National Zombie: The Juche Express (© Kurt Warner)
Page 1 Foreword Possibly the most bizarre true-life
setting for any kind of story, North Korea is a country where it’s
always easy to spot someone absolutely creepier than any conceivable zombie,
since his image is plastered everywhere. It is arguably the only place on Earth
that could qualify as an actual, physical, "alternate reality", and nothing
like it – ie, that bad -- is known to have ever existed before. The
reality parts of this story are less believable than the zombie parts and even
more horrific, but they are documented in multiple unrelated sources.
Otherwise, I, too, would probably believe in the existence of an actual zombie
population somewhere in the world before I’d believe the stories about the Kim
regime. In fact, I would prefer it, but Kim Jong-Il is the sad reality
we’re stuck with. NK will probably make the news a lot in
2012. If you’re not familiar with the country and its extremes, The Juche
Express might serve as a hopefully entertaining primer to what life
is like there now. It’s as authentic as I could get it, from the quotes to the
honorific titles. I could have even put in footnotes. None of the reality parts
are exaggerated, and the implied suggestion that the reader decide whether or
not North Korea would actually be better off with a zombie event leading to
accelerated depopulation may be ironic in nature, but it’s also a tough call …
a very tough call.
"Charm lies in one’s ideas, not in one’s
looks."
---------- Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il In North Korea, life was to be used up
until nothing remained. That was about to change, but not like anyone thought. North Korea was a land of darkness on many levels,
each serving as a fitting metaphor for the innumerable midnight horrors to
come, but the truly nightmarish thing was that the Plague didn’t really
change everyday life that much for the citizens, as they were used to
nightmares. It was a country run by madmen who, after 50 straight years of
obvious failure and progressively destructive regression, still saw no reason
to change their objectives or methodology. Or it was a country run by
calculating sociopaths who believed in slavery and didn’t care about anyone
else’s suffering as long as it wasn’t theirs. Either way, it was absolutely the
worst place on earth that didn’t have to be. Juche was the philosophical ideal and national
goal as envisioned by Great Leader Kim Il-Sung when he set up the North Korean
state after WWII and wanted to distance it from traditional Soviet and Chinese
communism. Juche means total self-sufficiency and self-reliance, without
any foreign interference or even influence. North Korea would provide its own
food, clothing, shelter, and defense. It would re-do its own heritage from
scratch and re-invent its own wheel. Everything. And any problems North Korea ran into during this transmutation – like its complete absence of oil fields -- would be
solved by North Korea alone. It was rumored to be the inspiration for the
classic TV series Gilligan’s Island. In support of Juche, no foreign
products were allowed in the North Korean market – at least not with the
identifying labels still attached -- and it was unlawful for the citizens to
purchase anything from any entity except the North Korean government, which
owned and ran everything. Although Great Leader took great pains to
legitimize his philosophy academically by invoking history when he formally
wrote it up in 1955, none of it was actually referenced or annotated in any
kind of informative way, so Juche was more like "the world as I see
it … without actually looking." The treatise was redundant double-talk
that belabored the obvious and provided absolutely no explanations, leading the
typical foreign reader to query: What the hell is this? and I
don’t have to read the rest of it, do I? "The
Juche idea is a new philosophical thought which centers on man. As the leader said, the Juche idea
is based on the philosophical principle that man is the master of everything
and decides everything. The Juche idea raised the fundamental question
of philosophy by regarding man as the main factor, and elucidated the
philosophical principle that man is the master of everything and decides
everything. [ Continue to page 2 ] |