Written by: Beck

As most people probably know, two trains collided in North Korea killing or injuring an estimated 3000 people. While this is an amazingly horrific tragedy, there are some odd questions that immediately come to mind. The first thing I wonder is how on earth 3000 people managed to be involved in a train collision. Both trains appear to have been carrying flammable materials, so if the trains were going fast enough, it's not hard to imagine that everyone aboard could well have been killed, or at least seriously hurt. But 3000 people? I guess it's possible. It's not that I doubt the reports, it's just that it's a flabbergasting number.

The bigger question, though, is whether or not this was actually an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The CNN article I linked above mentions that Kim had passed through on a train of his own just a few hours earlier, but doesn't suggest anything beyond that. Reporters on Fox News, however, are openly speculating that this could have been an attempt on Kim's life. If so, one must wonder if there isn't some significant faction of disaffected leaders in North Korea actively seeking to topple the regime. Speculation along these lines, unfortunately, will simply remain speculation, as no official reports are leaving North Korea, and likely never will. This article mentions that immediately after the accident, North Korea cut all international phone lines to keep word of the incident from leaking. The only news agency reporting primary information on this is South Korean, and their sources are from the Chinese side of the Yalu. Still, one can only hope that the Kim dynasty will come to an end sooner rather than later, finally freeing from some measure of tyranny the millions of people living under the poorest, most backward, and most oppressive regime in the world. For some reason, I always think of the world as portrayed in Ayn Rand's novella Anthem whenever I imagine life inside North Korea.