COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

If this "reporter" and I were to cross paths right now, I could only just refrain from spitting contemptuously into her useless face.

This is the most fellative apology for tyranny I've ever seen. This skank isn't fit to shine Robert Fisk's shoes. Robert Fisk at least has done some gutsy reporting on the Algerian war and the brutality of the Mubarak regime.

This girl's the journalistic equivalent of a cum-guzzling camp follower.

I'm talking about this.

I've never wanted so much to vomit while reading a piece. I mean, it's one thing to shamelessly whore your journalistic standards for advertising dollars, as the L.A. Times did with the Staples Center some years back. But to bend over a garbage can in an alleyway to offer yourself as a mouthpiece to a flack apologist for concentration (read, "death" camps) is a journalistic outrage.

This North Korean, an affable man in his late 50s who spent much of his career as a diplomat in Europe, has been assigned to help his communist country attract foreign investment. With the U.S. and other countries complaining about North Korea's nuclear weapons program and its human rights record, it's a difficult task, he admitted.

"There's never been a positive article about North Korea, not one," he said. "We're portrayed as monsters, inhuman, Dracula … with horns on our heads."

So, in an effort to clear up misunderstandings, he expounded on the North Korean view of the world in an informal conversation that began one night this week over beer as North Korean waitresses sang Celine Dion in the karaoke restaurant, and resumed the next day over coffee.

Why the formalities? Just tell him to throw a few coins on the ground when he's through with you. Maybe he'll toss an extra quarter or two just to see you crawl around to pick them up.

The North Koreans said they were keenly attentive to the language used by Bush administration officials in regard to their country. They were relieved that in this year's State of the Union address the president didn't again characterize North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," as he did in 2002. But they were greatly offended that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called North Korea an "outpost of tyranny" during her confirmation hearings.

Cry me a river. Here's a few choice lines from a U.S. Committee for Human Rights report:

Former Detainee #21 reported that she was beaten unconscious in mid-1999 at the In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) ku-ryu-jang (detention/interroga-tion facility) at Onsong, where detainees were beaten so badly that they confessed to doing things they had not done. Women were hit on their fingertips. She witnessed one very ill woman who was compelled to do stand-up/sit-down repetitions until she died.

Of course, this whornalist is too busy licking around the head to bother the reader with any kind of contextualization. The LA Times does not provide even a hint that while their Korean bureau chief is doing a smiling lap dance for Goebbels, the stormtroopers are slaughtering the villagers right down the hall.

More from the U.S. Committee for Human Rights:

CHOI Yong Hwa assisted in the delivery of babies, three of whom were promptly killed, at the Sinuiju do-jip-kyul-so (provincial detention center) in mid-2000.


Former Detainee #8 witnessed six forced abortions at Chongjin do-jip-kyul-so in mid-2000.


Former Detainee #9 witnessed ten forced abortions at Onsong ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camp) in mid-2000.


YOU Chun Sik reported that four pregnant women at the bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency) police station in Sinuiju were subjected to forced abortions in mid-2000.


Former Detainee #21 reported two baby killings at the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) police station in late 1999.


Former Detainee #24 helped deliver seven babies who were killed at the Backtori, South Sinuiju In-min-bo-an-seong police detention center in January 2000.


Former Detainee #25 witnessed four babies killed at Nongpo In-min-bo-an-seong police detention center in Chongjin in late 1999, and another six pregnant women subjected to forced abortion.


Former Detainee #26 witnessed three forced abortions and seven babies killed at the Nongpo jip-kyul-so (detention center), Chongjin City, in May 2000.

The reportwhore cannot plead ignorance. Remember, she's the Korea bureau chief. She's the full-time madam on this beat. The Korean peninsula's her alley.

JI Hae Nam confirmed the existence of miniature punishment cells at Kyo-hwa-so No. 1 and reported that beatings and kicking of women prisoners were a daily occurrence in the mid-1990s. She also reported beatings, during interrogation or for prison regulation infractions, in late 1999 at the Sinuiju bo-wi-bu jail, where she was required to kneel motionless, hit with broomsticks, and required to do stand-up/sit-down repetitions to the point of collapse, in her case in thirty to forty minutes.

I wonder what else the LA Times has deliberately left out of their reporting on North Korea? If John Carroll's willing to let this dribble-on-a-blue-gap-dress stain his broadsheets, I wonder what else he's allowed to be left out of everything the L.A. Times has ever printed?

AHN Myong Chol, a former guard, reported that all three of the kwan-li-so at which he worked had isolated detention facilities in which many prisoners died from mistreatment, and that at Kwan-li-so No. 22 there were so many deaths by beatings from guards that the guards were told to be less violent.


Former Detainee #8 reported that male prisoners were beaten by guards at the Chongjin jip-kyul-so in mid-2000.


Former Detainee #9 reported that detainees at the Onsong ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camp) were compelled to beat each other.

What we need to remember is that the stories we do hear from the survivors of the North Korean gulags are stories of the survivors. These people have been allowed to escape. Primo Levi, the Auschwitz survivor and writer who was so haunted by all he had witnessed that he killed himself to escape it, made the point that the stories of the Holocaust which have survived, horrendous as they are, are not the stories of the typical victim. The true nature of the holocaust was much worse than we can ever truly know, because the typical holocaust victim did not survive.

This survivalship bias is going to permeate everything we know about North Korea's concentration camps as well, until the day all the Korean people can breathe free. And even then we will never know the real horror of it.

From the L.A. Times:

"We were hoping for change from the U.S. administration. We expected some clear-cut positive change," the North Korean said. "Instead, Condoleezza Rice immediately committed the mistake of calling us an outpost of tyranny. North Koreans are most sensitive when they hear that kind of remark."

I wish I could grab a fist full of this dictation artists hair and forcefully rub her nose in this.

You don't find this information in the L.A. Times pages today (the North Korean John must have promised Carroll a fat tip), so I'll give it to you from Nick Kristof of the New York Times:

Mrs. Li escaped from Communist-governed North Korea to join a growing number of defectors who say they have firsthand information on starvation and slavery in the camps. "She was 39 years old and had two children, 5 and 7 years old," Mrs. Li said, recall ing her friend who stole the beet, Chae Wal Ryung. "Her husband had been a miner, but he was trapped and killed in a mine accident. So she had to work in the mine in his place. But there wasn't enough food, so one day she stopped on her way home and stole a beet root from a field. She was arrested on the spot, and she was never allowed to go home or see her children again.

"She was a mother, and she used to think of her children. She had images of her children starving to death. But the guards accused her of being reactionary, of not having faith in the Party to care for her children. So she was shot. They gathered us all together to watch, and they shot her."

This is the professional standard at the Los Angeles Times now. This is the context that the L.A. Times reporter leaves out. More from Kristof.

Mrs. Li, a former store manager, says she was falsely accused of embezzlement as punishment for refusing to make payoffs to a policeman. She says she was beaten, stripped, sexually abused and tortured for months. Sometimes, she recounts, she was tied to a bed, forced to drink huge amounts of water from the long spout of a kettle that was forced into her mouth.

The only way to avoid drowning was to drink, but then when her belly was round and full, the guards would put a board on her abdomen and stamp on it until she vomited. Despite that and other tortures, Mrs. Kim says she did not confess. She broke down, sh e says, only when the authorities threatened to punish her husband and son. She confessed to the embezzlement, unaware that her family had already been banished to work in a labor camp in the countryside.

No, rather than lift a finger to expose the true nature of the North Korean monstrosity, the Los Angeles Times quotes a silver-tongued agent disguised as a businessman, without challenge or comment:

He believes that Americans have the wrongheaded notion that North Koreas are unhappy with the system of government under Kim Jong Il. "We Asians are traditional people," he said. "We prefer to have a benevolent father leader."

Can the standards be this low at the LA Times? Are things possibly this bad?

Kristof:

In the prison camp, she says, she was put to work up to 16 hours a day, every day, making shoes, police uniforms, hats and goods for export. Those who did not work hard enough were locked in a coffin-sized punishment cell, pitch dark, on a starvation diet . Other prisoners were punished with death. Mrs. Li told the story of Suh Young Soon, 21, who was sewing nylon dresses when she accidentally tore some fabric. Miss Suh was so frightened that she hid the torn dress under her chair.

A guard discovered it, and Miss Suh was lashed to an iron pole that stood in the prison courtyard. All of the prisoners were summoned and forced to watch as Miss Suh was gagged but not blindfolded. Then six guards fired three volleys at Miss Suh's chest, killing her instantly.

And the LA Times:

He also said that U.S. criticism of North Korea's record on human rights was unfair and hypocritical. In its annual human rights report on Monday, the State Department characterized North Korea's behavior as "extremely poor." It said 150,000 to 200,000 people were being held in detention camps for political reasons and that there continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings.

"Is there any country where there is a 100% guarantee of human rights? Certainly not the United States," the businessman said.

Is there any newspaper left with any self respect? Any sense of duty to the truth? Certainly not the L.A. Times, whose editor once had the gall to accuse Fox News of "pseudojournalism."

This piece couldn't even rise to that level. This piece is an affront to the reader, and a journalistic crime that should soil the institution for 20 years. Or as long as Carroll, this reporter, and anyone else who ever touched the piece and had a chance to stop it or block it and didn't works or draws a pension from the company along with other honorable people.

This could have come out of the bowels of Hitler's propaganda ministry in 1938.

While Westerners tend to stress the rights of the individual, he said, "we have chosen collective human rights as a nation….

Let's talk about rights in North Korea. Better yet, let's hear it from an eyewitness to the collective human rights in the nation of North Korea:

Kang says his grandfather was a prominent official who in 1977 was abruptly accused of espionage, apparently because he did something that offended Kim Il Sung. The grandfather was sent to one prison, while th e rest of the extended family-including Kang, then 9, and his younger sister-were hustled off to a huge labor camp in the center of the country.

Adults were forced to work from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week, farming or logging or gathering herbs, Kang said, while children were obliged to work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. Inmates were constantly starving, and the cornmeal diet led to s evere malnutrition, Kang said. "Grandma used to divide up the food for each meal, and we kids always complained," Kang said with a bittersweet smile. "We were small, and we always felt that everybody else in the family was getting more food than we were."

Prisoners periodically tried to escape, he said, but if they were caught, the only question was how they would be executed. "Those who were caught easily were shot to death in front of the other inmates," Kang said. "But those whose escapes had been trou blesome to the guards, or who had beaten guards during their escape, they were hanged slowly from a gallows so that it took them a long time to die. And while they were dying, the guards made us inmates line up and throw stones at them."

Ah, but we digress. Let's get back to our scene, with our reporter just getting down to business.

We should have food, shelter, security rather than chaos and vandalism. The question of our survival as a nation is dangling."

Also dangling by a thread is the reporter's dignity. Will she salvage it? Will she get in even the merest hint of an ironic twist at the end? Will the LA Times even wink at the idea of bearing witness to the truth?

No. Here's the last line:

The most important point the North Korean said he wanted to convey in the conversation was that his nation was a place just like any other.

"There is love. There is hate. There is fighting. There is charity…. People marry. They divorce. They make children," he said.

"People are just trying to live a normal life."

Whore, you better wipe your face before you go back to work.


Splash, out

Jason

UPDATE: Come to think of it, this piece reads a lot like the reporter, or someone else at the Times, has been blackmailed. I wonder what they've got?

UPDATE: American Digest has some suggestions.