In particular, I found the following interesting:

“…Pyongyang’s famously attractive traffic policewomen who, clad in fetching uniforms, control the sparse traffic with strangely provocative robotic gestures.”

“strangely provocative” - THAT’S IT! If you’ve spent some time in Pyongyang (in my case, not much), perhaps you can relate to that characterization. I certainly can.

Though I can’t speak for what animated Hitchens’ characterization, in my case, what was “strange” about the attraction was the cognitive dissonance of feeling pity for the woman, standing at attention at the same largely deserted intersection every day, and at the same time thinking, “ya know, she’s kinda hot. And that flawlessly executed traffic-directing manuever is, well, kinda hot.”

Well, in that situation, one day I finally did what any other sane male would do. I yelled “stop”, got out of the car, and ran over and started dry humping her leg like a dog.

You might expect that my North Korean minder (not to mention the unfortunate object of my affections) would have taken grave offense. Actually, over a few shots of soju later, my friend admitted he’d been wanting to do the same thing for years.

http://www.ghosttreemedia.com/

Seems like we came to pretty much the same conclusions…

Oh wait, now that I’m getting all pedantic about it, I remember that Koreans already think this too. The story of the Korean people is full of shared misery. Isn’t that what Han really means?

They’re just jealous of their northern brothers for hording all the misery and not sharing.

Peter Hitchens writing has nothing to do with what his brother Christopher writes or believes…..politically they are poles apart. So what’s your point?

Once the North falls, most of the teeth gnashing will be coming from the south as they try to explain their reasons for propping up the north for so long while ignoring the misery of millions of their brethren. Ignoring the problem today only makes tomorrow’s problem worse.

Hah! Nice.