North Korea Punishes 'Insincere' Mourners

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marxism.  you gotta love it.

my husband and i are stationed in south korea right now, and i visited the DMZ last winter, and looked out across the border into north korea. i stood yards from north korean soldiers and it was a truly chilling experience. someone said 'how can this be happening anywhere in the year 2012', and someone else wrote that it's not even the 21st century in north korea, which is true. hell, it's barely even the 20th century in north korea. it is truly like a land lost in time and completely unconnected from the world the rest of us live in. i've been reading books about north korea while we've been living here, and the information that we *know* about this country is so weird and disturbing that it is almost hard to believe. and thats just the stuff we know, there is no telling what other bizarre and twisted stuff goes on there that no one else ever hears about.  we can make jokes about it and draw political parallels to disparage the party platform we are opposed to. but what is happening in north korea is very real, and to compare anything that happens in america to what happens in north korea is insulting to the people of north korea and the decades of suffering they have endured, and will continue to endure, since no one knows how to help them.  and the frightening thing is that *most* north koreans are so brainwashed and misinformed as to genuinely and truly believe that they ARE blessed, that their dear leader IS a god, who loves and protects them, that they are BETTER OFF than the rest of the world. their country is so isolated that most of them literally have no idea what the reality is outside their borders. they believe what their government tells them and teaches them, from childhood, which is that the dear leader is a god and they are lucky and blessed, compared to everyone else. can you imagine? can you really even imagine that, what it must be like to live there, to be starving, and genuinely grief-stricken when your dear leader died? obviously, not all of them are brainwashed. but believe me, there are plenty of north koreans who are in genuine mourning over kim jong il's death. and that regime is truly fucked up enough to punish severely the ones who arent. they cant let even a crack form in their carefully-constructed house of cards, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. they are ruthless when it comes to stamping out *anything*, no matter how seemingly harmless, that threatens the alternate-reality matrix they have built for their people. 

North Korea wanted adds: Drama Queen wanted, must be able to wail on demand.