I have been disturbed ever since I finished reading B.R. Myers' The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters.
* I'm disturbed because I have never, ever, been given as reliable and accurate a picture of who the North Koreans are. There is no question that Myers is right on point with his well documented and illustrated book. North Korea is not a communist puppet state, it is a racist fantasy land.
The North Koreans believe they are superior beings because they are clean and child like. Their leader (one of three Kims), whom they love as a parent, protects them from the outside world that wants to destroy them, particularly from ugly long-skinny nosed rapist-torturing-Americans who are run by Jews. They believe that their fellow Koreans in the South want to be governed by the North but are being manipulated and restrained by the Americans who are also destroying their Korean racial purity.
There is a whole history that goes with this, all of which is preposterous. Exposure to outside radio and DVDs has not changed a thing in the past decade. The North Koreans are proud that they lied to Jimmy Carter and the world about creating a nuclear arsenal and proud of forcing Bill Clinton to bow down to the North's power.
* I'm disturbed because I have been forced to remember that every nation and every peoples has lived similar propaganda lies. The French believe that General De Gaulle liberated France from Germany in WWII, when he in fact caused the death of many allies by his intransigence and he was a serious burden on the allies who liberated France with no help from fatuous, incompetent De Gaulle.
All of Europe lives with lies about Jews and believes a putrid stream of outrageous lies from their news media about Israel.
America has lived 150 years with big lies about the Civil War and carpet baggers; the South still believes the war was not about slavery. Americans believe in the Kennedy Camelot myth when the truth is JFK was the most divisive President until Barack Obama came smoking and apologizing along.
National lies and false histories are widespread, I simply never knew the story of North Korea. I'm sure the U.S State Department pays no attention to what is really going on there and has its own fantasies about the world.