▲ The college students who derided Kim Jong Eun on April 15th in central Seoul (@Daily NK)

On the 15th, college students gathered in Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul to condemn Kim Jong Eun’s dictatorship succession and missile launch. Despite it being exam week, more than one hundred students gathered to spread news of North Korea’s dictatorship and emphasize the dangers of the missile test.

Aside from the mentally unstable, almost nobody is in favor of hereditary dictatorship successions and missile launches, leading as they do to thoroughgoing repression of freedom and human rights approved of only by the tyrant himself and the servants who support him.

However, for sometime in South Korea there have been unreasonable ideas in play; that we must accept the third generation succession and not respond to North Korea’s satellite launch. “We cannot stop the third generation succession,” they say. However, it is wrong to say we “have to admit to something bad because we have no other choice.” It can be found throughout history that this leads to a vicious cycle, just like that of the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il eras. There needs to be a set standard, according to which we declare that it is not right to ignore such wrongdoings.

▲ A student brandishing the masks of the Kims and a cardboard version of the failed ‘Unha-3’ rocket. (© Yonhap)

“Silence only helps the torturer; it does not help the tortured.” While we stand silent, the North Korean people are standing at the jaws of death. And so the gathering was a message to those who remain silent in South Korea. Let us not be silent! Let us join together to improve human rights and stand against dictatorship in North Korea! We must hold up the light of hope for those defectors who are suffering and shine it on Kim Jong Eun to force him to give up on dictatorship and reform and open up.

North Korea’s response to us was rage: “They are just a crowd of college thugs,” they said. In a statement from its Supreme Command, North Korea has said that it was an insult to their dignity and that they plan to blow away Seoul in a way never seen before. It must have bothered Kim Jong Eun to hear such things from college students of a similar age to himself.

Already known as ‘Lil Kim’ and mocked for the third generation succession, we are sure that Kim Jong Eun was annoyed indeed when he heard about the college students poking fun at him. Kim Jong Eun, who has inherited a throne of lies and hypocrisy, is afraid of the truth and the voices of the young.

We will fight on, and we will hope for the day when Gwanghwamun Square is filled with people with candles shouting, “Kim Jong Eun hereditary dictatorship! No, no no!”