I don't like to use phrases like 'required reading,' but everyone should know about the the new survey of human rights abuses* in North Korea. It was compiled by researcher David Hawk for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The report wasn't available at that website at last check, but will be soon.
Meanwhile, you can read Claudia Rosett's striking article about the report at Opinion Journal. I think some people assume that after Hitler and Stalin the world would be safe from these sorts of things, but for some the great tyrants were only role models. For Kim Jong Il this appears to be true.
As an interesting and spot on aside Robert Clayton Dean notes:
I never cease to be amazed at the useful idiots who view corporations and the market as more of a threat to their well-being than the state. When Microsoft and Exxon order "babies tossed on the ground to die, with their mothers forced to watch. . . , or assign [grandmothers] to help in the delivery of babies who were thrown immediately into a plastic-lined box to die in bulk lots," I will be willing to listen to these morons, but not before.
The state is not your friend.
I steal a lot of good ideas from Samizdata.
*On second reading 'human rights abuses' looks a little pale to me. It's really a report on concentration camps and state sponsored mass murder, not just jailing a few annoying dissidents.
