Hugh Hewitt has a post about an article in the LAT today about North Korea (“North Korea, Without the Rancor“). One of their reporters met with some North Korean “businessmen” in Beijing. As one who has traveled to communist countries on several occasions — China and Cuba in the late seventies; the Soviet Union twice in the late eighties — I found it easy to recognize the rhetoric of the totalitarian intelligence agent. (I spent a lot of time with them as my guides and translators.) I wondered why the Times’ reporter didn’t make this clearer. Is it possible that she did not understand she was being propagandized by regime operatives claiming to speak for “North Koreans”? Perhaps she believes she was merely “reporting” what she heard. If so, one has to ask why she leaves her readers with this quote:
The most important point the North Korean said he wanted to convey in the conversation was that his nation was a place just like any other.
“There is love. There is hate. There is fighting. There is charity…. People marry. They divorce. They make children,” he said.
“People are just trying to live a normal life.”
Well, I guess they got what they wanted from the Times. Hugh is devoting his show today to informing people on the real North Korea, news of which rarely seems to appear, like this article, on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. I must confess, however, that I don’t keep up with my hometown paper as much as I used to. There are so many informative sources on the Internet.
UPDATE: Just noticed the magic ellipses – “There is charity…. People marry.” Breath pause? Something missing? I suppose we’ll never know.
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