"Kim Jong Un, you son of a b----. The people are starving to death because of you"
"To have a message such as this appear on a wall in Pyongyang will have been a shock to the authorities and to ordinary people."
Toshimitsu Shigemura, professor, Waseda University, Tokyo
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| North Korean Leader, Kim Jong Un, Reuters |
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that North Korea is short 860,000 tonnes of food for the year, equivalent to approximately 2.3 months of basic foodstuffs. North Koreans report shortages of cooking oil as well. Prices for the limited supply available have risen fourfold, according to Radio Free Asia.
By law, any criticism of the ruling Kim family or of the political party that represents their dictatorship is strictly forbidden. People can be held on charges of sedition or crimes against the state if they are suspected of finding fault with the regime. The punishment is a lengthy period in one of the country's notorious prison camps for political prisoners. Should a case prove to be considered 'extreme', fitting punishment can be a death sentence.
All this results in any manner of graffiti that expresses an anti-Kim sentiment being exceedingly rare. And on the most rare of occasions instances of slogans appearing that attack the North Korean leadership may appear in remote areas of the country. In the capital Pyongyang, however, any such defiant messages are hugely unusual. Only the nation's elite are given permission to live there.
Yet the message "Kim Jong Un, you son of a b----. The people are starving to death because of you", was found written on the wall of an apartment building in the wealthy (by North Korean standards) Pyongchon district, according to the South Korean Daily NK news site. This occurred on December 22, when the ruling Workers' Party of Korea was in session.
Local leaders responded with alacrity, cordoning off the area, and the message was soon erased. But the damage was done, since there were people who had seen it and reported it to Daily NK. The Seoul-based media outlet is operated by dissidents who depend on their compatriots in North Korea to smuggle news to them; a network of undercover 'citizen reporters' located in North Korea and China.
An insider source revealed that North Korean officials are going door to door demanding handwriting samples from thousands of residents of Pyongyang in an effort to find the person responsible for the insulting graffiti targeting supreme leader Kim Jong Un. People in apartment blocks and businesses were forced to give interlocutors samples of their handwriting.
Locals were questioned on their movements on the day in question. The thousands of cameras installed throughout the city since 2011 when Kim Jong Un came to power are being inspected. The border closures linked to the pandemic and severe flooding in recent years have resulted in the impoverished country facing a serious food crisis. But this has not stopped Kim from funding ballistic rocket development and nuclear devices.
In March of 2018, a colonel in the North Korean military was found guilty of writing slogans on the April 24 House of Culture in central Pyongyang, and was publicly executed. It has been pointed out that even the wealthiest North Koreans living in the capital are increasingly experiencing food shortages.
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| Kim has acknowledged a 'tense' food situation that could worsen if all of the crops fail, exacerbating economic problems amid strict self-imposed border and movement restrictions that have slowed trade to a trickle. Pictured: File image of men plowing a field in North Korea in July 2017 |
Labels: Crimes Against the State, Criticism, Dictatorship, Food Insecurity, Food Scarcity, Kim Jong Un, North Korea
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, January 06, 2022
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