Posted on 03/15/2003 3:51:55 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Dear comrade company commander Huh Chol-Ho,
How are you, comrade company commander ? I am Kim Chol-Min, the former targeter of artillery No. 8 under your command, who lived through good and bad times with you. A lot of time has passed since I saw you last time in October, 1995. Seven years to be exact. I am now in S. Korea. I really doubt that this letter I am writing at an apartment in a street of Seoul will reach you but I still want to share my feelings with you now.
On the day when we went out for 25 mile march, me carrying a 82mm mortar tube which is taller than me, at the young age of seventeen, you told me, "Chol-Min, it will be tough but you must prevail. Military service is a hard work but isn't it rewarding and honorable ?" No fancy rhetoric in your encouragement, but it remained as my motto for 10 years and 3 months of my service. The reward and honor, they were really what I wanted to get for all my life. Intangible and untouchable, still they were what all guys in my hometown, including me, were eager for in return for sacrificing our youth.
As you know, I literally dedicated my entire youth for that goal and finally became a party member, and the chairman of Socialist Worker's Youth League at my company. I was awarded 9 medals, which I proudly pinned on my chest. I was overjoyed. I cannot forget my trip back home wearing all those medals. I felt as if I were having all the glories in the world. Until I saw myself and my neighors surviving on grass gruel.
Had you heard anbody starved to death ? Now it is commonplace but back in April, '94, I could not believe what I was hearing. How would you feel about your childhood buddies dying like that ? I could no longer tell where the reality ends and the nightmare starts. I lived in Northern Hwang-Hae Province, the breadbasket of the nation. Still if you went out to the local train station, there were countless kids begging for foods, who were homeless or abandoned. And old folks abandoned by their children.
In spring '95, I met a dying seventeen year old girl in front of the train station, who pleaded me to bring her to where she could not be spotted by others. She believed that people would see all fleas crawling out of her body when she dies, the though of which caused her unbearable shame. I was cursing myself, while granting her wishes and blurting to her what the hell was with her shame now that she was dying. It was driving me mad. I thought that the history was moving backwards, and that the human civilization was in full retreat.
The honor and reward you drilled into my mind suddenly sounded as worthless as those fleas. It is worthwhile to be remembered and honored by those in your society but the honor over there is about serving Kim Jong-Il who is another ordinary human being like me. It would be absolutely of no use for saving me and my brothers who were starving. I would have gladly traded my party membership card and medals if it could bring a mere spoonful of food to them.
You would not believe me if I tell you that I came to Seoul after 10 years of successful military service and a college education just because I was hungry. But you would if I tell you that I could no longer bear watching all those starving people. It was really true. Watching people starving to death and frozen to death. It was too much. That is why I came down to the south. I have no regrets. I feel sorry about leaving behind those beloved folks back home. But I will redouble myself, working hard and sweating more until I go back and stand proud before my folks back home. I will live every trying day of my life here this way. Next time, I hope to write about details of my everyday life down here. Untile the day I will see you again, please be well.
Sincerely,
former targeter of artillery No. 8, Kim Chol-Min
This letter illustrates the horror of the situation.
What's your definition of success? Stability, welfare of the people, living standard and longevity of the dictator? If you define dictatorship as an autocracy, then all the old monarchies were dictatorship, and they lasted a long time.
it's a cult!!
Yes, it is a cult commune.
I encourage you (if you are likewise inclined) to use the words " 'Freepranslated' by ________" in such research posts so we can get that as a regular word in the Freeper lexicon. There is a growing number of Freepers who read critical foreign languages, who synopsize here in English like you have, thus providing stuff that may never otherwise see the light of day in the English, Western press. Thanks for your service!
Now, on this side, recently I sent an e-mail letter, trying to appear apolitical, as an academic 'researcher', to a so-called Korean rights organization which is part of the International A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-Bush, anti-America umbrella.
This group claims to stick up for the 'human rights of Koreans.' Nearly everything they have is so-called atrocities by US troops in Korea 50 years ago.
I stated specifically in my message that I had a growing concern and could they help me and confirm: the locations of several concentration camps in NORTH KOREA, and I pointed to the Fall 2002 Far East Economic Review magazine article with clear aerials of one of those North Korean death and work camps near China for political prisoners/Christians, and asked them to briefly help me research (or provide other information resources) re: the rumored terrible human rights situation there in the DPRK.
I wrote it clearly, politely and respectfully asking for them, as Koreans and Korean experts who are also concerned, to help me.
I sent it over nearly TWO WEEKS AGO.
Do you think this communist front job for that scumbag, phony "pro-peace" shill of an organization International A.N.S.W.E.R. ever got back to me or otherwise showed the slightest concern?
I've heard a lot of talk about hunger and privation in that country, and it's always laid at the doorstep of the president. But nobody ever explains why it should be.
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