web analytics
Menu Close

SNL Weekend Update, Kim Jung Un, December 20 2014

As doctors always say, I don’t know what that is but it’s spreading.

SNL Weekend update Part I – Cuba, Kim Jung Un and Christmas Upbeat with Willie

SNL Weekend Update Part II – Garth and Kat

SNL Weekend update

Boy that North Korea, what a place. I once sat with a dozen men 100 meters away from the actual border for a year. 5 Days up, 5 days off watching them from periscope equipment in a sandbagged trench system. It was often below zero with only a couple of kerosene heaters and nothing to eat but C rations. You want to trade ham and lima beans for… ANYTHING ELSE? To top off the misery, the deer in the zone had fangs.

Off to the left about 200 meters away on their side was what was called “Speaker Hill.” A Tokoyo Rose kind of thing. On Christmas evening 1968 it was pleasantly snowing while Christmas carols blared from the speakers. Suddenly I heard my name.  “Lt Jite! What are you doing here freezing when you should be home with your family? With your mother Mary and father Russell back in Milwaukee. Go home Lt Jite. Or you can call them at 555-454-4555.” They even had my parents phone number. So this is nothing new.

If you want an entertaining way of getting a taste of what it’s like in North Korea and don’t like the grainy hidden camera documentaries or history books, I recently read a good page turner on the subject.  The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011. Why is Adam Johnson still among the living you ask. Ah, well because it was written while Kim Jung Il was still alive and it left out the living problem of Kim Jung Un. Hemingway, it’s a good read.