off any place in this galaxy. The human rights atrocities taking place in North Korea even as I type this rival Nazi Germany and that’s not hyperbole. North Korea is a kind of hobby of mine. I’ve read dozens of books on the North and follow what is happening there. Saddam’s Iraq was like the Vatican compared to North Korea. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are imprisoned in ghastly concentration camps. It’s the closest thing to hell you can find on earth.

This article titled “Suspected North Korean defectors found off Japanese coast” was written by Justin McCurry in Tokyo, for The Guardian on Tuesday 13th September 2011 10.27 UTC

Coastguard officials in Japan are questioning nine suspected North Korean defectors after they were found drifting off the country’s west coast, on Tuesday morning.

The group – three men, three women and three young children – were found by a coastguard helicopter 15 miles off the Noto peninsula, in Ishikawa prefecture, after a tip-off from local fishermen.

They were collected by a coastguard vessel and taken to Kanazawa for questioning. Their eight-metre boat bore Korean characters along its sides and was stocked with rice and pickled vegetables, Japanese media reports said.

A man claiming to represent the group told local media that they had come from North Korea and had intended to travel to South Korea. The man reportedly described himself as a member of the Korean People’s army, and said the eight other people on board were his relatives.

They were fortunate to have survived the long trip east across the Japan Sea. The boat was not equipped with navigation equipment and none of the group wore a life jacket.

Japan is an unusual destination for North Koreans hoping to flee repression and poverty in the communist state. The coastguard has records of two other cases: in 2006, when four men and women drifted to the coast of northern Japan; and in 1987, when a family of 11 ended up on the country’s west coast.

Most would-be defectors cross the border into China or drift across the Yellow Sea maritime border dividing North and South Korea. Cross-border tensions escalated this year after four of 31 North Koreans who sailed into South Korean waters refused to return home.

The South Korean foreign ministry said it expected Japanese authorities to share the results of its investigation. An official in Seoul told the Yonhap news agency: “If they are confirmed to be North Korean defectors and have a clear desire to come to South Korea, we will take all necessary measures in accordance with the law on handling defectors.”

More than 21,000 North Korean defectors have entered the South since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean war, according to the unification ministry in Seoul.

The boat’s discovery so close to the Japanese coast prompted speculation that it may have continued to drift eastwards after failing to make landfall in South Korea.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This man is such a disgrace I’m embarrassed to say that he’s an American. It’s beyond the pale even for Jimmy “Useful Idiot” Carter to accuse the US of human rights violations from inside North Korea. There is no country on earth with less disregard for human rights than North Korea. Millions and millions and millions of people have died at the hands of the two Kims. For this hack peanut farmer and failed president to lecture America about human rights while in the presence of those murderous cretins is an outrage.

For him to talk about America witholding food aide to the North shows either stupidity or willful ignorance on his part. Let’s first examine why North Korea needs food aide. When you cross the barbwire fence into South Korea there’s more food than a person could eat in 10 lifetimes. There is no difference between North and South Korea except for the regimes in power. The North has no food because they’ve maintained rigid Communist control over the economy. Once your government food rations run out you don’t eat. It’s illegal to grow your own food or set up your own business. Kim Jong-IL has starved his people to death for decades. Literally, millions of people die of starvation in North Korea.

Secondly, the food aide we send there only goes to feed the North Korean armed forces. Whatever food is left over is then sold to starving citizens at prices they cannot afford. Aiding the North Korean regime only serves to prop it up. We prolong the suffering and the agony of the North Korean people by aiding the regime. Our aide never reaches the starving people of North Korea anyway.

Jimmy Carter is a useful idiot and a propagandist who never met a third world dictator he didn’t carry water for.

Take a look at this recent footage smuggled out of North Korea. That is what North Korean human rights violations look like. Would you break bread with a regime that did that to people? I would not. Jimmy did and will again.

South Korea was nice enough to set up a school especially for North Korean refugees. Many of the children escaped from the North after their parents died of starvation. I posted a video about it last December.

Source: Associated Press
Former President Jimmy Carter and other past world leaders arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday hoping to meet with North Korea’s leader to discuss dangerous food shortages and stalled nuclear disarmament talks.