If you read any international news piece this week, make it this one:
The piece opens with this sentence:
"Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury."
I had to look up penury.
pen·u·ry (pĕn'yə-rē)
n.
- Extreme want or poverty; destitution.
- Extreme dearth; barrenness or insufficiency.
[Middle English penurie, from Latin pēnūria
, want.]
Sit down with a box of tissues and a globe and read about what's going on in this little nation that's about the size of Ohio. Read about the people who live just a fraction of an inch from us (the Johnson's in China) on a map, but light years away in every other respect.
It's a sobering piece. With difficult questions. (And not many answers.)
Go ahead. Read about their penury on that part of the peninsula.
Cut and paste it into your browser and see that our biggest concern can't simply be their tyrannical leader... but the destitution and looming starvation that is happening just across the Yellow Sea.
2 comments:
My DH just finished the book "Nothing to Envy" by Barbara Demick, about life in North Korea. All he had to say upon finishing it was, "how can they get away with this, in this day and age..." I'm a little apprehensive to start reading it. I probably don't need gloom and doom in my life right now, but I'm compelled. I'm living large in Beijing, worried about a visa situation when there is real tragedy happening just a few hours away. Harrowing article. Thanks for sharing the link.
Sobering is right. I sit here at home in Mid-west USA mildly concerned about a virtually bankrupt state government, wondering how long my pension will be paid, and find that I am rich beyond measure in contrast to the lives described in the NY today.
Thanks for alerting me to another perspective.
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