Weaponizing electricity

Satellite view of North Korea at night, with South Korea below and China at top left. (NASA)

Robert Bryce reports at National Review,

Last night, President Donald Trump had a historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un at Singapore’s Capella Hotel, a five-star resort with beautifully appointed suites, big-screen TVs, and recessed lights.

While Kim was safely ensconced in well-lit luxury, his countrymen were not so fortunate. Indeed, the Kim family’s 70-year reign of terror in North Korea has been abetted by its ability to starve its own people of electricity. A staggering 18.4 million North Koreans, some 70 percent of the country’s population, do not have access to electrical power.

…In addition to their economic success, South Koreans enjoy the world’s fastest average Internet-connection speed, at about 26 megabits per second. By contrast, last year, the Transitional Justice Working Group reported that North Koreans can be executed solely for having or distributing media from South Korea. The report said that Kim’s regime routinely conducts public executions of prisoners — in schools, markets, and public parks — as a way of keeping the population in fear. By weaponizing electricity — that is, by preventing his people from having it — Kim can prevent them from accessing media, and therefore learning about what is happening in the South and the rest of the world.

Read more here.