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.
