Awesomest. Post. Ever.

The Marmot exposes the most delicious irony in South Korea’s relations with its neighbors. Consider the following news clip:

South Korean Ambassador to Geneva Choi Hyuk has taken up historical distortions in Japanese textbooks at the 61st meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC). “This year is the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II,”Â? Choi said Thursday. “If we don’t learn the lessons from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them.”Â? Choi said a whitewash of Japanese wartime atrocities in a middle school textbook passed by Japan’s Education Ministry on Wednesday was “a factor of serious concern for Korea.”Â?

Now try and wrap your head around this:

The [South Korean] government has decided to abstain from voting on a UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) resolution condemning violations of human rights in North Korea, it was learned from government sources on Thursday… “Given the ongoing nuclear negotiations and the special character of intra-Korean relations, which are moving in the direction of reconciliation and cooperation, we feel there is no need to provoke the North by voting on the resolution,”Â? officials said. The government walked out of a vote in 2003 and abstained last year.

Marmot then asks the inevitable question:

OK, so let me get this straight. Japanese textbooks whitewashing what the country did 50 years ago is a “a factor of serious concern,”Â? but gulags, public executions and reports of chemical weapons testing on political prisoners in North Korea aren’t? Oh, wait — former Minister of Unification Jeong Se-hyun had already answered that question back in 2003… “political freedom is a luxury, like pearls for a pig. The improvement of economic conditions for the North Korean people is the most important issue right now.”Â?

That’s a good point, but it only goes so far. Join the fray in the comments section! (I weep for the future. )