Tragic Ironies and the Misery of North Korea

Over the Fourth of July weekend, The Times ran an admirable series on life in North Korea. We were told of little children dying of starvation, and their parents trying to make a soup of tree bark for them. Meanwhile, it is well known that their self-exalted leader, Kim Jong Il, consumes mountainous quantities of gourmet delicacies shipped in from all over the world for his exclusive use.

On July 5, we read of a hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, U.S.A., involving a large number of contestants. The winner stuffed himself with about 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Would someone please explain how the Coney Island gluttons are morally superior to the gluttonous dictator Kim Jong Il?

Richard Nagle

Hollywood

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I commend you (a rarity, I assure you) on the two articles covering North Korea’s struggling and starving population (July 3-4). Being a student of history and seeing the famines of China in the 1960s and the Soviet Union -- famines that left millions dead -- I feel powerless and disgusted that the world can allow this to happen again anywhere.

All the conversations that focus on North Korea’s nuclear weapons proliferation miss the point: Kim Jong Il is a madman, a brutal butcher whose most destructive and horrifying weapon is his state machine, starving physically and mentally his own people.

This may not pose a threat to the U.S. directly, but we cannot allow this sort of human misery to continue in a continually shrinking world. I only wish your articles addressed what the world and her citizens are -- and are not -- doing to help.

Roy Kaufmann

Los Angeles