North Korean Gets Firing Squad For Telling South Korean Friend The Price Of Rice
The Silly Lankan & North Korean Family Dictatorships
North Korean Soccer Team Reprimanded
Is South Korean ship sunk by a NEW WEAPON?
Executing a Woman for Distributing Bible - Is North Korean Leadership a Cruel Tribal ?
Korean Journalism Sucks
If criticizing Mohammad or desecrating a Koran can get you 25 years to life in prison in Pakistan, simply sharing some innocuous information with someone who happens to live outside of North Korea can get you the firing squad in that country. At least that's what happened to a N. Korean man named Chong. A worker at an armaments factory, he spoke on his cell phone with a friend of his who had defected to South Korea many years ago. One would think that to merit the death penalty he must have committed some major act of treason by perhaps divulging important state secrets to this friend, after all he worked in an armaments factory. But no, all this poor man did was to tell his friend what the cost of rice was, and shared some other information regarding current living conditions in North Korea, and for that he was executed.
What could possibly be treasonous about sharing information about the price of rice? Is that a government secret? Or a threat to their national security? Of course, as closed a society as North Korea is, perhaps revealing just how poor the living conditions are in that country might just upset the powers that be. I'm sure they're embarrassed as hell that a political system like Communism, that is/was supposed to be so wonderful, isn't quite the utopia it's made out to be, but that's no reason to stand someone in front of a firing squad and gun him down. Killing someone for talking about rice is as execrable as jailing someone for hurting Muslims' feelings. He was also found to have shared the information on an "illegal" cell phone. Cell phone usage is very restricted in that country, for obvious reasons, and many people there own illegal phones from China. It's estimated that more than 10,000 in areas bordering China own these illegal mobile phones. Chong was one of those many, which probably didn't help matters with regards to his predicament.
Maybe some day North Korea, Pakistan and all the other countries both Communist and Islamist (since both those systems are all about 'controlling' their populations) will enter the 21st century and allow their people to live in peace and prosperity and freedom.
