E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

11,000 N. Koreans awarded for playing roles in nuclear test
SEOUL, Feb. 23 -- More than 11,000 North Koreans have been cited for their contribution to the country's nuclear test earlier this month, the country's media said Saturday.

The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a report that a total of 11,592 scientists, technicians, workers and officials have received state decorations for their roles in the test. The report, monitored in Seoul, gave no further details, including the identify of any awardees.

The English-language report also said that "100 were awarded the title of Hero of the DPRK with a gold star medal and Order of National Flag First Class."

Following its December long-range rocket launch, North Korea had earlier honored a total of 101 scientists and engineers with the Hero of the DPRK titles, according to the KCNA. An additional 5,700 were cited for their contribution to the launch, it said.
Reminds me of a story from the Gulag Archipelago: a man in the late 1920s receives an award as a heroic worker at a factory in the Soviet Union. There is a ceremony on the factory floor where the local party apparatchik pins a medal on the worker's jacket in front of all his coworkers. The worker is invited to say a few words, and in doing so he asks whether, instead of the shiny medal, he could instead have a loaf of bread for his family.

You can guess how that turned out.

Wonder how many shiny medals, versus how many loaves of bread, they gave out in North Korea?

Posted by: Steve White 2013-02-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=362953