Catastrophe in North Korea

No one knows for sure what is happening, but the BBC says as many as 3,000 people have been killed or injured in a horrifying train accident. And in a spectacularly cruel irony, the accident took place at a train station just hours after Kim Jong Il had passed through.

That has people speculating it was an assassination attempt, but it was most likely a horrible accident. Heaven knows we've suffered enough train collisions in the West, and the situation is almost certainly worse in a blighted Stalinist hellhole like the DPRK.

Away from the accident site, you have to wonder whether any North Korean even knows what happened. There's no mention of it on the official news agency's website, and I doubt the state television and radio stations broke into their regular programming (shows about Kim Jong Il being born under magic rainbows and stuff) to cover this disaster.

And if the government does admit this to its own people, that's no cause for relief either. This is a state which uses Anne Frank's diary to promote war with the evil Amerikkkan imperialists - so God knows what the state propaganda machine could do with something like this.

Is there no end to what these poor people have to go through?

Update: the Red Cross puts the death toll at 54, with 1,249 injured.

Posted by damian at April 22, 2004 05:19 PM