Christopher Hitchens on North Korea

The transcript of today's interview with Christopher Hitchens, who has been to North Korea and written of the experience in his new book Hitch 22.

A snippet of his comments:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I say in my book that my attempt to describe... I'm one of the few people who's been to North Korea as a reporter - in fact all of the Axis of Evil countries.

My attempt to describe how terrible life is there is one of my greatest failures as a writer because I don't think it's possible to explain to a person living in free society the utter misery and pointlessness and horror and starvation and hell of just one day in the life of a North Korean.

And the reason I'm starting like this is that, for the same reason I don't think it's possible to explain the atmosphere of intense military chauvinism.

There's only one thing that the Kim Jong-il regime has left to offer to its people, who it's now starved to a stunted condition where they're six inches smaller than their South Korean counterparts. Picture how much starvation that takes.

There's only one thing they've got left which is what they call the Army First Policy, a constant drumbeat of aggressive talk and the promise that one day they'll have all the spoils of South Korea too and all the sacrifice will have been worth it.


We haven't been paying attention to North Korea in general, since it's on the other side of the world. Out of sight, out of mind.

Here's hoping there are wise heads who can contain and resolve this quandry. If it comes to a shooting war, Heaven only knows how many would be killed or hurt.