The Ultimate Cult

New Zealand is a truly great country for many reasons. One of those is simply freedom and it has this in common with a lot of other nicely developed countries. In this modern age it is hard to imagine living in a regime where freedom of speech, or freedom to just go about your business without being contantly monitored (in the style of 1984), is not permitted but it does exist. I am not talking about Mugabe or other such African dictators; they've got nothing on this guy.

I'll give you a clue. Juche (pronounced "Joo-cheh"). If you want control, then this is the country for you. This is a government that indoctrinates the entire country and whilst it is almost impossible to really know what goes on behind the borders, the spoutings of the Korea News Service (KCNA) give you a good idea that all is not quite right.

How about this for a crystal clear stance on defectors:

If there be any, they are just a handful of hooligans and criminals who are not in a position to look up at the clear blue sky over the country with an easy mind for the crimes committed against it and its people. It is hard to expect to hear anything from such human scum and we, therefore, do not care at all about whatever nonsense they talk.

But it gets better. My personal favorite is the story demanding that South Korea immediately demolish the 240km, 10m high wall that separates the two countries down the entire width of the Korean peninsula. There are some obvious issues with this. Taking down the wall would take time and cost a lot of cash and would, in theory, leave South Korea open to invasion. However, the biggest stumbling block to removing the wall is that it simply does not exist and never has!

Read this and other great propaganda from the master cults at a new site, NK News, which has painstakingly catalogued the entire KCNA database and, rather handily, put a nifty search tool in there. The wall story can be found under the "Hall of Fame" and it is a laugh a minute. If you think Helen Clarke can spin, you ain't read nothing yet.

Sadly, people live their lives without knowing true freedom and in absolute poverty and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it, especially with that damn wall in the way...