I’ve been reading The Gulag Archipelago and my tolerance for Stalinist states is at an all-time low. I don’t consider North Korea to exclusively be a Stalinist state, but I suppose it’s close enough.

I have to admit, after reading an article or two concerning the freedom of Charles Robert Jenkins, I stopped paying attention. But he’s written a book and is currently making the rounds on various talk shows, and doing interviews with major newspapers and magazines. I’d consider reading his book, but I don’t know how much more I can take. The episodes detailed in this Washington Post article sound terribly similar to those in Gulag Archipelago.

Thanks to Matt for passing along an MSNBC article that actually expired, but prompted me to find a similar piece. 

The power of his story is in the details of his life. It was unspeakably boring, as well as depressing, drunken, hungry, cold, maddening and painful.

Speaking of pain: One warm summer day, while teaching English in a military school, Jenkins showed up for work in short sleeves. A “US Army” tattoo was visible on his left forearm. This upset the Communist Party cadre there.

Doctors were called in to cut off the tattoo, without benefit of anesthetics. Several cadres held Jenkins down, while a doctor used a scalpel to slice skin above and below the tattoo. Then, as Jenkins screamed, the doctor pulled up the intolerably tattooed skin and cut it off with scissors.

The article reports Jenkins is quite a celebrity in Japan. He lives on Sado Island with his wife, who he met and married in North Korea, and works at a tourist gift shop. I hope he’s making a lot of money from this book deal so he can live comfortably if he chooses.

In the wake of the New York Philharmonic’s “historic” concert in Pyongyang, things are same-as-they-ever-was in North Korea, with the exception of an uptick in rhetoric against the new South Korean president Lee Myung-bak. Interestingly, The Economist theorizes the recent saberattling by Kim Jong-il has to do with tomorrow’s congressional elections here in South Korea.

Here’s the full audio file of the Economist piece:

North and South Korea — Rocketman Versus Bulldozer