Lonely at the top

THE PICTURE has bounced around the internet for a few days now: Kim Jong Un, the pudgy little tyrant from North Korea, being hauled up the side of a mountain in his new ski lift. How many peasants it took to pull the ropes is anybody’s guess-the state media didn’t take pictures of them. Or maybe, perhaps, it’s just-a-thought, the country had enough electricity at that moment to set the lift in motion. Anything’s possible.

Proud they are in that backward but menacing country. This ski resort has been in the works for years. And now it has a lift.

You may remember that back in October, the Hermit Kingdom tried to buy a ski lift for the resort from Switzerland. After all, it’s said that Kim III attended school in Switzerland, and he may have developed his love for snow skiing there. But the Swiss government blocked the deal-there’s a ban on exporting luxury items to North Korea-and the North Koreans were furious.According to state media at the time:

“This is an intolerable mockery of the social system and the people of the DPRK and a serious human rights abuse that politicizes sports and discriminates against the Koreans.”

Denial of a ski lift. A serious human rights abuse.

Well, the North Koreans know from serious human rights abuses. You might say they’re experts at serious human rights abuses. Anybody who has escaped from that prison of a nation will tell you as much.

So the folks who planned out the new Masik Pass Ski Resort in North Korea, and who also know what’s good for them, found a way to engineer-up a lift themselves. Analysts say the “new”lift seems to be based on a 1970s model. Which is modern enough for North Korea. Maybe even futuristic.

So now for the fun. After all, the pudgy little dictator says the new resort is for the people. While they starve, he’s built them this great vacation spot.

Price: only a $50 admission fee.

Which sounds like a bargain.

Until you’re told that the average North Korean makes about $80 a month, by some estimates.

Ah, well. Kim Jong Un probably doesn’t want the people cluttering up his ski lift anyway.

IT’S BEEN just over two years since Kim Jong Il died and his son took over in Pyongyang. Some of us actually had hopes (back then) that things would change for North Koreans. That a foreign-educated young man thrust into the leadership role in a failing state, who had lived in enough countries to know what prosperity looked like, who might have a more liberal view of the world than the mob bosses/family tsars before him, would make changes for his people.

Detaining an aging American tourist who fought in the Korean War, deploying more attack helicopters and rockets near a disputed border with South Korea, trying to get around the weapons embargo by hiding Cuban arms in a boat full of sugar, canceling a humanitarian program that would have allowed separated Korean families to meet for the first time since the Korean War, and building a ski resort that is useless for 99.999 percent of his people weren’t exactly the changes some of us had in mind.

God help the people of North Korea. It’s obvious the Kim family won’t.