Kim Jong Un appeared to blink first Tuesday morning, with North Korean media reporting the dictator had delayed a decision about whether to fire missiles toward Guam – a pronouncement that came hours after a particularly stark warning from Defense Secretary James Mattis promised further escalation would mean “game on.”
Kim Jong Un’s remarks came as he made his first public appearance in nearly two weeks, inspecting his army and examining missile plans, the official state media arm, KCNA, reported according to Reuters. The leader tempered his recent fiery rhetoric, appearing to step back from the brink in an intensifying war of words with the United States.
Thus to explain to hysterical media – the Trump Administration wins again.
In this period of calm, as the American Left comes to grip with another failure to accomplish America’s demise, it is helpful to consider what life is like inside the truly evil land of fear. To that, a defector recently gave Sky News insight into life in North Korea – where public executions on school grounds are common place.
Katie Stallard, Asia Correspondent in Seoul filed the report and quotes the defector from North Korea that the leader is significantly weaker than what is portrayed by the regime writing:
Despite televised images of mass public adulation of Kim Jong Un, displays of loyalty are coerced through fear.
He said living conditions had become harder, and privately many people were critical of his leadership, but nobody dared express those views in public.
“If you criticize Kim Jong Un you will go to a prison camp and not come back,” he said.
“In North Korean society you can do everything but criticize the Kim family.
“If you are caught, even if you have money, you won’t be able to survive.
“It’s a frightening system.
“(In the camps) you are forced to labor and you live a life no better than a dog or a pig. It is better to die.”
[Sky News] showed him some of the latest footage from Pyongyang, featuring thousands of people apparently rallying in support of the leader in the city center.
“These civilians, if the government tells them to come, they are gathered by the system, they’re forced to come, they don’t have the freedom not to,” he explained.
“I feel sorry for these people, they will all be cannon fodder. People are scared.
“On the surface they look thankful, but none of it is genuine.”
“Everyone is aware that there is no other place in the world as poor as North Korea, and that no other country suffers as much as our people do,” he said.
“We don’t follow the system because we like it, we are only following because we are scared of it.
An NGO researching atrocities under the Kim regime has revealed how public executions are intended to instil fear of the government and to be witnessed by as many people as possible.
The Transitional Justice Working Group’s executive director Hubert Youngwhan Lee told Sky News: “The most commonly used locations are river banks, under bridges, markets, or even on school grounds, or public stadiums.
Asked to clarify whether school grounds were being used for public executions, he replied: “Yes, school grounds, because North Korea uses this as a tool for instilling public fear of being punished by their government.”
A United Nations Commission of Inquiry reported in 2014 that crimes against humanity, involving extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, and deliberate starvation, were being committed in North Korea, with abuse on a scale without parallel in the contemporary world.
Another UN agency warned earlier this year that the country was suffering its most serious drought in 16 years, raising fears of worsening food shortages this autumn.