Thursday Screening: March 21, 2024

Life in South Korea's DMZ village & Muscovite's reactions to Navalny's death

Happy Thursday. Aggravatingly the EU imposed restrictions two days ago on Ukrainian agricultural exports to satisfy malcontent protesting European farmers. Imposing economic limitations on a nation already besieged by our collective enemy is the kind of mind-boggling self-defeating policy that has plagued the Western response to Russia’s war since day one. While House Republicans hold additional Ukrainian military aid hostage, European bureaucrats wage economic warfare on Kyiv to really twist the knife. Ukraine can’t win with an arm tied behind its back militarily and economically speaking.

With that out of the way, on to the screening. This week I’m highlighting a feature on Daeseong-dong and a short man-on-the street interview in Moscow.

BBC News: The Hidden Village Just Metres from North Korea

I’d read in the past about North Korea’s famously uninhabited propaganda village but I didn’t realize Kijong-dong had a South Korean sister city in the DMZ that’s actually populated by longtime residents. The BBC sent a correspondent to Daeseong-dong to show what life is like for the small group of Koreans living in a town with a completely open border to the North. It’s an eerie but interesting look at how the seventy-three year conflict has impacted a tiny enclave on the world’s most dangerous border:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Russians React To Reports Of Navalny's Death

“I think that everyone who is against Russia is guilty, even if they are right”

“I don’t think he’ll be missed”

Those are the sentiments two Russians expressed when asked about Alexei Navalny’s murder last month by a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter on the streets of Moscow. Although thousands turned out to publicly mourn the slain opposition figure, it’s clear the majority of Putin’s subjects are either indifferent to his subjugation or outwardly supportive of the nihilistic death cult the Russian dictator has created:

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