one expat's life in Korea
Explicitly speaking, there is no “human rights issue” much touted by the U.S. in the DPRK. The Korean people fully enjoy genuine freedom and rights under the socialist system where all people form a big family. It is the consistent popular policy of the DPRK government to fully guarantee the rights of the citizens in a responsible manner. In the DPRK based on the man-centered Juche idea all working people do labor according to their abilities and wishes and lead a genuine life, given ample opportunity of learning. It is absolutely illogical for the U.S. to talk about the “human rights issue” while ignoring such reality.
There is the most serious human rights issue in the U.S. as it is a rogue state that exterminated tens of millions of native Indians and accumulated wealth through slave trade and flesh traffic and a country where the almighty dollar principle and the fin de sickle lifestyle based on the law of the jungle prevail. The impoverishment of Americans in the mental and cultural lives is actively fostered institutionally, driving them into the abyss of corruption, despair and crimes. This is a true picture of the American society today.
The “human rights” piffle made by the U.S. high-ranking officials indicates that they have no stand to recognize and respect the dialogue partner. The U.S. is persisting in the politically motivated provocations as evidenced by the ruckus kicked up over the non-existent “human rights issue” in the DPRK, an indication of its deep-rooted hostility and inveterate enmity toward the DPRK.
This attitude leaves the DPRK and the countries concerned skeptical about the U.S. intention to implement the points of the October 3 agreement. Such provocative acts of the U.S. as slandering and pulling up its dialogue partner can never help the talks make any progress in the positive direction. [KCNA]
North Korea said on Wednesday it saw as “unjust” calls from global powers such as the United States for Pyongyang to verify claims it made in disarmament talks about producing arms-grade plutonium. The North’s KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed spokesman from its Foreign Ministry as also saying that South Korean-U.S. military exercises, which started on Monday, had spoiled the atmosphere for the disarmament discussions.
“This situation compels the DPRK (North Korea) to heighten vigilance against such unjust demands as the ‘verification in line with the international standard’ recently claimed by the U.S. as regards the nuclear issue,” the spokesman said. [Reuters]
North Korea “will increase its war deterrent in every way as long as the U.S. and its followers continue posing military threats to it,” a spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency. The remarks came two days after South Korea and the U.S. launched Ulchi Freedom Guardian, an annual computer-simulated war game and follow daily criticisms of the exercises in North Korean media. The exercises come amid a dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over ways to verify the North’s declared nuclear programs under an aid-for disarmament deal. [AP, Kwang-Tae Kim]
In the North Korean vernacular, “war deterrent” means nukes.
How's the view from in there, Comrade Kim?
Sigh.
There's actually nothing funny about it. The best I can muster is bitter, angry derision. . . people are dying there, so as much fun as it is to laugh at "I'm Ronely" jokes, the dying people of North Korea deserve more.
There was a big olympics thingy going on at the top of the Chunggyecheon.
I believe the sport of the day was table tennis, on the big screen.
And a bit closer up:
There were off-and-on spatters of rain from time to time, and every spot where a rain droplet (barely larger than mist) spackled onto my black umbrella, the street-light shone through the droplet and through the the black umbrella, making the inside of the umbrella look like one of those Star-Trek night skies. The picture here doesn't do it justice, but it was a little moment of beauty in keeping with the quote on my blog header, and bud, ya gotta pay attention to those, and write them down, or shoot them, or point them out to somebody -- not that you need to; you can stuff it in your pocket and keep it to yourself like a love-note from God just to you. . . but those gratuitously lovely morsels of universe taste better when shared (even clumsily, like this barely-even-manages-to-hint-at-it picture.)
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You'd think they'd have protected their investment a bit with an airbrush.
Last night I was talking to one of my best friends, someone I've come to trust deeply over years of being in the kind of conversation that is woven into our whole lives. . . .We were talking about self-perceptions, and how they compare to how others perceive us. I often perceive myself to be....all these negative things, but according to my friend, this is not how my friends perceive me. . . . I'm writing about how almost all of us do this very thing all the time, and how just sad it is, maybe more than anything.Thanks, Tamie.
If we knew that we were loved, it would change everything, wouldn't it? What if for one day you were granted some kind of supernatural power so that you could feel just how much people loved you? (I feel like I know what so many of us would fear--we wouldn't want to be granted that supernatural power because we'd be so afraid that people are secretly annoyed and disgusted by us. And this is precisely the point.) But people do love temporally and imperfectly. But if we knew that we were loved, absolutely and eternally, that we are always always inside endless love....well, yep, that would change everything.
Why, tell me why, is this so damn hard to really get a hold on? Why are we bumbling around in these illusions, so convinced that we're on the cusp of being cut off, when in fact we're fairly swimming in love? Jesus. In those brief moments when I know that I am loved, through and through and through, then I am completely free. And in those moments it becomes suddenly clear to me just how not-free I am most of the time. How I am missing the joys of my life, missing the glorious cosmic dance. Not because I'm not a part of it, but because I'm deaf to just how much of a part of it I am. I can't hear that the music is everywhere.
And even in this, in my deafness and illusions, I am loved. Oh, but how I wish that I could know it, live it, all the time. Know what I mean, dear readers? Know what I mean?
Okay, enough said for now. Time for yoga.
