By Shyamon Jayasinghe –
Shyamon Jayasinghe
On December 13th in the year that has just passed North Korean Leader ( Dictator) self-styled as “Dear Leader,” Kim-Jong-Un, had his uncle Jong Song Thaek executed in public for “treachery.” The uncle’s aides were also executed along with him. An extract of a news story published in the Straits Times is given below. This gives a brief snapshot about the execution. I thought of presenting this story along with a few comments for the benefit of Colombo Telegraph readers as this incident throws light on the character and operational path of all dictators. Kim-Jong-Un’s uncle had helped to establish this young brute as successor when his father died. However, they soon fell out and the fall-out climaxed with the public execution.
”AFTER North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un declared his uncle to be “despicable human scum, he got the latter executed in public.
The details were disclosed in a report, where unlike previous executions of political prisoners which were carried out by firing squads with machine guns, Jang Song Thaek was stripped naked and thrown into a cage, along with his five closest aides, the Straits Times reports.
“Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called “quan jue”, or execution by dogs.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (left) with Jang Song Thaek, who was the vice-chairman of the National Defence Commission, at a cemetery for Korean War veterans in Pyongyang in July. Photo courtesy AP
The report also said the entire process lasted for an hour, with Jong-Un, watching it along with 300 senior officials.”
It is instructive for us to note the following lessons from this harrowing event and the narrative leading to it:
(1) How dictators get swallowed up by a consuming passion to bring anything and everything under control. Kim has achieved this in great speed. All obstructions on the path are mercilessly destroyed. He saw his uncle and aides as a check on his ambition. The nature of this execution shows the vindictiveness and hate that dictators develop against their “enemies.”
(2) The judge who tried the uncle was obviously Kim’s appointee and he gave the verdict that the Dictator wanted. This points to the danger of having a dependent judiciary. A judiciary in any country is supposed to be the last resort for those seeking relief and protection from the abuse of executives.
(3) Kim has been lying and making bogus threats all along. Dictators tend to cut corners, truth being one of the easiest to trim.
(4) Dictators tend to present to the public and the world a show of prosperity, pomp and glory. We all know that North Koreans are mostly struggling in the margins to survive. Yet Kim and his father before him concentrated on diverting resources to building a nuclear base. One of the poorest nations of the world has thus become a nuclear power.
JULAMPITIYE AMARAYA / January 4, 2014
What is this?.
“Jang Song Thaek was stripped naked and thrown into a cage, along with his five closest aides, the Straits Times reports.
“Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called “quan jue”, or execution by dogs.”
The report also said the entire process lasted for an hour, with Jong-Un, watching it along with 300 senior officials.”
This is nothing, in Sri lanka.
If they know what is happening, doing to [Governance selected] traitors in Sri lanka, Koreans will be ashamed.
We have Broken mouth bottle treatment, specially for women
we have Barbed wire inserted PVC pipe treatment,
We have Half bath Acid treatment,
we have Heli trip 100000ft above ocean, or Rock top treatmant.
we have Dolosmahe tire Pahana [365 days burning well] well treatment.
Some time David Blocker or Hothambaya will help me to elaborate.
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Sirimal / January 4, 2014
No, DB is now in hideout mode. Long time no see.
So is leela or Banda. Only Jim stupidity – Sumane are still in action.
This korean brutality is a very serious issue to whole world. Entire world should go against the man. I really hate if the story is a true one to see how some power greedy idiots have reached to the level of all appalling.
Even Hitlor was not this much cruel. How come any human being go against close relatives in this way- inhuman by all means :(
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Andre / January 4, 2014
If this is a real story behind the latest Nk execution.
We have to be very careful travelling to lanka next time. I am very scared hearing the news. Besides, who knows why Gota collected those stray dogs lately telling something totally palatable over the press(not sure he may have killed them all- though rumours are there), I would not want to watch anyone´s live-cadava being torn by fiece dogs. This is indeed a very serious above all brutalities. I am doubtless that Rajapskes would enjoy it in the same manner as the brutal man from North korea may most likely have been.
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Rattaran / January 5, 2014
Now read this friends.
If you’ve been on the internet in the last 24 hours, you’ve might have seen the story claiming that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had his uncle executed last month by stripping him naked and feeding him to 120 hungry dogs. The story was first reported by a minor Hong Kong outlet on December 12, was picked up by a Singaporean newspaper on December 24 and since late Thursday has been sweeping through nearly every corner of the media.
The only problem is that it’s not true.
It was indeed a big surprise last month when South Korean intelligence revealed that Kim had purged his own uncle, Jang Song-thaek, which North Korea confirmed a couple of days later with a long screed in its state media.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his uncle Jang Song Thaek in 2012.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his uncle Jang Song-thaek in 2012. Photo: Reuters
The highly public nature of the purge, which ended with Pyongyang announcing Jang’s execution, was totally unprecedented and legitimately shocking, which is a high bar for North Korea news.
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Crazy-sounding stories happen with some frequency in North Korea, where the government has a well-earned reputation for taking political punishments to medieval extremes.
But there are five big reasons that this story just does not seem particularly plausible. The fact that the Western media have so widely accepted a story they would reject if it came out of any other country tells us a lot about how North Korea is covered – and how it’s misunderstood.
First and foremost, let’s consider the source. The story originated in a Hong Kong newspaper called Wen Wei Po, which oddly makes the claim without citing a source. With a couple of high-quality exceptions, Hong Kong media have a reputation for sensationalist and tabloidy stories that do not always turn out to be true. But, even by Hong Kong standards, Wen Wei Po is considered an unusually unreliable outlet. A recent study found that, out of Hong Kong’s 21 newspapers, Wen Wei Po ranks 19th for credibility.
Second, consider the fact that the rest of the Chinese media have not touched this story in the almost-month since it came out. Some observers are treating the story as credible because Wen Wei Po is aligned with the Chinese government in Beijing; if anyone would know what really happened in Pyongyang, it would probably be the Chinese government, right? But Wen Wei Po is not anywhere near as close to China’s power centres as official outlets such as Xinhua and the People’s Daily.
The entire remainder of the Chinese media have been sticking to the same story that everyone else has: that Jang was killed by either machine gun or anti-aircraft guns (the two could plausibly be conflated). China has not been shy about expressing its displeasure with North Korea lately, but the fact that little Wen Wei Po is all alone on this story should tell us something.
Third, South Korea’s media have also not touched the story. “This story has hardly been picked up on by Korean media which is one reason to be suspicious,” Chad O’Carroll, who edits the news site NKNews.org, told me via email. “The other reason to be suspicious is because the rumour surfaced ages ago – but no one paid attention to it,” he said.
South Korean media are quite plugged in to North Korean defector communities, to sources still in the country and most especially to South Korea’s intelligence agency. Some of those outlets can be eager to pick up stories or rumors that portray North Korea in a negative light. And, as O’Carroll pointed out, they’re not shy about running single-source stories. But South Korea’s many news outlets, big and small, seem to be treating this story as so implausible it’s not even worth mentioning. And they would know.
Fourth, the time lapse: this story has been around for almost a month, and it’s not been anywhere near confirmed. That alone is not surprising, but the fact that Asia’s many media circles have not even deigned to acknowledge the report is pretty telling. You might say that Asian media are treating it the way outlets respond when the National Enquirer reports that Hillary Clinton is ensnared in a sex scandal – by ignoring it.
Fifth, the predominant story of what happened is much more plausible. It’s not as though we’re operating completely in the dark about Jang’s execution. Far more credible outlets with far more credible sourcing have consistently described Jang as having been executed by firing squad; typically he is said to have been killed by anti-aircraft guns, though sometimes that is rounded down to machine guns.
This is just much more consistent with what we know about North Korea. “He was in a military tribunal so it seems logical he would be executed by firing squad,” O’Carroll said. The fact that South Korea’s better-sourced and more credible media outlets continue to maintain that Jang was executed by firing squad, and not by 120 hungry dogs, as reported by a lone Hong Kong newspaper, should really underscore which version of events is more likely.
Sixth, as the satirist Karl Sharro put it, “The clue about the story of Kim Jong Un’s uncle being fed to 120 hundred dogs being false is who has time to count dogs at a time like that”. Okay, so that’s not a real reason to disbelieve the story. But it was too funny not to include.
But all of this raises the question: why are so many people – and so many major media outlets – still willing to treat this implausible story as plausible? This seems to be a problem particular to stories out of North Korea, about which almost any story is treated as broadly credible, no matter how outlandish or thinly sourced. There’s no other country to which we bring such a high degree of gullibility.
A friend who’s covered North Korea for several years and has visited the country, Isaac Stone Fish, now of Foreign Policy, once joked to me that as an American journalist you can write almost anything you want about North Korea and people will just accept it. Call it the Stone Fish Theory of North Korea coverage. We know so little about what really happens inside the country, and especially inside the leader’s head, that very little is disprovable. But the things we do know are often so bizarre that just about anything can seem possible.
And, there’s no getting around this, we in the media have a certain incentive to pick these stories up. “As you know, NK stories tend to get a lot of hits, so it’s easy to see why editors will want to pursue these stories,” O’Carroll said. “I guess editors feel it is more legitimate to publish unverifiable, sensationalist information on North Korea because they can always fall back on the defence: ‘How could we check? North Korea is so closed.'”
There’s also a lost-in-translation element to American credulity about outlandish stories out of North Korea; to some degree, we fall victim to our own ignorance of how that society actually works. As I wrote in 2012 when the US media were briefly aflame with nonsensical rumours that Kim had been assassinated in Beijing, the images out of the country are so bizarre and hard information so scant that there’s little to prevent our imaginations from running wild. We are ready to believe anything.
Still, the thing about this story and so many others like it from North Korea is that there is a chance, however remote, that it could still be true. Yes, there is an awful lot of evidence suggesting it’s probably false, but this being North Korea, there are also some reasons to allow for its plausibility.
“Bottom line is: unlikely but I can’t rule it out,” O’Carroll, whose NKNews site is known for its sober and careful coverage of North Korea, acknowledged. “While this one definitely feels exaggerated, who knows? With North Korea’s KCNA publishing films showing the destruction of effigies of [former South Korean President] Lee Myung-bak by hungry dogs last year, and of course publishing several cartoons depicting the gruesome death of the same president, at least parts of the story could be within the realm of true. Don’t forget the North Koreans even hosted competitions last year to think up the most gruesome way to kill ‘Traitor’ [Lee Myung-bak]; the prize? The winner could carry out that particular death sentence!”
Ultimately, while North Korea-watchers are certainly not buying this story, O’Carroll wouldn’t take the bait when I gave him an opportunity to scold media outlets for picking it up. He asked me, rhetorically: “What are editors meant to do? Ignore a story because it ‘feels’ wrong, but could end up later to be true? I don’t know.”
The Washington Post
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Davidson Panabokke / January 4, 2014
Kim will have to learn a few things from Sri Lanka:
”The pain of one is the pain of another. We are all connected….. We live in a complex world and our problems are all human made. We therefore need to find solutions together as one human race and not as individual countries…. In this 21st century, we need people not only with the right mindset or academic background
but also people whom are emotionally balanced. Both the mind and the heart need to be right so that one would not follow fundamentalists and extremists…. ” – Public lecture delivered by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera Executive Director LKIIRSS at Virginia Tech University” – The Aftermath of Civil War in Sri Lanka: Reconciliation and Resilienc, October 3rd 2013
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Silva / January 4, 2014
Asanga should be telling this to his President !!
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Sengodan. M / January 4, 2014
People of Sri Lanka should clearly see the dangers of having a subservient judiciary in an emerging dictatorship.
Sengodan. M
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Percy Jilmart / January 4, 2014
@Sengodan. M
Emerging dictatorship??? It is already a full blown dictatorship. Very soon the Goatman too will try to make this country into a nuclear power state and the silly fools known as the majority will have to suffer.
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K.A Sumanasekera / January 4, 2014
Why this Shymo worry about Baby Kim ?…
Is he in the queue for a Dual too to enjoy their special needs ……
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Peter / January 4, 2014
KAS – you’re obviously missing the forest for the trees! I guess that’s intentional or else you must surely be dense (which I doubt!)
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Silva / January 4, 2014
Leela creature,
Sumith says, “..Our MaRa has only a big mouth and he is not closer..”
Whereas you have a bid asshole and a dustbin mouth tooooooooo to show up!
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Sirimal / January 4, 2014
It is just that atleast over 50% of our people (covering a cross section of our society) may feel that Rajapaskshes are brutal to be compared with those most brutal leaders like N korean babarian. Revengeful acts are becoming routine to him now. Right at the moment: the great plan to remove PM and replace with one of his siblings to strengthen his fences. Rajapakshe pays a fox smile – but his actions have been far from his pet words. How many more months, years he would act as an actor.. ? Becoming very clear, that the man is the most dangerous in the region.
Listen to his responses to any questions made to him during Chogem sessions; his stammered respnoses hint everything about him.
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Sumith / January 4, 2014
Kim has a million men army, nuclear war heads and he can attack south korea any time and bring Asia and World economy down in few days.
Our MaRa has only a big mouth and he is not closer to Kim but even worse than Myanmar junta who really scared-off by American intimidation. MaRa don’t even realise that Indian’s and American’s can frame him on crimes against humanity anytime.
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Sirimal / January 4, 2014
Headlines of the day say- that Gota allocate more to his Defence academy than to a state University of the country. Can you imagine – where we have been by this day ?
We should be catious against any kind threats to the country, but why to be that paranoic ? Can the state afford it at all ?
I have no doubt if they the authorities would thoroughly implement austerity measures – we can save billions of funds to finance fulfiling the long overdues of the local state Unis.
Greeks are advised to save every cent right at the moment, why our people cant learn to do so.If our people are made clear; by feeding them with proper facts and figures about their future, without deceiving them further – not to panick but awakening them with truths.
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Shyamon Jayasinghe / January 4, 2014
Washington Post (WP) has since pointed out that the story about Kim throwing his uncle and aides naked to the dogs may probably be an exaggeration by Straits Times. WP suggests that Straits Times had borrowed the story from a Hong Kong newspaper, Wei Wei Po. WP believes that Kim had executed his uncle by firing squad, which is the standard North Korean style of execution. Modus operandi apart, the essence of this story, namely that the Dear Leader had executed his uncle denouncing him as a ‘dog’ and ‘scum’ is substantially true as Kim-Jon did appear before TV (Al Jazeera) and make a statement. I watched this in Al Jazeera and it had been repeated in other TV news channels.
As some have already commented, the primary lesson from this event for citizens anywhere is to safeguard democracy and the checks and balances that come with it. Dictators can cut themselves from reality and run away into a murderous lunacy before they eventually crash. The notion of a “little bit of dictatorship” never works as the “little” inherently leads to more and more. That’s the logic of authoritarian rule
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Pena Kiyanna / January 4, 2014
Dear Mr jayasinghe
Please spare us from this US propaganda you are relaying to us through CT. You seem to be believing all this propaganda by the US globalists but we are a bit sceptical.
The best thing the US can do to protect human rights in the Korean peninsula is to leave it so the divided families on the two parts can unite. They are staying through corruption in South Korea and paint the north Koreans blacker than the devil.
You should ask the Americans why they can’t finish the war and leave like the Russians did.
I am sad to see that a person with a shallow intellect like yourself was a civil servant in Sri Lanka for a long time.
Learn to think for yourself please.
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Silva / January 4, 2014
Shyamon Jayasinghe,
I think JR shouldn’t have created this unbalanced constitution which became the source of power corruption in the country. We must extract through Ranil’s government what the country really needs.
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Sirimal / January 4, 2014
In hindsight everyone becomes clever.
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Andre / January 4, 2014
Its high time, constitutional experts (local and foreign) to sit down and closely examine each and every line of the 78 constitution: specially on the surplus of grey zones in which they have left all freedoms, paving any brutal minded like MR to highly the way to abuse for their sake, should be addressed first.If the constitution is complete only, we can expect them to have fullfilled their responsiblities in compliance with that. Half or partly explained consituational paragraphs can work to ruins as it is the case for now in the country. Just adding lines without going into details can misguide leaders to the core. Specially ones like MR has tried to make use of them for their advantage. NOthing has sofar stood on their way – law professionals have no powers to go against either. This is the reality that we experience today.
If anyone would closely examine the way Germans work – before being implemented, they the experts have gone through each and every step of the consitution in detail. It is even far detailed than a new versions of the bible.
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Andre / January 4, 2014
Do you think that our dictator would travel to NK next week to welcome the exceptional execution ?
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Safa / January 4, 2014
This type of dog treatment is exceptional. The people who do these things must be exceptionally mad. We do the opposite, like slaughtering 260 half starved dogs.
And of course we have the pigshit and bolt gun treatment for journalist who disagree. Also we have many heroin addicts and heroin police who will oblige. We must be 90% mad, little way to go.
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Andre / January 4, 2014
You are right. Such mind sets should be really sick. This reminds me the films -SCHEIGENDE LAEMME (silent lamb) or Hanibal. I myself have got to know south koreans in Europe. Some men were like robots. Women are very like sensitive. And soccer players behave as if they are computerised. I have the feeling – average mind sets of that part of the world is not easy to understand.
Safa, I dont think that brutal koreans have carried out the killing as described it. Some believe this could be fabricated ones made by chinese for their advatanges. Anyway, times ahead we ll hear more about the ecceptional execution.
Hope not that MR would visit him next week to welcome the excutions – this man is unpredictable… . Remeber, the bugger even travelled to Napoli and put his arm around Gadaphi and enjoyed his company… to point in time it was said, that Lybia was about to invest in lanken power station projects… stupid MR believed all these. – a few months later only lybian leader was found dead on a drainage.
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Bedrock Barney / January 4, 2014
This is a trend breaker/game changer. It usually the Koreans who eat the dogs.
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wimaladharma / January 4, 2014
Shyamon,None are so blind as those who refuse to see. So, continue to be a torch -bearer for us who keep eyes closed when things are happening in front of our nose.
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Fathima Fukushima / January 4, 2014
If Balachandran was allowed to live he would have ended up like Kim-Jong-Un.
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Desperate_Lanka / January 5, 2014
How do we know how Raja Juior will have ended up in the years to come ?
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Bensen Burner / January 4, 2014
No Shyamon, He must have learnt a few things from us and will continue to learn eg impunity, the lack of rule of law, executions at will etc. He does not appear to be having disappearances. Who knows, if he has them , it would be just child’s play. We are also fast learners. Bensen
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shankar / January 4, 2014
Wonder whether gota will now decide not to slaughter dogs any more.
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gamini / January 4, 2014
Any sensible Human would abhor such cruel inhuman acts. What I like to know is how many of the right minded would have been disposed in this manner earlier, by the Uncle Jong Song Thaek against those who went against their rule, witnessed by Kim Jong Un? If revealed that he has, many who now feel sorry for him would not feel so. But then again this is not being civilized in the present day society to justify crime to be met with crime. Where is Human Rationale?
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Bruz / January 5, 2014
No worries. Stray Dogs were killed but we have pet sharks instead :-)
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Desperate_Lanka / January 5, 2014
Do you have evidence to see they have killed all of stray dogs ?
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reerie yaka / January 5, 2014
The North Korean incident tells us what would become to Lanka if this megalomanical RRRR continues to rule. Like Kim RRRR have got the media under them, the CJ under them, the Central Bank conner under them and JHU rogue monks under them. Saw what they did to General Fonseka. Hero who shed his blood for the country stripped of all his titles and put to jail for three years until the Americans gave a warning. MR would next put Mangala to the dogs!
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Levi / January 5, 2014
Didn’t You Know? These Dogs were Colombo dogs, the ones in the Custody of the CMC and Starving. Mercifully removed by an anonimus very powerful one and sold to North Korea for consumption.
However its president found that the dogs were so starved and his religious back ground prompted his conscious to have mercy on them.
He decided to reverse the sequence and ordered them to be fed by humans.
His sub ordinates mis interpreted the order and fed them using humans who were handy.
Already condemned to hung uncle and his compatriot were there.
Thus the Colombo dogs were fed with live human.
Long Live Sri Lankan Love for Dog.
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