ah, north korea...

around the time when i started elementary school, north korea's plan to invade south by digging numerous underground tunnels was discovered... then south korean government produced this educational and anti-north korea propaganda animation that became a big hit... the main character was a little boy from south with some sort of supernatural power who saved people from north korea under the military dictatorship... funny considering the fact south korea was also under military dictatorship just disguised as democratic one... anyway one thing that made the biggest impression on me was that at the end the animation, the north korean army officers and the leader turned out to be rats and pigs disguised themselves as humans under some evil spell... so you could imagine what kind of message south korean government was trying to send out to young children then... however things have improved, especially within last 10 years or so, and it seems like south korean public began to realize that north korean are humans just like us...
so i do understand it's easier to dismiss north korea as a bunch of lunatics for the rest of the world... especially in these days when a single life doesn't matter all that much, especially to people in power, if it's related to their political, economical agenda... like 655,500 killed iraqi people after the us invasion... it happened because they just ignore the fact that there are millions of people who live in these countries like iraq and north korea had nothing to do with their governments' policies... none of us got to choose where to be born...
well, so when i ran across these pictures, i was glad that it showed that there are actual people living in north korea too... who probably have been suffering all their lives and many of them doesn't even know that they have... what will happen to these children...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6052344.stm

call me naïve, if you will... but hope one day it'll be a different world somehow... and every single human life has the same weight and importance...