Can you say, “kokiri kalbi?”
This is the cutest picture I could find.
Two baby elephants intended as a gift to North Korea are unlikely to survive the journey by air, Zimbabwean conservationists said Thursday.
The independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said the 18-month-old elephants were being held in pens in the western Hwange National Park, along with pairs of most of the park’s other animal species bound for North Korea. The country is a longtime ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. [L.A. Times]
As tragic as I find this to be on one level, on another, they should be lovely grilled over yontans and served with spicy deonjang and wrapped in sesame leaves. I suppose somewhere, someone has said it tastes like chicken.
By the way, the best headline on this story goes to the A.P.: “Dumbo Drop.”
True story: I was once charged by an elephant in Hwange National Park in 1990. The wildlife viewing at the waterholes was great, and it’s not far from Victoria Falls (I almost fell in). At the time, there were plenty of elephants at Hwange, though pretty much everything in Zimbabwe has deteriorated since then.
Say, isn’t it time for Robert Mugabe to die already?
It’s bad enough that Mugabe and Kim torture and kill their own people but do they have to do that to baby elephants?
Will the international community care now?
Sadly, I think more people will care about the elephants than they ever will about the plight of the Zimbabwean and North Korean peoples.
Resolution of the suffering of the NK people is the main focus of Mr. Stanton and the folks who visit this site. I guess the stuff I read here leaves me numb – nothing Mr. Stanton reports, and none of the visitor comments, really shock me anymore. That said, I have a hugely soft spot for little, and not so little animals, who depend on people for their existence – cats most of all. (Full disclosure: I do eat meat, and I recognize the contradiction). Idiot humans who choose to emigrate to North Korea . . . well . . . have fun. My gut sank when I read Mr. Stanton’s summary – I did not want to read the LAT article. Robert Mugabe, a total goon, will force these critters, through no choice of their own, to “live” in an artificial hell. A North Korean zoo – mmm hmmmm. Kim the Sclerotic really wants tender, exotic bush-meat. I think I read someplace at http://www.cheetah.org that years ago, the Iranians gave NK some cheetahs. I don’t even want to think about what happened to them, or the other animals unfortunate enough to at one time live in the NK zoo system. I vaguely recall a cliche that says something about the measure of a society is how it treats its most helpless creatures – its children and its animals. I sure hope Robert Mugabe rots in hell w/Kim the Sclerotic. Of course, what they have done to adults definitely counts too.
Greg, sadly, there is a more visceral response to the cruelty against an animal than there is to state-sanctioned cruelty against an entire population. I wager that the baby elephant’s plight would receive more coverage in the popular press than what goes on in North Korea and Zimbabwe.
Kim Jong-Il and Robert Mugabe should rot in hell and I wonder when that will happen.
I was at a conference yesterday, and one of the speakers Kang Sung-jin from Korea University said that North Korea has over 50 species on the endangered list. It does not have the resources or the political will to put effective conservation measures in place. So this Zimbabwe thing is very worrying.