Tuesday, May 07, 2013

News at Eleven: Kim [Jong-il] gave the poet [Jang Jin-sung]

an gold Rolex worth $11,000 (£7,000) and granted him the "sacred immunity" that only the microscopic minority who spent 20 minutes in the presence of the god-dictator received. Now Jang could not be prosecuted without special permission from on high. At the second meeting, "We sat at a performance together, and he kept on crying while he watched it. I felt his tears represented his yearning to become a human being, to become an ordinary person."

Jang could not reconcile his lifestyle with the suffering he saw around him.

from The Guardian: North Korean 'court poet' to publish memoir
then GlobalPost: Crossing the Border: Jang Jin Sung, North Korea's poet laureate, to publish memoirs

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