Korea Anyone?

I just don't get it. There are some crazy motherfuckers in this world.
We at least got rid of the maggot Hussein, now we need to get Lil' Kim (Kim Il Sung) and his ilk the hell out of Korea:

There are 23 million people living in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), and all of them – men, women and children – suffer every day under the heel of the most repressive regime on Earth. Their plight has been abandoned and ignored by most of the world for nearly 50 years.

Let me see if I can come up with a short list of things I think are not quite right:

The Korean government:

• starves its people
• oppresses its people
• denies them basic civil rights
• denies them access to food
• denies them access to health care
• does not permit international inspection
• does not respond to inquiries
• does not fulfill its United Nations obligations
• concentrates on keeping the world from North Korea
• concentrates on keeping Koreans from each other
• does not tolerate opposition of any kind

Those who are assumed to be less than loyal:

• are arrested
• are imprisoned
• are starved
• are executed
• Entire families are detained or "resettled" because of the supposed political deviation of one relative
• children are punished for the political sins of their parents
• denied education
• socially ostracized

What makes them less than loyal? Here are a few things they can't get away with:

• Any unauthorized assembly or association is regarded as a "collective disturbance" that is punishable.
• There are reports of severe repression of people involved in public and private religious activities, through imprisonment, torture and executions
• Many Christians are reportedly being held in labor camps
• Travel within the country is severely restricted; attempting to leave it is likely to result in beatings, imprisonment and, in some cases, execution.

So what happens if you get busted:

Hundreds of thousands are held in a system of prison and labor camps.

The victim, along with his immediate family, is shipped off in the early hours of the morning to an interrogation facility. He is only permitted to bring the clothes on his back. The presumed offender is then tortured in order to make him "confess" before being sent to the political penal-labor colony.
On arrival at the camp, the victim is issued a pick and shovel, simple cooking utensils and a used army blanket. All contact with the outside world is blocked: he is now a non-person; no question will be asked about him by friends or relatives.
Shortly after arriving at the gulag, it becomes immediately apparent that the most salient feature of everyday life is the combination of below-subsistence-level food rations and extremely demanding labor quotas.
Prisoners are provided just enough food to be kept perpetually on the verge of starvation. They are compelled by their hunger to eat, if they can get away with it, the food of the labor-camp farm animals, as well as plants, grasses, bark, rats, snakes and anything remotely edible. In committing such desperate acts driven by acute hunger the prisoners simultaneously incur the extreme risk of being detected by an angry security guard and subjected to a brutal, on-the-spot execution.

As prisoners eat rats in the camp, rats were almost depleted and became harder to find. The surviving rats are wary. Rat tastes strange and somehow unpleasant at first. The revolting taste, however, soon disappears. The children never lost opportunities to catch rats, as they watch so many other prisoners dying of undernourishment and pellagra. Rat is the only source of meat for prisoners for 10 or 20 years."

Not surprisingly, the prisoners are quickly reduced to walking skeletons after their arrival. All gulag survivors said they were struck by the shortness, skinniness, premature aging, hunchbacks, and physical deformities of so many of the inmates they saw upon arriving at the gulag. These descriptions parallel those provided by survivors of the Holocaust in infamous camps like Auschwitz.

But wait! There's more!

• Torture and ill-treatment are widespread in prisons, detention centers and labor camps Conditions in prisons
• Inmates are made to work from early morning until late at night
  
• Minor infractions of rules can be met with severe beatings
  
• Public executions are carried out before large crowds, with advance notice given to schools, enterprises and farms
• Some prisoners have reportedly been executed in front of their families
  
• Executions are carried out by hanging or firing-squad

So you don't like it, leave:

...hundreds of thousands have escaped to seek a better life in China. At least 150,000 people, most women and children, live in wretched conditions on the Chinese side of the border.
As many as 50,000 Korean refugee women have been sold into domestic servitude and sexual slavery.

Can't leave? So then stay:

• They are subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda
• All communication media are controlled by the government and the purpose of all programming is to glorify the leadership.
• Radios receive only government broadcasts; loudspeakers in gathering places blare government programs.
• Indoctrination is supported by neighborhood associations and schools at all levels
• The opinions of all North Koreans are constantly gathered and reviewed
• Telephone calls and mail are monitored
• Apart from a few state-sponsored Buddhist and Christian services, all religious activity is discouraged
• There is no artistic freedom; all art and entertainment serves to extol the leadership.

13 million people in North Korea – over half of the population – suffered from malnutrition.
Aid agencies have estimated that up to 2 million people have died since the mid-1990s as a result of acute food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement.
Several million children suffer from chronic malnutrition, impairing their physical and mental development.

I just find it hard to fathom that in the modern day world, where some countries are so advanced, that some country's leaders can be such morons.

Sources: Here. Here.