The Western Press Revolts in North Korea

The late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il professed such “boundless love” for his country’s reporters that the state press published a book in 1983 that called him, in its title, “The Great Teacher of Journalists.” Kim took care that journalists had hot breakfasts before they started work, and umbrellas to keep them dry when they went out reporting in the rain, the book explained, and in return they “must become propagandists who spread far and wide the voice of our party.”