Peru, North Korea, and Violence

Here’s a disturbing story about former Peruvian President (and current candidate once again) Alan García’s creation of a paramilitary group (and very likely more than one) to combat the Shining Path in the late 1980s.

Especially noteworthy is the fact that Peru was sending members of the paramilitary to North Korea for training. Upwards of 1,000 (!) were trained there. I shudder to think what Kim Il Sung’s soldiers were teaching them--ironic that they were being trained to fight Marxist guerrillas. No wonder that Peru’s Truth Commission reported that 69,280 people were killed as a result of political violence in the 1980-2000 period.