North Korea’s New Low: Murder for Insurance Money

I  have blogged about the evidence supporting charges that North Korea has committed  racial infanticide, killed entire families in a gas chamber, and starved millions of innocent people to death because it would rather buy MiG’s than corn.  Perhaps in the grander scheme, all of those outrages are worse than this one, yet on some level I can’t quite explain, it does seem like a new low:

Death is hardly a rare thing in North Korea, where millions are estimated to have expired from famine, flood and government repression in the past decade — but the number of apparently ordinary people in the dictatorship who have suddenly been found to have foreign-backed life insurance is raising insurers’ eyebrows.

Now, I feel that I must give the devil his due and emphasize that the  “strong” suspicions of “[a] growing number of major underwriters around the world” are just that, at least until the North Koreans allow their inspectors to do what it won’t let the Red Cross, the World Food Program, or the International Atomic Energy Agency do:  verify the facts independently.  But given how cheap life is between the Yalu and the Imjin, you have to wonder why  ordinary citizens of a land stalked by famine are spending their hard-slaved corn money on life insurance policies.  [Afterthought:  Or, do you suppose these people never even existed?  We can only hope.]

This is not the first time North Korea has been accused of reinsurance fraud, although past accusations suggested the fraudulent contrivance of property damage, not cold-blooded murder.

“The North Korean claims are supported by meticulous paperwork, something at which the North Koreans excel,” Payton said.

“For example, where death certificates and hospital reports are required, the regime’s attitude is ‘tell us what you want, we’ll give it to you.'”

In the case of a ferry accident that allegedly took place last April, near the coastal city of Wonsan, North Korean authorities declared that 129 people had died aboard the vessel after it struck a rock about 1,000 yards off the Korean coast, and only about 100 yards from an island. All of them, the Koreans claim, had been automatically covered with life insurance when they bought their ferry ticket, and that insurance risk had been passed on to the London market through a common reinsurance product known as “excess loss personal accident reinsurance.” Here the claims from reinsurers totaled about 5 million euros, or roughly $6 million.

The North Koreans claimed that most of the victims had died of hypothermia in the freezing water. Industry sources say that when insurance investigators discovered that weather conditions were warmer than claimed at that time, the North Koreans responded that severe winds were blowing from Siberia in the spring, making the water unusually frigid.

When insurers asked for permission to send an independent diver to inspect the ferry wreck, they were refused.

To get North Korea’s side of the story, FOX News approached the regime’s official insurance representative in London, Song Ryon Ko, at his home. Song refused to discuss the issue and hastily closed his door.

Well, this pretty much leaves me at a loss for words.  We eagerly await  stern action  and demands for facts from the  U.N. Human Rights Council and Amnesty International.   And do explain, if you’re so inclined,  just how and why you think we can disarm these people through diplomacy alone.  Or how they want peace, just like us.  The issue here goes so far beyond the shape of the table, we’re not even  capable of comprehending it.  The people of North Korea need guns.