North Korea Will Try to Brazen it Out

Sometimes it is interesting to put two separate news stories together.

1. North Korea slams EU for criticism on human rights

2. North Korea in 'Spring Cleaning' of Border Area, Activist Says

From story number 1;

SEOUL: North Korea accused the European Union on Friday of a “dastardly act” for criticising Pyongyang’s human rights record after Britain said the reclusive Stalinist state could face sanctions for the way it treats its citizens.
...

The North’s official KCNA news agency cited a North Korean delegate to the rights talks as saying the European Union was acting selfishly by backing the position of the United States.

The delegate repeated a charge the North has made before, that Washington was launching an attempt at “bringing down the system of the DPRK under the pretext of human rights”, KCNA reported

From the story number 2;

SEOUL—The authorities in North Korea are in the process of a large-scale crackdown in regions of the country near its border with China, forcing hundreds of residents to move further inland in an attempt to stop people leaving and carrying out public executions, a Seoul-based activist told RFA.

"North Korean residents are referring to the occurrence as a spring cleaning," Chul-hwan Kang, director of the Democracy Network against North Korean Gulag, told RFA's Korean service.

"The North Korean government is arresting all the people who have connections with China and sending them inland. Some people are on the expulsion list just because they have cellphones," Kang said.

We have video of this;

Kang said three people were publicly executed in the border area after being convicted of human trafficking.

The DPRK being the killing ground country that it is, more starvation and more executions are in its future.

Public executions for 'control'

"Because of this kind of monitoring, people are scared to breathe in the Moosan and Hoiryung areas."

Kang said the re-emergence of public executions could indicate an economic situation as poor as during the famine years of the late 1990s.

"I think maybe the North Korean economy is as bad as it was in the late 1990s and the government is employing public execution as a tool to control North Korean people," he told RFA.

Kang said the inspection teams were probably ordered by leader Kim Jong Il, and were a joint effort on the part of the police, the National Security Agency and the judiciary.

"Kim wants to eradicate all problems in the border areas."

Yes he does, to the great sorrow of the Korean people.