North Korea - In the

North Korea - In the church I used to go to, there was a woman that always reminded me of the rampantly-bigoted South African woman in P.J. O'Rourke's "Holidays in Hell" - the one O'Rourke called, and I'm paraphrasing, ugly in the way that is a symptom of really bad character. Seventyish, boundlessly crabby, tall in a craggy sort of way, never a smile for anyone. I called her Hawk Woman, because she hovered like a hawk over all church activities, ready to pounce on any sign of political incorrectness - not in the sense of "we need to be inclusive", but more in a "More PC than thou" sense.

During congregational prayers, she'd always raise her hand, and respond with a prayer request for some fashionably lefty cause; "the Honeywell Project" or "an end to police brutality in Saint Paul" or some such.

One day, after the news broke in the mid-nineties about the cataclysmic famines sweeping North Korea, she asked us to pray "for the people of North Korea, who are caught up in a famine caused by the United States' imperialist aggression".

I sat, stunned (along with about three quarters of the congregation) - then raised my hand. The minister - a lefty with a great sense of humor who, alone in that church, knew of my conservative past - recognized me. "Let's pray for people who are being starved to death by Stalinistic dictatorships who are diverting their nation's food supply to the support of immense military buildups at the expense of their own people". I heard a few muted chuckles, and saw Hawk Woman glaring at me in disgust. Although she'd never actually spoken to me in the past, it was clear she Never Spoke To Me Again.

So goes the double standard with North Korea; leftists who are ferocious in their vigilance for human rights abuses among small-l/d liberal democratic nations, are completely, often willfully oblivious to the abuses of the likes of Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and of course Kim Jong-Il.

Google the subject sometime. See any major, left-wing media in the list?

Search any leftist publication - say, The Nation. Search their databases for articles on North Korea; you'll see serried ranks of stories about the whys and wherefores of negotiation over nuclear weapons; endless, yeshivic arguments about whether or not Yongbyon is really a serious threat; breathless justifications of the Clinton policy that may have led us to this showdown with the North.

But the refugees?

The current left, at its best, seems to share its grandparents' myopia for the sins of the likes of Kim, Stalin, Mao, Hitler.

And that's at best. At worst?

Abject support. Check out the likes of Indymedia - they know who the real aggressors are.

In the meantime, the story goes on.

More to come.