Hwang Jang-yup (86) told Free North Korea Radio, a private radio that broadcasts transmissions to the North, that day. He said in New Year's statement the Kim Jong-il regime "calls for building a powerful and prosperous nation by 2012, but there is no single paragraph that says, 'We will improve the quality of people's life' or 'We will enhance people's freedom and happiness.'" The "powerful and prosperous" nation "merely means calling for further intensifying the personality cult, strengthening the leader's power, and increasing his wealth," Hwang said. "North Korea may rank first among the nations of the world in terms of dictatorship, but it will never become a powerful and prosperous nation."

"Perhaps there has been no nation in history that has built so many villas only for its leader. Every scenic spot has a villa built for him," he said. "I never experienced Hitler's dictatorship, but according to documents of that time, its dictatorship was not as total" as North Korea's.

In Nazi Germany there were shops and people had their own lives, he said. "But Kim Jong-il is unable to feed his own people. Hitler was harsh against the Jew due to his ethnocentric egotism, but Kim is suppressing his own people under the pretext of class struggle."

(englishnews@chosun.com )