I’d like to share a letter with you, relating to a column I wrote yesterday. Rather, to a piece I wrote last fall, linked to in that column.

The piece is about Yeonmi Park, an escapee from North Korea. It contains this paragraph:

It occurs to me that Yeonmi must be a hard person to complain to. I say to her, “How can anyone complain to you, or other North Koreans? You must be amazed when people say to you, ‘Oh, my feet hurt,’ or, ‘Oh, I ate too much.’ Your problem was never eating too much, was it?” She smiles. And she relates a conversation she had with an Egyptian, about the severe problems in that country. For one thing, said the Egyptian, people cannot get meat regularly. They have to make do with fruit, vegetables, bread, and so on. To Yeonmi, when she was hunting for dragonflies, such meals would have been unthinkably great.

I had a note from Marilyn Minden, a great friend of NR, and a retired journalist. She says,

I was editing an article by Elie Wiesel for the NYT, and called him to go over it — at about 8 p.m. He said, “You’re still working? At this hour? That’s so cruel!”