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Thursday, September 27, 2007       EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM

Games North Korean children play shock visitors

SEOUL — Both North and South Koreans celebrated Chusok, the full-moon harvest celebration, on Sept. 25.

North Korean children photographed from across the Chinese border. AP
In the South, Chusok is a special holiday for children who enjoy feasts, amusement parks and computer games played with friends.

In North Korea, food is not in abundant supply and outside of Pyongyang there are no amusement parks.

So how do young North Koreans spend carefree hours? Korean-Chinese visitors were horrified by the games they saw children playing.

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“We noted two kinds of activities," said a Korean-Chinese businesswoman who had recently been to North Korea. "One was a burial ceremony and the other was, quite shockingly, an open execution," she said.

“If children are the mirror of their parents and the society they live in, those children are reflecting their surroundings. I was flabbergasted,” she said,

Recent North Korean defectors confirmed her description, saying they had also seen such scenes quite often. They said the burial game was staged by children who grew up seeing the burials of those who starved to death in early 1990s.

Some children make a small mound of dirt and kneel before it, bowing and weeping. Other children try to comfort those who are weeping.

The open execution game, they said, was especially disturbing.

“When my friend and I were passing a deserted warehouse in the village, we saw several children lined up against the wall,” said Park, a defector from Hyesan, Yanggan Province.

“In front of them stood three boys with sticks under their arms. At a signal from one of them, they aimed the sticks at the boys lined against the wall and they shouted ‘tang! tang! tang!’ and the boys fell to the ground," Park said.

Defector sources said the ruling party has instructed parents to warn their children not to play the wrong kind of games.

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