South Korea fires shots at a North Korean fishing boat near the NLL.

Kim Jong Nam predicts that the North Korean regime will collapse “soon.”

Our airborne laser system hasn’t been doing well in recent tests, but Japan has carried out a successful missile interception test.

Some observations on Kim Jong-Eun, from his former dietitian, Kenji Fujimoto:

Added Fujimoto: “His chubby appearance is probably from eating a lot. In North Korea, those with power at the top cannot be thin,” hinting that Kim Jong-un put on weight deliberately on Kim Jong-il’s orders. [….]

There have been rumors that Jong-un is ruthless and intolerant, which the Japanese chef denied. Kim Jong-un is not a dangerous figure, he said, and the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan was “probably not his direct order.

So we’ll put him down for “figurehead” in the office pool.

And if you must talk about Robert Park’s new round of interviews, do it here.

Here are some quotes I found mildly interesting.

“They have really thought about this. How can we kill these people, how can we starve these people, how can we enslave these people, how can we control these people,” the Korean American told KBS on Tuesday.

He pledged to devote the rest of his life to fighting for the demise of the North Korean regime and the human rights of North Koreans. [Chosun Ilbo]

A few of you have already taken note of this in the comments:

Park recalled how he crossed the Duman (or Tumen) River on Dec. 25 last year, and was immediately arrested and beaten. “The scars and wounds of the things that happened to me in North Korea are too intense,” he said. He added that to prevent him from divulging the details of his detention, the security forces carried out humiliating sexual torture. “As a result of what happened to me in North Korea, I’ve thrown away any kind of personal desire. I will never, you know, be able to have a marriage or any kind of relationship.”

Previous reports described this “sexual torture” as something akin to what might happen in a typical North Jersey bachelor party, which makes me wonder what we still don’t know. It’s fair to reserve judgment, less so to ridicule Park for what we don’t understand yet. It’s possible that Park was harmed physically in some way that’s not clear to us. But what’s also clear is that Park is emotionally fragile. In other words, Park isn’t the kind of person who had any business taking on the Anjeonbu‘s interrogators:

He attempted a suicide immediately after he returned to the United States and had to be treated by a psychiatrist for seven months.

Park insisted that an apology he read on North Korean TV was dictated to him. Asked why he decided to enter the North illegally armed with nothing but a Bible, he said, “I hoped through my sacrifice, that people will come together and they will liberate North Korea.”

I still wonder what price we paid to bring him home. Park certainly paid a high price, but how has that been redeemed?

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