Brad’s graph showing the divergent economic fortunes of North and South Korea is a stark illustration of the damage Kim Jong Il inflicted upon his country. But Donald Rumsfeld had, if anything, a more chilling way of making the same point. “If you look at a picture from the sky of the Korean Peninsula at night,” he said in a December 2002 briefing, “South Korea is filled with lights and energy and vitality and a booming economy; North Korea is dark.”
Here, via Afrikent, is a nighttime shot of the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea outlined:
That, right there, is Kim Jong Il’s legacy. In a world that had long ago found light, he managed to keep 24 million human beings in the dark.
