Monday, December 19, 2011

News in the modern age

Korea at night from space: A photo is worth 1,000 words. This one says it all.
doctorbulldog.wordpress.com

A sudden influx of visitors coming to my DMZ tour post from a few years back via a Google search forwarns me something is up on the Korean peninsula. And usually it's because of a bad thing--the North flexing military power on land or sea belonging to South Korea or threatening the United States, whom they view as the Republic's enemy number one.

This time, however, the news is different--although not unexpected. Kim Jong Il, age 69, is dead. As tyrants go he was not as bad as Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi but a tyrant never the less. I can only hope his son Kim Jong Eun, like most twenty-somethings worldwide, was an early adopter and has grown up with the Internet.

If anything can lead to the democratization of North Korea, it's the freedom of expression inherently found here.


A new dawn for Korea?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A new dawn for Korea?

That's what they said when he took power from his father.

Don't hold your breath this time either. They're still stuck in 1936.

Anonymous said...

Not as bad as Saddam Hussein or Kadaffi??? What world do you live in, Larry? What an ignorant statement on your part.

Anonymous said...

Let's see, his people are starving so badly that they are actually stunted in growth as compared to S. Koreans, while he spends their meager budget developing nukes which he tried to proliferate by building a secret facility in Syria. A veritable saint.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be as harsh as Anon 1:42but North Korea's leaders' crimes against humaity have not yet been gotten the scrutiny they deserve. I think that, when it comes to authoritarianism and the systematic daily use of terror against human beings that it requires, Kim may have the others beat. This is really one of the last societies on the planet to come into the light, as your overhead view so clearly demonstrates.

I think it's unfair to come here to read what's on Larry's mind, and then to trash him as "ignorant". If that's the case, then why come back?

Anonymous said...

I did not say Larry was ignorant. I said his comment was an ignorant comment. It shows his ignorance of the situation in North Korea. I stand by my comment.

Anonymous said...

I doubt it.