FREEDOM OF THE PRESS (IN NORTH KOREA)

Since 2007, the clandestine publication Rimjingang has provided first-hand accounts of life inside North Korea. The quarterly is published in Japan, but its reporters routinely cross the border between North Korea and China to smuggle their stories out of the news vacuum that is North Korea.

Rimjingang was named after a river that flows back and forth, cris-crossing the border of China and North Korea.

Founding editor Jiro Ishimaru comments, “I’m proud of these reporters. I’m committed to helping them deliver a message to the world they are risking their lives to report.”

Ishimaru trained North Korean civilians in the arts of journalism and espionage, equipping them with surveillance cameras that would later provide stunning footage. Some of the scenes recorded include an illegal market where children are scavenging for food off the ground and a town where women and children are forced to work in a coal mine.

A recent video shows the Soonchun Vinylon factory, a site Western intelligence has long considered a production facility for nerve gas. But the video shows a deserted complex overtaken by weeds.

“The story is so complex,” says Ishimaru. “It needs to be told by the people who live it.”

This is Al Gore’s wet dream, the one in which his reporters do not get kidnaped by the North Koreans and rescued by Clinton.

NORTH KOREA’S FELICITOUS FRIENDS

Today marks the auspicious occasion of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

According to several articles appearing in the New Light of Myanmar, sympathetic Burmese generals have been celebrating the felicitous holiday by regaling North Korea with felicitations.

In one article, no less than Senior General Than Shwe, leader of Burma’s felicitous military junta, sends "felicitations" to the Chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission.

A similar article details how “Prime Minister General” Thein Sein sends his “felicitations” to the North Koreans.

In a third article, Senior General Than Shwe rears his ugly head again to “send a message of felicitations” to the President of the Presidium Supreme People’s Assembly.

What a felicitous bunch of commies!

The Senior General’s smile is known to melt Dear Leader’s heart.

North Korea makes full use of its chimneys.

FRUITLESS IN PYONGYANG

North Korea is one of the world’s leading producers of fresh fruit and vegetables.

According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, North Korea is the tenth largest producer of fresh fruit, including apples, peaches, pears and nectarines.

The chronically malnourished country is also the world’s 12th largest producer of fresh vegetables.

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Unable to experience this incredible bounty, starving North Koreans have increasingly turned to an artificial food composed of twigs, tree bark and leaves. The scavenged ingredients are ground into a paste and formed into dried noodles.

The noodles provide scant nutrition and can cause internal bleeding and dysentery.

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Since the mid-‘90's, North Koreans have endured chronic food shortages which have killed an estimated 2 million.

The government in Pyongyang blames natural disasters, such as the floods of 1995, 1996 and 2000, for the food crises–omitting the key detail that the floods were induced by the clearance of massive areas of forest to create more land for growing fruit.

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Officially, North Korea espouses a philosophy of self-reliance known as juche, even rejecting various shipments of food aid.

Privately, North Korean officials usher in hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid which is siphoned off by the military and high-ranking members of the Korean Workers’ Party.

Despite its vaunted improved seeds, fertilizers and irrigation methods, the country remains unable or disinclined to feed its citizens.

All of that glorious fruit is destined for export.

"Bodies of Pyongyang" by performance artist Yoonhye Park.

PARTY AT KIM JONG-IL’S HOUSE!

Curtis Melvin, an American who spends too much time on Google Earth, claims to have spotted one of North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il’s luxury homes.

The sprawling compound in the Ryongsong district north of Pyongyang features a sparkling pool and water slide.

It would be difficult to imagine a lesser official than Chairman Kim occupying such a preposterously lavish compound in the starving country.

Unnamed sources within North Korea have confirmed that Kim’s residence #21 is located in the Ryongsong district and is where he spends most of his time when in Pyongyang.

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

Im Chun-yong, a former North Korean military captain who escaped to South Korea in 1999, reports that North Korea tests its vast stockpile of chemical and biological weapons on children with mental and physical disabilities.

Kim Jong-il’s regime may be communist in theory, but its praxis is pure Nazism.

"If you are born mentally or physically deficient, the government says your best contribution to society...is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing," says Im Chun-yong.

Children are blasted with poisonous gases as soldiers time how long it takes the kids to die.

Experts estimate that North Korea has several tons of chemical weapons. In Kim's communist utopia, disabled people are conspicuously absent.

Kim Jong-il Outlives Michael Jackson...But Can He Out-Weird Him?

According to South Korean news reports, the perpetually dying Kim Jong-il is now being treated for life-threatening pancreatic cancer.

Someone at North Korea’s "Longevity Institute" will have to be fired and sent to a remote gulag. The Longevity Institute, an arm of the finance and accounting department of the Workers’ Party, is charged with maintaining Kim’s health for the ages, an increasingly unworkable task.

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The Institute ensures that Kim receives the highest quality food in great abundance, such as rice from special farms in Mundok County. Officials carefully examine each individual grain of rice before cooking the rice over a flame with firewood obtained from Mt. Paekdu.

Kim drinks bottled mineral water from dedicated springs. His team of Italian chefs deliver him hot pizza on demand. He is said to eat shark-fin soup no fewer than three times a week. Kim regularly indulges in lobster, but prefers boshintang, or dog soup.

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The Longevity Institute may not succeed in granting Kim eternal life, but it has succeeded in fattening him.

Author Michael Breen calls Kim Jong-il "the only Fat Bastard in the whole country."

Under Kim’s dear leadership, 10% of his country’s population has starved.