Ripples #76

Compiled and written by Lenny Giteck

North Korean Dictator Kim Jung Un
Visits Waterpark Construction Site

In case anyone needs further evidence of the bizarre, Alice-in-Wonderland (or perhaps Alice-in-Hades) quality of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Sky News Web site reports that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un recently visited the construction site of a lavish waterpark and swimming complex in Pyongyang, the impoverished nation’s capital. The facility is being built by North Korea’s People’s Army.

During his tour of the complex, “Outstanding Leader” Kim provided brilliant guidance to spur the success of the project. According to the Sky News article, the official North Korean state news agency reported the following:

Going round different kinds of slides and wave-rising pools and various other wading pools and different sports rooms in the indoor swimming pool, he praised the builders for ensuring quality in the project as required by the construction methods. At a restaurant on the balcony on the first floor, he told officials to distribute tables and chairs to be in harmony with the restaurant. At the kitchen, he instructed officials to provide good cooking utensils.

Regarding the waterpark and other showpiece projects by the regime, the independent Web site NKNews.com quoted Andrei Lankov, an Associate Professor of Social Sciences at South Korea’s Kookmin University:

“[Kim] wants to provide his people with entertainment, while his people needs [sic] food, above all,” Lankov said, adding that Kim fails to “understand that he is not in Switzerland any more, that the average ajuma [a Korean term meaning a middle-aged, working-class woman] might like gadgets and dolphins, but has a lot of far, far more pressing needs.” Kim must realize, Lankov says, that he is “a young dictator, in charge of a desperate, cornered, dull and very brutal place, where mistakes can easily get people killed (including the dictator himself).”

Brutal place, indeed. A recent U.N. inquiry into human rights abuses in the DPRK uncovered the most horrific conditions — including starvation and torture — among the estimated 200,000 North Koreans languishing in a far-flung system of state prison camps. (In one alleged case, a mother was forced to drown her own baby in a bucket.) Michael Kirby, the head of the inquiry, said the North Korean regime is engaging in “unspeakable atrocities.”

To learn more about the waterpark project, click here.

To learn more about the U.N. inquiry and its findings, click here.

The following item ran in Ripples about a month before Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was dragged out of the drainage pipe where he was hiding and summarily executed.

Ripples Classic: September 14, 2011

Stomping on Gaddafi’s Face Before
Having a Blast in His Daughter’s Pool

As of this writing, the whereabouts of Libyan strongman and mental case Muammar Gaddafi are still unknown — but that didn’t stop some rebels from invading his daughter Aisha’s plush home in Tripoli, treading on the dictator’s face (symbolically, on a poster on the floor) and jumping into the indoor swimming pool.

According to an article on the Web site itn.co.uk, “Many of the rebels expressed anger at the opulence of Aisha’s property, and a man who identified himself as Mohammed said it was ‘only right’ that the house now belonged to the Libyan people: ‘This is the property of the Libyan people. They have been living in poverty for the last 42 years and he [Gaddafi] has been living in luxury.’”

It is a sentiment that “Outstanding Leader” Kim (and “Dear Friend” Dennis Rodman) would do well to consider.

And with that, Ripples once again says…
Until next time, happy watershaping to you!