Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 10:09 AM by Gene

Still, the reports left out crucial facts. A KCNA dispatch said little about the flooding across the Yalu River in the Chinese city of Dandong, bound to Sinuiju by a long steel road and rail bridge that survived numerous US bombing runs in the Korean War. A bustling commercial center, Dandong is several times larger than Sinuiju, whose 400,000 people are said to live in run-down apartment blocks and small shacks.

There was no mention in North Korean reports of the evacuation of 250,000 people from Dandong, where North Korean traders go on buying and selling expeditions, before raging currents began to subside. At least four people were reported killed.

Nor did KCNA give the really bad news. That was up to Daily NK, a monitoring group in Seoul with contacts in the North. While helicopters were picking up trapped people, said Daily NK’s source, one helicopter “crashed into a rice paddy” on a mission “to rescue isolated residents” with the loss of its two-man crew.

North Korean central TV reported only “that helicopters had been sent to the rescue project on the orders of Kim Jong-il,” said Daily NK, but “there was no word of the crash.”

And there was no word either about rail service, though trains were assumed to have halted. Stopping in Dandong and then Sinuiju on the way to Pyongyang, freight trains from China carry most of the goods, including food and fertilizer, that North Korea needs to survive.

"Candor"!