HISTORY SUCKS . . .

I'm watching a documentary about North Korea on The History Channel. (I'm a nerd. I love The History Channel.) I never knew ...

... Kim Il-Sung was the son of devout Christians. Ironic, really, for a man who claimed to be God himself ...
... Kim Jong-Il ordered the bombing of a South Korean airliner because he was pissed that South Korea was awarded the 1988 Summer Olympic Games, and the International Olympic Committee would not consent to hold some competitions in the North ...
... little nursery school children are taught, to this day, to sing songs with lyrics such as "If you feel enough hatred, you can shoot the Yankees in the chest" and "Shoot them between the eyes, between the eyes, shoot the Yankees between the eyes" ...
... 2,000,000 Koreans died in the three years of the Korean War. Yes, I said TWO MILLION KOREANS ...
... at the start of North Korea's economic crash and ensuing famine, the government told its own people, via newspaper and television commercials, to eat grass, that grass was good for them, that they could make rice cakes out of grass, all while eating the internationally donated food themselves ...
... the government turned its people into such scavengers that neighbors turned on each other for every great and small infractions, and when someone died of starvation -- sigh -- the dead were occasionally eaten ...
... it is a crime in North Korea to mention God ... one defector calls South Korea and the United States "God's paradises, where His name may be spoken freely" ...

And this I knew: the Korean War is not yet over. An armistice does not a peace treaty make.

It's totally fascinating to watch North Korean defectors interviewed, telling the stories of their lives in the North, reporting the cult of personality created and sustained by the "holy" Kims, drawing pictures of their days in jail, presenting their identification cards required to travel even to the next town or village, conveying the absolute hypocrisy and madness and brutality of the reigning regime. One former prison guard says it never occurred to him that beating his wards to death was wrong; he didn't think twice about it because he was instructed that prisoners are not humans. One woman tells how she was jailed and raped for humming a South Korean song heard in a North Korean movie. One man tells how Kim Jong-Il has a Hair Styling Consultant whose sole job is to make sure that Kim looks his best (I personally think the Consultant needs to be fired). Each defector uses the same words: "scared," "brutal," "pain," "hungry," "inhuman," "harsh."

And I think about my father ... and pray "but for the grace of God ..."

***

. . . BUT SO DOES SENSELESS WEEPING . . .

Yes, it's true.

I'm also watching "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" again. Soldier secretly returns from Iraq to help the crew remodel his house, and surprise his wife and kids. Sniffle, sniffle.

I love this stuff.

***

BACK TO THE REAL WORLD . . .

If I could say that I hate anyone in this world -- I mean, REALLY hate -- I would have to say that the leadership of North Korean qualifies. The things they do to their own people, the things they do to keep themselves fat and happy and nuclear-armed, the things they tell people and reveal only when they want to reveal, the things they perpetrate upon the innocent and blind, the things they force women and small children and the elderly to suffer, the things they do to upset the precarious balance of this communal world, the things they do to suppress economic, social, financial, religious, academic, sexual freedom ... they make my stomach turn. They make me want to tear my hair out in mourning every time I see the emaciated face of a peasant and wonder if that is my aunt or my cousin or a member of my half-family. They make me want to go over there and drop-kick some sense into them, and no, I don't think I would feel any remorse if I had to use brute force and massive weaponry in the process. None at all. They make me want to smuggle in food and gas and oil and vegetables and computers and books and Bibles, even at the risk of dying myself. They make me want to ... I don't know. I am rendered speechless.