Okay, Barbara Demick Rights ThingsBack in March, Barbara Demick of the LA Times wrote a rather ridiculous article on North Korea which I
blogged about here, and Hugh Hewitt ragged on her for on the radio. The article seemed to be glossing over the problems in the Hermit Country.
Well, nobody will accuse Ms Demick of whitewashing
with her breathtaking piece in today's LA Times.
His day begins at 4:30 a.m. The 64-year-old retired math teacher doesn't own a clock or even a watch, but the internal alarm that has kept him alive while so many of his fellow North Koreans have starved to death tells him he had better get out to pick grass if his family is to survive.
Soon the streets of his city, Chongjin, will be swarming with others doing the same. Some cook the grass to eat. The teacher feeds it to the rabbits his family sells at the market.And:
In a working-class neighborhood in southern Chongjin, the 39-year-old coal miner lives in a squat, drab house. The homes in Ranam are organized in blocks, usually with five units on either side of an alley and an outhouse at one end shared by the 10 families.
His only piece of furniture is a wooden table with folding legs. He has one cooking pot. One knife. A couple of bowls. A cutting board that he made himself. A large urn to store water he brings from the well.
He has four pairs of chopsticks and four spoons — exactly enough for himself, his wife, 12-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. He traded away his extra utensils for food years ago.Terrific and horrifying read. I slammed Demick for her earlier article, but she was courageous enough to go on Hugh's show and say that she wrote certain things the way she had in order to get to write other things. This is a stunning piece, one that has Pulitzer written all over it.
