North
Koreans in Libya banned from returning home
Posted
By Suzanne Merkelson Thursday, October
27, 2011
Can
North Koreans living and working abroad possibly have it worse than those
citizens who stay home? From waitresses who
work in government-run restaurants across Asia to seamstresses
essentially enslaved in the Czech Republic to the well-documented North Korean football team
publically shamed after its World Cup loss, it's obvious that the regime's brutality
doesn't stop at the border. Now, the estimated 200 North Korean citizens living
in Libya have been banned from
returning to North Korea, due to fears that news of the Arab Spring will leak
to the country's 23 million subjugated inhabitants.
As
the Telegraph reports, Kim Jong Il's regime had a close
relationship with Muammar al-Qaddafi -- the North Koreans sent doctors, nurses,
and construction workers to Libya, earning hard currency needed to buy missiles
and equipment for North Korean's nascent nuclear weapons program. The North
Koreans in Libya join other nationals who had been working in Tunisia and Egypt
not allowed to return home.
According
to the Telegraph, North Korean media hasn't reported on Qaddafi's
death and only about one percent of
North Koreans are even aware of the uprisings in the Middle East and North
Africa -- mainly government officials and a few citizens who travel to China
for business.
As
an editorial in the Korean Herald says:
Pyongyang's
silence about the fall of the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and the bloody
death of Gaddafi reveals Kim Jong-il's awareness of the vulnerability of his
regime in the process of a third-generation dynastic succession of power.
Despite their boasting of the perfect loyalty of the 23 million people to the
party and the leader, the ruling elite are afraid of what effect the
information on the fates of the overseas dictatorships will have on the
oppressed people of the country.
