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One day, Shin joined his mother at work, planting rice. When she fell behind, a guard made her kneel in the hot sun with her arms in the air until she passed out. Shin did not know what to say to her, so he said nothing. [...] On the morning after he betrayed his mother and brother, uniformed men came to the schoolyard for Shin. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and driven in silence to an underground prison. [...] Shin awoke in his cell, soiled with excrement and urine. His back was blistered and sticky. The flesh around his ankles had been scraped away. As his burns became infected, he grew feverish and lost his appetite. [...] Shin's fever grew worse and the blisters on his back swelled with pus.

"Execute Jang Hye Gyung and Shin He Geun, traitors of the people," the senior officer said. Shin looked at his father. He was weeping silently. When guards dragged her to the gallows, Shin saw that his mother looked bloated. They forced her to stand on a wooden box, gagged her, tied her arms behind her back and a noose around her neck. She scanned the crowd and found Shin. He refused to hold her gaze. When guards pulled away the box, she jerked about desperately. As he watched his mother struggle, Shin thought she deserved to die. Shin's brother looked gaunt as guards tied him to the wooden post. Three guards fired their rifles three times. He thought his brother, too, deserved it.

General Secretary Kim Jong Il of the Workers Party of Korea provided field guidance to the Kwangbok Area Supermarket just before opening, [the Korean Central News Agency reported from Pyongyang on 15 December 2011]. Kwangbok Department Store which was originally completed in October 1991 has been renovated as a supermarket thanks to the initiative and great loving care shown by Kim Jong Il being considerate of the people's well-being and improvement of their living standard.

The supermarket is a commercial service base capable of providing every convenience for the customers with accurate and rapid service as all of its management activities have been put on IT and digital basis ranging from warehousing to selling. The three-storey supermarket has counters filled with household appliances and electronic goods, such foodstuff as confectionery, milk, tea, soy sauce, soybean paste and oil and such textile goods as children's clothes, toys, Korean dresses, towels, quilts and undergarment.

Going round counters on each floor, Kim Jong Il learned in detail about the varieties of goods, state of display and sales plan. Saying that the supermarket is fitted with display cases, stands and tools and other facilities and furnishings needed for the storage and sales of goods to cater for the tastes of consumers, he expressed great satisfaction over the successful renovation of the commercial service center to be conducive to improving the standard of people's living.

He, calling for meeting the people's need in any case, saw to it that necessary measures were taken. He set forth tasks facing the supermarket in its service. He went on to say: "It is the firm will and determination of the Party to provide the people with things best. Officials should become true servants for the people, who provide them with good things first and worry about their life before anything else." He underscored the need to strive to supply goods to the people before putting them in foreign markets.

TO: Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Issues w/Various Countries

We need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home.

We also need to solve the Pakistan problem.

And Korea doesn't seem to be going well.

Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?

Thanks.

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The most interesting changes since the 1990s [in North Korea] and the famine that killed up to three million is that the common, ordinary people awoke from the nightmare, [concluding] basically: "The state is not a reliable source of our income. They do not take care of us. And so we better feed ourselves." And now, through cellular phones, porous borders, and defectors, North Koreans are learning that they have to change.

"One of the most underrated realities about North Korea is its very dynamic relationship with China, and the amount of information that flows across that border. Students; business people; it's a continuous stream of traffic," says Steven Linton, an American aid worker in North Korea. With that traffic come thousands of DVDs, CDs, cellular telephones, used computers and videotapes -- many of them from China and South Korea.

Many Koreans in China make a living by setting up satellite TVs at their homes to receive South Korean media. Then, they burn CDs and DVDs of the programs and sell them to North Koreans for a profit. These media are so prevalent inside North Korea now that knowledge about South Korea has become commonplace, says Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor at Korea University in Seoul. Yoo regularly talks to students and refugees from North Korea.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127836840

The furor over Kim Jong-il's missile tests and nuclear brinksmanship obscures the real threat: the prospect of North Korea's catastrophic collapse. How the regime ends could determine the balance of power in Asia for decades.

American military officers talk of the Kim Family Regime. Kim Jong-il learned a lesson from the fall of the Ceausescu Family Regime: Take complete control of the military. The KFR now rules through the army.

Kim Jong-il's father established a link in the North Korean mind between the Kim Family Regime and the Choson Dynasty, which ruled the Korean peninsula for 500 years, beginning in the late fourteenth century.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/10/when-north-korea-falls/5228/

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/on_the_spot_with_kim_jong-il.html