Letters to the Editor, March 25, 2013

John Charleston ("Firepower keeping North Koreans safe", March 16) writes that North Korea is "safe" from American influence thanks to its military strength and nuclear weapons programme, while suggesting that the "right-wing" South China Morning Post is partly responsible for public opinion of the North Korean regime.

I suspect the irony of a resident of the world's most economically free jurisdiction using the local free press to defend the most repressive regime on the planet will not be lost on most of your readers.

It will also be obvious to most that the North Korean military strength that Mr Charleston espouses comes at the expense of the country's citizens, who live trapped in a nightmarish existence with severely limited access to the most basic of resources or freedoms that Hongkongers take for granted.

Your correspondent may do well to reflect on his likely fate had he similarly criticised the press in Pyongyang. Some 150,000 North Koreans guilty of similar "crimes" currently languish in the regime's expanding gulag system.

Mr Charleston closes by suggesting Lily Chan ("Change long overdue in North Korea", March 13) "would do well to expand her comfort-zone reading matter".

I would politely suggest he consider the same, starting with Blaine Harden's Escape From Camp 14.