I sure hope the Kim Jong-Il commemorative stamp isn’t next
Check out the flag at 10 o’clock in this U.S. Postal Service promotion, stuck to the front door. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing. Then again, we’re talking about a government that has a massive chain of concentration camps, and possibly even gas chambers. How would you react if you saw a swastika banner stuck to the door of your post office?
Hon. Paul Sarbanes
United States Senator
Class I 309
Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510Hon. Barbara Mikulski
United States Senator
709 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510Hon. Chris Van Hollen
U.S. House of Representatives
1419 Longworth House Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20515Dear Senator Sarbanes, Senator Mikulski, and Representative Van Hollen:
Yesterday, at [my local] Post Office, I saw a promotional sticker on the glass entrance door. On this sticker, along with about ten other flags, was a North Korean flag. Photographs are enclosed.
To see my government display the flag of North Korea offends me deeply�and no doubt, many others. North Korea is in all probability the most ruthlessly pervasive dictatorship that has ever existed, one that even George Orwell could not have imagined. It keeps 250,000 of its people�one-tenth of its population�in concentration camps, of which approximately one-fourth die every year. It has allowed 2 million of its people to starve to death due to mismanagement and selective apathy toward less-favored classes. It severely punishes all free expression, including listening to any radio and television stations other than government propaganda channels. In North Korea, religious belief is punishable by death. In recent months, we have even heard that North Korea murders babies born in its concentrations camps and kills entire families in gas chambers like those the Nazis used at Treblinka and Auschwitz. You can find credible documentation of these claims in reports in respected media, linked at www.onefreekorea.net.
A U.S. post office is no place for a North Korean flag any more than it is a place for a Nazi swastika. The United States does not even have diplomatic relations with North Korea, nor is there direct mail or telephone service between the United States and North Korea. There are very few North Koreans living in this country because North Korea severely punishes those who attempt to escape. Furthermore, those who do live here certainly do not support the North Korean government. Language is not an issue, because North and South Koreans speak the same language.
There are many other nations in this world that respect their citizens� basic rights and which have friendly relations and regular commerce with the United States. Why should a U.S. post office display the flag of North Korea instead? If you share my concern, I hope you will ask the Postal Service to immediately remove the North Korean flag from all postal facilities.
For the same reasons, I urge you to support the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, now pending in both houses of Congress. This bill would impose severe economic sanctions on North Korea until it ceases the horrific oppression of its people. The Senate sponsors are Sen. John Kyl and Sen. Sam Brownback; in the House, the main sponsors are Rep. James Leach, Rep. Henry Hyde, and Rep. Christopher Cox.
Sincerely,
Joshua B. Stanton
cc: U.S. Postmaster General
Just in case that’s not enough for you, they’re also doing their best to piss off the Vietnamese-Americans, and even inadvertently granted independence to Puerto Rico (note to the PO boys–the Cuban flag has blue stripes, but I don’t think we get mail from there, either). At least this is obviously a case of ignorance, rather than malice.