Daily Lessons from Life 09 December 2009

"UN agency sees severe food shortage in N.Korea - Wed, Dec 09, 2009 Reuters

SEOUL - North Korea is expected to suffer a serious grain shortage this year, well short of what it needs, a UN official who recently returned from the impoverished state said on Wednesday."

I don't think this is the 1st time we learned about, allegedly, shortage of food in North Korea. A country that is still very much under the cult leadership of the Kim dynasty. A country that is still very closed to the world.

Lessons for me are:

1. a leader can have tremendous impact on million of people under his or her leadership. The responsibility is immense. The temptation to hold on to the power is immense. And many fell short!!;

2. while it is ideal to have the followers follow the leader willingly, it is unfortunately, the reverse in North Korea for some, or maybe a lot of the populace. It is difficult to imagine any followers who do not benefit from this type of leadership to be willing to follow the leader. Maybe there are too many people who followed the leader are getting a good life and that is good enough for them. To hell to those who did not benefit! In fact, it is due to the deprivation of these people that the 'followers' get to benefit! Again, the sense of justice and equality is missing;

3. nobody can tell the people who did not enjoy the benefit to 'overthrow' the malicious leader. It is up to them to decide. Some how there seems to be a force, a deliberate one at work in this secretive nation: that the propaganda, the supposedly iron-fisted way of suppressing dissenters if any, the brutal treatment of any defectors (or returnees who were captured), etc all paralysed the non-followers. However, there is no guarantee that the discontent will spread to a large population. When that happened, the people will know what to do and what type of sacrifices they will have to make to get the life that they want and deserve.

I only wish that the leader know his or her responsibility and not have to let the people sacrificed to achieve what should have been!