My HD7 bricked itself miraculously. So I've sent it in for a new replacement... hurray. Took only 12 days to happen, too.
I've been reading this for like a month now, but I'm around half way through, and it's a great book... that's over 800 pages long (or 24,000 sections in Kindle terms).
http://i771.photobucket.com/albums/xx358/zerstorer23/0312323220.jpg)
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader (
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Loving-Fatherly-Leader-ebook/dp/B003JMF8P8/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2)
Here are a few choice quotes!
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Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (Bradley K. Martin)
- Highlight Loc. 7399-7404 | Added on Thursday, December 02, 2010, 12:07 AM
After the move, his father worked as a bricklayer and “was questioned repeatedly by Public Security,” Kang Chul-ho told me. The hot-blooded father was so annoyed by the constant questions that he set fire to the local State Security building. For that he was executed, in 1976. “It was a public execution by shooting. I was there with my family when my father was executed. I witnessed it, at the public execution site near the riverside, close to Hamhung.”
Could it get any worse for a little boy? Oh, yes. “My mother committed suicide when my father was executed. Grandmother lived far away, and was too old to help. Local people discriminated against my family, shunned us because of what had happened,” he continued.
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Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (Bradley K. Martin)
- Highlight Loc. 8065-95 | Added on Thursday, December 02, 2010, 09:27 AM
Shin was kept at first in a guest house, also in Pyongyang but separate from Choi’s, with a guide and a secretary. After a couple of months, however, as punishment for his two nocturnal escape attempts, he was jailed. In his cell he was required to sit cross-legged, in the lotus position, his back straight, for hours at a time, Zen-style. He was not allowed to move. No reading, no radio, nothing else was permitted. He had to look into the eyes of his instructor, not shifting his gaze.
A guard remained with him all day long. Meals were corn or rice, with salty soup. “I awoke around five each day, then as soon as I got up I had to raise my arms straight up until the 7 A.M. breakfast, as punishment,” Shin recalled. “After breakfast I could wash my face with the remains of my drinking water. Then I had to sit in the lotus position for three hours. After that punishment, I had three minutes to relax. Following lunch, it was the lotus position again from 12:30 to 6:30.
Electrical brownouts occurred on average three times a day. Someone would bring a candle to each cell then, because the guards needed to see that we were in the lotus position. Once a week I had to strip and face the wall for a ‘physical exam.’ It was not a real physical, and I hated to show them my nudity.” In jail, after a couple of years of that routine, Shin felt his sanity starting to unravel.
On Christmas morning in 1980, he was struck by an urge to send a greeting to his family back in South Korea. It was a white Christmas. Sent out with a shovel to clear the grounds, Shin used his urine to write “Merry Xmas” on the snow. “Anyone who saw me would have thought I was out of my mind, but I had to do it,” he wrote. Eventually Shin requested a consultation with someone in authority. The request was refused. He was told he must write a letter of apology to Kim Jong-il for his escape attempts and his other disobedience. “I decided to write a letter of apology. It took three days to get it right. I wrote: ‘I will obey your rules. I want to become a DPRK citizen and follow and praise Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Please free me.’”
After he wrote his apology letter, Shin found that his status changed. Under the tutelage of a State Security agent, he began studying the lives and thoughts of the Kims. Wake-up time was still 5 A.M. And he had to obey rules that were posted on his wall: “Obedience is essential. Do not try to learn of the private lives of other prisoners. Don’t listen to other prisoners’ conversations. Don’t converse with other prisoners. Accuse any prisoner who is at fault. Patients, obey the doctor. Don’t waste the blanket, which is the property of the nation.” Each prisoner had only one blanket, one set of clothing, one pair of socks.
Before Kim Il-sung’s birthday the prisoners had to clean the premises furiously. Some called that “the torture of April.” Shin found the rules ridiculous, especially one that limited each prisoner’s shower to five minutes. He obeyed for a while but eventually got so fed up with prison that he resumed attempting to escape and even tried to fast to death. At first, his guards simply told him to go ahead and die of starvation if he wished. But then some “guidance” officials came to his cell and force-fed him with a funnel, pushing the food down his throat. After that horrible experience a guard told him, “I’ve never seen that before. They never cared about a fasting prisoner. You’re the first.” The guard said his treatment indicated Shin must be very important for North Korea.
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Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (Bradley K. Martin)
- Highlight Loc. 7052-60 | Added on Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 12:28 AM
Without giving names or the date, Hwang offered a horrifying example of the intersection between secretiveness and killing: “One of Kim Jong-il’s secretaries got drunk once and told his wife about Kim Jong-il’s life of debauchery. The good wife, a woman of high cultural and moral standards, was genuinely shocked, and thought, ‘How can a leader who leads such an immoral life safeguard the happiness of his people?’ After much thought, she decided to write a letter to Kim Il-sung asking him to reprimand his son. Needless to say, the letter went to Kim Jong-il, who threw a drinking party and had the woman arrested and brought before him. In front of all the guests at the party, he pronounced the woman a counterrevolutionary and had her shot on the spot. Kim Jong-il’s intention was to issue a warning to those present that leaking whatever went on at drinking parties would be punishable by death. The poor woman’s husband actually begged Kim Jong-il to let him do the shooting. Kim Jong-il granted the secretary his wish, and gave him the weapon to shoot his wife.”