Last week, Korea's spy agency gave the first word that Kim Jong Un's Uncle may have been dismissed his own nephew. It said he had not been seen publicly in weeks and his two closest confidants executed.
The North's media has not confirmed the executions, but today it made vividly clear that Jang is out. Images aired on TV showed him being stripped of all his titles at the party meeting led by Kim. Premier Pak Pong Ju was in tears as he denounced his longtime friend.
This time, there was no white general's uniform: Jang was dressed in civilian wear and sitting in the audience, not with the rest of the leadership. Party members watched impassively, barely flinching or raising an eyebrow, as two burly men grabbed Jang.
Media laid out a laundry list of Jang's transgressions, including instigating party dissent and squandering party funds on drugs, gambling, and women. He was branded "depraved" for living a "capitalist" lifestyle.
Koreans sometimes "disappear" for re-education and re-emerge later, and Jang has been purged before. He dropped out of sight for a few years in the mid-2000s, reportedly for going too far with fledgling economic reforms under Kim Jong Il. But today's public pillorying was unprecedented, and a startling show for a regime that typically keeps its internal politics secret.
||I happen to like the rollercoaster, o Kaye?|| ~ Mary Steenburgen as Karen Buckman
Michel Gondry: Instead of staying home or just watching TV or watching movies on the net or what ever, which is great, too, but I think, sometimes, it is good that you get your ass out of the House.
Dad: You are no longer a child, Reuven. It is almost possible to see the way your mind is growing and your heart, too… so, listen to what I am going to tell you: human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity, so it may be asked, ‘What value is there to a human life? There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much, if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?’ I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing, but the eye that blinks: that is something; a span of life is nothing, but the man who lives the span: he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable, though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning: meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest, when I am no longer here. Do you understand what I am saying?
