News from the Paranoid Kingdom

This is actually one of Kim Jong Il's *official* portraits. 'Nuff said?

Kim Jong Il, via a spokesperson, has issued the following cry for help statement:

North Korea launched a scathing personal attack on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday after she likened the leadership in Pyongyang to “small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention.”

Hillary Clinton says N. Korea’s refusal to discuss nuclear program could provoke arms race.

At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a “spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in,” according to the state-run KCNA news agency.

The spokesman called Clinton “by no means intelligent” and a “funny lady.”

“Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping,” the statement said.

The verbal tussle between the two countries culminated with the reclusive communist state making it clear that six-party nuclear talks, stalled for over a year, were effectively finished.

Clinton had earlier warned that North Korea’s refusal to discuss its nuclear program could escalate tensions and provoke an arms race in northeast Asia.

“I was gratified by how many countries from throughout the region spoke up and expressed directly to the North Korea delegation their concerns over the provocative behavior we have seen over the last few months,” Clinton said at a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand.

“Unfortunately, the North Korean delegation offered only an insistent refusal to recognize that North Korea has been on the wrong course,” she said. “They expressed no willingness to pursue the path of denuclearization. In their presentation today, they evinced no willingness to pursue the path of denuclearization, and that was troubling not only to the United States, but to the region and the international community.”

Her remarks came after the North Koreans issued their blunt statement in response to Clinton’s interview earlier in the week with ABC News.

Before Clinton’s remarks in Phuket on Thursday, the North Korean delegation attempted to take the podium to speak to the media. But it was turned away by security guards. [emphasis added]

That’s just so pathetic I can’t even summon the energy to be angry or annoyed about the insults to Clinton and the US. After all, N. Korea’s reclusive leader had a full day to respond to Secretary Clinton’s remarks the previous day and this is the best he could come up with? And keep in mind that last bit in the excerpt above, the ASEAN conference wouldn’t even allow the N. Korean delegation to get to the podium to speak to the media- not exactly how a great, well-respected country is treated is it? The problem is, it seems to have never occurred to North Korea that such treatment is directly related to its refusal to adhere to any long-accepted rules of international discourse, behavior and cooperation.

On a very serious note, see this human right website for a sobering [and tragic] accounting of how millions of North Koreans have starved to death while the very few elites there have squandered all the nation’s resources for themselves and their military build-up. In addition, N. Korea is believed to hold at least upwards of 200,00 people in concentration/slave camps.