North Korea's secretive 'first family'

North Korea's secretive 'first family'

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il died at the age of 69 in December 2011, and Pyongyang named his son Kim Jong-un as successor. Explore the family tree to find out about the country's enigmatic and powerful first family.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11297747

1. Kim Jong Il - Kim Jong-il was one of the world's most secretive leaders. Tales from dissidents and past aides created an image of an irrational, power-hungry man who allowed his people to starve while he enjoyed dancing girls and cognac.

But a different picture was painted by Sung Hae-rim, the sister of one of Kim Jong-il's former partners in her memoir, The Wisteria House.

She describes a devoted father and a sensitive, charismatic individual, although she admits even those closest to him were fearful of him.

North Korean media depicted him as a national hero, whose birth to the country's founder, Kim il-sung, was marked by a double rainbow and a bright star.

He appeared frail in recent public appearances after he reportedly suffered a stroke in August 2008.

2. Kim Kyung Hee - The 64-year-old is Kim Jong-il's sister and the wife of the second most powerful figure in North Korea, Chang Song-taek.

The siblings are reported to be very close. Kim Jong-il has said in the past that "everyone should be as loyal as Kim Kyung-hee", and he demands that his sister be treated with deference, according to defectors' testimony.

She has held a wide range of important Workers' Party positions including being a member of the all-powerful Central Committee.

Her promotion to four-star general makes Kim Kyung-hee the first North Korean woman ever to achieve such status. Her name was listed ahead of Kim Jong-un's, state media reported.

Analysts say Kim Kyung-hee is possibly being positioned to oversee the transfer of office from her brother to her young nephew, and may act as a guardian during his rise to power.

There has been speculation in the past that a power struggle may ensue after Kim Jong-il's death, with some analysts arguing that his sister may try to seize the reins.

3. Chang Song-Taek - Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law was thought to be one of his closest confidants. Last year he was elevated to North Korea's powerful National Defence Commission - the country's highest military body and the heart of power.

High-profile defectors have described him as "the number-two man in North Korea". Commentators say he may have taken on de facto leadership during Kim Jong-il's ill health.

The 64-year-old is considered to be one of the architects of the succession, and Kim Jong-un will need his support to ensure the loyalty of the party and the military.

4. Kim Jong-Nam, 39, is Kim Jong-il's eldest son.

Sung Hae-rang, the sister of Kim Jong-nam's deceased mother Sung Hae-rim, has written in her memoir that Kim Jong-il was extremely fond of Kim Jong-nam and was pained to be away from him. Like his half-brothers, Kim Jong-nam studied at an international school in Switzerland.

His chances of succession appeared to be ruined when, in 2001, Japanese officials caught him trying to sneak into Japan using a false passport. He told officials that he was planning to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

Some analysts argued that he may have been forgiven by his father, as there is precedent for the regime reinstating disgraced figures after a period of atonement. Confucian tradition also favours the oldest son.

But in a rare interview while on a trip to China last year, Kim Jong-nam said he had "no interest" in succeeding his father.

5.Kim Sul-song, 36, is Kim Jong-il's daughter born to his first wife, Kim Young-sook.

Reports say she has worked in the country's propaganda department, with responsibility for literary affairs.

One South Korean report said she had also served as her father's secretary

6. Kim Jong-chul, 29, studied at an international school in Switzerland. He works in the WKP propaganda department.

His mother, Ko Yong-hui, is said to have been the North Korean leader's favourite consort.

However, Kenji Fujimoto, the pseudonym of a Japanese sushi chef who spent 13 years cooking for Kim Jong-il, has written that the leader considered his second son "no good because he is like a little girl".

7. Kim Jong-un, the second son of Kim Jong-il and his late wife Ko Yong-hui, has been anointed "the great successor" by Pyongyang.

Like his older brothers, he is thought to have been educated abroad.

A Japanese sushi chef who worked for Kim Jong-il for 13 years up to 2001 said that he "resembled his father in every way, including his physical frame".

Speculation that he was being groomed to succeed his father had been rife for years.

But Kim Jong-un is an inexperienced, untested young man who has no political legitimacy other than his birth. He is inheriting a nation with nuclear weapons and a raft of difficult problems: almost no real economy, widespread hunger and tense relations with South Korea and the US.

8. Ri Sol-ju was introduced as Kim Jong-un's wife in state media reports about the opening of an amusement park in July 2012.

Reports simply said he attended the event with his wife, "Comrade Ri Sol-ju".

Little more is known about Ri Sol-Ju, although there has been much speculation about her background since pictures first emerged of Kim Jong-un with an unidentified woman. There is a North Korean singer of the same name, but she is not now thought to be the same person.

State media did not mention when the couple got married.

9. Kim Han-sol

The grandson of Kim Jong-il and nephew of leader Kim Jong-un has said he wants to "make things better" for the people of his country.

Kim Han-sol, 17, spoke of his dreams of reunification of the two Koreas in an television interview in Bosnia, where he is studying. Kim Han-sol said he had never met his grandfather or uncle.

He described an isolated childhood spent mostly in Macau and China, after his birth in Pyongyang in 1995. In the future, he said he pictured himself going to university and then "volunteering somewhere".

The Korean War armistice

The Korean War armistice



The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, with neither side able to claim outright victory.

More than 50 years on, the truce is still all that technically prevents North Korea and the US - along with its ally South Korea - resuming the war, as no peace treaty has ever been signed.

Both sides regularly accuse the other of violating the agreement, but the accusations have become more frequent as tensions rise over North Korea's nuclear programme.

When the armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, talks had already dragged on for two years, ensnared in testy issues such as the exchange of prisoners of war and the location of a demarcation line.

Military commanders from China and North Korea signed the agreement on one side, with the US-led United Nations Command signing on behalf of the international community. South Korea was not a signatory.

The armistice was only ever intended as a temporary measure.

The document, signed by US Lieutenant General William K Harrison and his counterpart from the North's army, General Nam Il, said it was aimed at a ceasefire "until a final peaceful settlement is achieved".

However, that settlement never came, and a conference in Geneva in 1954 which was designed to thrash out a formal peace accord ended without agreement.

The armistice is still the only safeguard for peace on the Korean peninsula.

The agreement provided for:

A suspension of open hostilities

A fixed demarcation line with a four kilometre (2.4 mile) buffer zone
the so-called demilitarisation zone

A mechanism for the transfer of prisoners of war

Both sides pledged not to "execute any hostile act within, from, or against the demilitarised zone", or enter areas under control of the other.

The agreement also called for the establishment of the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) and other agencies to ensure the truce held.

The MAC, which comprises members from both sides, still meets regularly in the truce village of Panmunjom.

Despite the relative peace since the war ended, tensions remain high between the two Koreas, and their border remains the most heavily militarised frontier in the world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10165796

White Rose: The Germans who tried to topple Hitler By Lucy Burns BBC World Service

White Rose: The Germans who tried to topple Hitler
By Lucy Burns BBC World Service



In 1943, World War II was at its height - but in Munich, the centre of Nazi power, a group of students had started a campaign of passive resistance.

Liselotte Furst-Ramdohr, already a widow at the age of 29 following her husband's death on the Russian front, was introduced to the White Rose group by her friend, Alexander Schmorell.

"I can still see Alex today as he told me about it," says Furst-Ramdohr, now a spry 99-year-old. "He never said the word 'resistance', he just said that the war was dreadful, with the battles and so many people dying, and that Hitler was a megalomaniac, and so they had to do something."

Schmorell and his friends Christoph Probst and Hans Scholl had started writing leaflets encouraging Germans to join them in resisting the Nazi regime.

With the help of a small group of collaborators, they distributed the leaflets to addresses selected at random from the phone book.

Furst-Ramdohr says the group couldn't understand how the German people had been so easily led into supporting the Nazi Party and its ideology.

"They must have been able to tell how bad things were, it was ridiculous," she says.

The White Rose delivered the leaflets by hand to addresses in the Munich area, and sent them to other cities through trusted couriers.

Furst-Ramdohr never delivered the leaflets herself but hid them in a broom cupboard in her flat.

She also helped Schmorell make stencils in her flat saying "Down with Hitler", and on the nights of 8 and 15 February, the White Rose graffitied the slogan on walls across Munich.

Furst-Ramdohr remembers the activists - who were risking their lives for their beliefs - as young and naive.

One of the best-known members of the group today is Hans Scholl's younger sister Sophie, later the subject of an Oscar-nominated film, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Furst-Ramdohr remembers that Sophie was so scared that she used to sleep in her brother's bed.

"Hans was very afraid too, but they wanted to keep going for Germany - they loved their country," she says.

On 18 February, Hans and Sophie Scholl set off on their most daring expedition yet. They planned to distribute copies of their sixth - and as it would turn out, final - leaflet at the University of Munich, where students would find them as they came out of lectures.



The siblings left piles of the leaflets around the central stairwell. But as they reached the top of the stairs, Sophie still had a number of leaflets left over - so she threw them over the balcony, to float down to the students below.

She was seen by a caretaker, who called the Gestapo. Hans Scholl had a draft for another leaflet in his pocket, which he attempted to swallow, but the Gestapo were too quick.

The Scholl siblings were arrested and tried in front of an emergency session of the People's Court. They were found guilty and executed by guillotine, along with their friend and collaborator Christoph Probst, on 22 February 1943.

Hans Scholl's last words before he was executed were: "Long live freedom!"

The rest of the White Rose group was thrown into panic. Alexander Schmorell went straight to Lilo Forst-Ramdohr's flat, where she helped him find new clothes and a fake passport. Schmorell attempted to flee to Switzerland but was forced to turn back by heavy snow.

Returning to Munich, he was captured after a former girlfriend recognised him entering an air raid shelter during a bombing raid. He was arrested, and later executed.

Lilo Furst-Ramdohr was herself arrested on 2 March. "Two Gestapo men came to the flat and they turned everything upside down," she says.

"They went through my letters, and then one of them said 'I'm afraid you'll have to come with us'.

"They took me to the Gestapo prison in the Wittelsbach Palais on the tram - they stood behind my seat so I couldn't escape."

Furst-Ramdohr spent a month in Gestapo custody. She was regularly interrogated about her role in the White Rose, but eventually released without charge - a stroke of luck she puts down to her status as a war widow, and to the likelihood that the Gestapo was hoping she would lead them to other co-conspirators. After her release she was followed by the secret police for some time.

She then fled Munich for Aschersleben, near Leipzig, where she married again and opened a puppet theatre.

The final White Rose leaflet was smuggled out of Germany and intercepted by Allied forces, with the result that, in the autumn of 1943, millions of copies were dropped over Germany by Allied aircraft.

Since the end of the war, the members of the White Rose have become celebrated figures, as German society has searched for positive role models from the Nazi period.

But Furst-Ramdohr doesn't like it. "At the time, they'd have had us all executed," she says of the majority of her compatriots.

She now lives alone in a small town outside Munich, where she continued to give dancing lessons up to the age of 86.

Her friend Alexander Schmorell was made a saint by the Russian Orthodox church in 2012.

"He would have laughed out loud if he'd known," says Furst-Ramdohr. "He wasn't a saint - he was just a normal person."

Lucy Burns interviewed Liselotte Furst-Ramdohr for the BBC World Service programme Witness. Listen via BBC iPlayer or browse the Witness podcast archive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21521060

The Scholls were tried at the People's Court of Law, now Munich's district court

The Sixth Leaflet
'Fight against the Party!'

The sixth leaflet produced by the White Rose was smuggled out of the country and scattered over Germany by Allied planes.

The day of reckoning has come, the reckoning of German youth with the most repellent tyranny our nation has ever seen...

For us there is only one slogan: Fight against the Party! Get out of the party hierarchy, which wants to keep us silent!

The German name will be dishonoured forever if German youth does not rise up, to revenge and atone at once, to destroy their tormentors and build up a new spiritual Europe. Students! The German nation looks to us!

Translation: Lucy Burns

What was the White Rose?


Hans and Sophie Scholl, members of the White Rose resistance group

Resistance group formed in 1942 by group of Munich University students and their professor

Horrified by Nazism, they wrote and distributed leaflets urging Germans to oppose Hitler's regime

Also painted anti-Nazi slogans on buildings around Munich

Produced six leaflets before their arrest

Growing up a foreigner during Mao's Cultural Revolution

Growing up a foreigner during Mao's Cultural Revolution


Paul Crook - back - was in school when the revolution began


Paul Crook with fellow workers at farm implements factory

Paul Crook's Communist parents met in China in 1940 and brought up their three sons in Beijing. In the 1960s, Paul was caught up in the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic attempt to root out elements seen as hostile to Communist rule.

"We were encouraged to write posters criticising our teachers and the school leaders for anything seen as being 'Revisionist'.

My classmates and I would get big sheets of paper, poster size, and write all sorts of things and put them up in the classrooms and hallways.

If sometimes the teachers were not very nice to you, then this would be a chance to get back at them.

At the beginning there wasn't really much violence in my school, on the whole it was civilised, supposedly fighting against wrong ideas, but no doubt very demeaning, even horrific for many teachers.

I do remember one of the more unruly students picked on an art teacher who was said to come from quite a bourgeois background.

He was one of the best teachers, I really liked him.

We were in a room with him and one of the other students had a baseball bat and was about to hit him and one of my friends said, 'Hey you can't do this'.

On that particular occasion we avoided any violence.

But elsewhere, there was much violence, as the Cultural Revolution went on.

'Bourgeois authorities'



Mobilised by Chairman Mao, millions of young people became Red Guards.

Red Guard high school students read from Mao's Little Red Book

They hounded anyone who they thought was sabotaging the Communist Revolution, many of them highly placed members of the Communist Party.

If you were noticed, a celebrity of any sort, you were fair game.

Academics, Party officials and others who were seen as being 'bourgeois authorities' were dragged off to meetings to be 'struggled against' in front of large crowds.

Many people were locked up - sometimes even killed or driven to suicide.

There was huge upheaval at the university where my parents, David and Isabel, worked.

At that time school students from the cities were regularly sent to work in the countryside during harvest season, and upon graduation many were sent to settle in the country, to share the life of the farmers.

In those days everyone in the countryside was a member of a 'People's Commune', working together, and sharing the proceeds.

In the autumn of 1967, I joined a bunch of foreign kids and went to a commune just outside Beijing, where we harvested sweet potatoes and pears.

It was a very happy time, but then when I came home three weeks later my brothers said, 'You'll never guess what has happened, they've arrested a spy at the university among the foreigners, can you guess who it is?'

I thought of a few relatively dodgy characters. But it turned out to be my father.

'Spy'

It was a bit of a joke because we thought, he believes in all this, supports the revolution, how could he be a spy?

We thought my father would be released within a few days, in a few weeks.

We had all been educated to think that things were getting better all the time, but sometimes there would be mistakes.

One of the slogans at that time was: 'You should trust the Masses, and trust the Party!'

As I recall, I don't think I seriously thought that my father would ever not be released and I did not think he would be abused physically, so we just went on living.

We were constantly going to different government departments to find out where he was locked up, so we could deliver reading material to him or food that he liked.

My mother was repeatedly summoned for questioning and eventually she too disappeared.

By then the university was run by a Revolutionary Committee supervised by the Workers' Propaganda Team, and by army representatives sent to take control of universities by Mao.

But my brothers and I continued to receive our parents' wages, and we were getting older, and were pretty well able to look after ourselves.

After I left school, I worked in a farm implements factory, and later an automobile repair plant.

We were anxious about what had happened to our parents, but we weren't eaten up by anger or worry, as we were brought up to believe that if you were innocent then this would be proved in due course.

Meanwhile my parents' friends gave us care and encouragement, and the official position towards young people whose parents were in trouble was that they could still be educated 'to take the right path'.

'The right path'

For a long time we thought it would just be a few months and we kept hearing things, rumours about the latest political twists and turns, and we thought - hoped - our parents would be coming out quite soon.

In the end my mother was freed after just over three years of lock-up on the university campus.

My father was released from prison after five years, much of it spent in solitary confinement.

He and my mother were later exonerated of any wrongdoing, and received an official apology.

My parents were never physically abused in all the time they were locked up, but it was a trying time, to say the least.

They were sustained by their belief that all this upheaval was part of an attempt to create a better society.

Although the time of my parents' incarceration was a period of turmoil in China, and we were concerned for our parents, it also was a time of independence for me and my brothers.

We had opportunities to travel around the country, and there was plenty of time for teenage fun, going out hiking in the hills, and parties and dancing in the Friendship Hotel, where foreign residents in Beijing lived a somewhat sheltered life.

Inevitably, what happened then shaped the way I saw the world.

Like many of my friends I grew to be rather sceptical, to be critical of what people's stated intentions were, and what their grand visions entailed.

My father said when he was locked up, he did think it was a mistake and wondered how he could clear his name.

When he came out he found that many of his Chinese colleagues had gone through very similar experiences.

And he was reconciled to the fact that the leadership was making an earnest effort to get rid of these abuses.

He had lost five years of his life in prison but he didn't see why he should change his ideals.

He and my mother continued to work at the university for many years before retiring, teaching and writing about what was going on in China.

My father also worked on a Chinese-English dictionary, which is still in use today.

That is what they wanted to do, to give meaning to their life.

My father died in China, while my mother still lives there, leading an active life."

Paul Crook left China and came to the UK, where he worked at the BBC World Service for nearly 30 years. He told his story to the BBC World Service history programme, Witness.




On 16 May 1966, Chairman Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The 10-year political and ideological campaign was aimed at reviving revolutionary spirit, produced massive social, economic and political upheaval
Millions of radical youths came to be known around the world as the Red Guards
Millions of young Chinese were packed off to the countryside to learn from the peasants
Hundreds of thousands of people were persecuted
By the end of 1968, the revolution had brought China to the brink of civil war - Mao ordered the Red Guard to be disbanded

Rare Chinese Cultural Revolution photos on display By Alastair Lawson BBC News

The staff of the Heilongjiang Daily accuse an official of 'following the capitalist line'. His dunce cap announces his 'crimes'. (© Li Zhensheng. Courtesy Contact Press Images)

A collection of rare photographs from China's Cultural Revolution is on display in London for the first time since they were hidden for safekeeping nearly 45 years ago.

Li Zhensheng's work has been described as a "unique treasure trove of information" during one of the most turbulent periods of 20th Century history, a 10-year campaign of violence and chaos launched by Mao Zedong's feared Red Guards to enforce communism by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from society.

Millions of people were persecuted in a wide range of abuses carried out across the country, including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture and seizure of property.

Because Li Zhensheng worked for a newspaper in the north-eastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang, he was able to take state-approved images of the revolution in his capacity as a working reporter. His job at the Heilongjiang Daily also left him in the unusual position of being able to record its violence and brutality.

'Counter-revolutionary'

"My work meant that I could take photographs of people being persecuted without being harassed," Mr Li told the BBC after the exhibition opened last month.

But in such a tinder box atmosphere, he fully realised that the sensitive nature of his images meant that it was only a question of time before he too would face possible recriminations.

So Mr Li took the precaution of hiding the negatives away under the floorboards of his flat.

When he was eventually accused of counter-revolutionary activities in 1968, his flat was ransacked by the authorities but the negatives themselves remained undiscovered.

If they had been found, Mr Li would have been severely punished and they would almost certainly have been destroyed.

"It was kind of risky," he says with more than a degree of modesty about a collection of photos that experts say is unequalled in size - there are about 30,000 images in his portfolio - and breadth of subject matter.

All the images were taken at a time when being a photographer in China was a dangerous profession.

Because they were in many cases perceived as intellectuals and publicly denounced, many photographers were not prepared to put their lives and their careers on the line by taking pictures that may have upset the authorities.

But it was a risk that Mr Li was prepared to take.

Although much of his extensive archive was first released in a book in 2003, the display at London's Barbican is the first time that his original prints and negatives have been presented to the public - and the first time they have been displayed as panoramics.

"When I took these photos I was not sure how useful they would be. I never dreamed of having them shown like this in the West," Mr Li said.

"I studied cinematography as a student, and my teacher told me that photographers should record everything they see - good and bad - which is what I did. So I took photos of mass rallies and public humiliations not realising that in future they would prove to be so useful."
'Spellbinding'

Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images was closely involved in producing and editing Li Zhensheng's book and helped to curate his photos at the Everything was Moving exhibition - which also includes political and social works by other international photographers during the 1960s and 1970s.

Mr Pledge discovered Mr Li and his portfolio while travelling in China in 1988 to attend a photography event at China's Museum of National History in Beijing.

Each photo was kept by the photographer in small brown paper envelopes, bound together with rubber bands in groups according to chronology, location, type of film or other criteria.

Each envelope in turn contained a single negative inside a glassine pouch. Some had not been removed since he first cut them from their original negative strips and hid them away nearly 45 years earlier.

On each envelope he wrote detailed captions in delicate Chinese calligraphy. Communes and counties, people's names, official titles and specific events were all carefully noted.

"Li shows surreal events to be all too real. Through his lens, these people and occurrences from so far away are made at once personal and universal," said Mr Pledge.

"While some pictures are mundane depictions of everyday life, some are spellbinding.

"There are photos from one of the eight mass rallies staged by Mao in 1966, for example, and photos of a disgraced official having his hair shaved off by a 14-year-old girl as part of his public humiliation."

Mr Pledge says that the photos are also artistically remarkable because of Mr Li's cinematic training.

"Li is one of the few photographers I know whose work is cinematic yet not contrived - their imagery alone is extraordinary."

At present there is no chance of the photos going on display in China, Mr Pledge says.

"The authorities there want to look forward rather than backwards. They regard these photos as dirty laundry from the past not for public consumption. The concern in China today is about expanding the economy rather than embarrassing events of the past."



Li Zhensheng, Several hundred thousand Red Guards attend a "Learning and Applying Mao Zedong Thought" rally in Red Guard Square (formerly People's Stadium), Harbin, Heilongjiang province, 13 September 1966 (© Li Zhensheng. Courtesy Contact Press Images)

Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s is open until 13 January 2013 at Barbican Art Gallery, London. www.barbican.org.uk

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Originally launched by Mao to rid the Communist Party of his rivals, it ended up destroying much of China's social fabric.

At its start, Mao and his supporters mobilised thousands of young, radical Red Guards who were ordered to destroy the "four olds" in Chinese culture - old customs, habits, culture and thinking.

Colleges were shut so students could concentrate on "revolution", and as the fervour of the movement spread, they began to attack almost anything and anybody that stood for authority.

Schools and temples were destroyed, their teachers and parents vilified and, in thousands of cases, beaten to death, publicly humiliated or driven to suicide.

While this was going on, Mao and his supporters - including his former film-star wife Jiang Qing - purged the party of thousands of officials.

The Cultural Revolution officially lasted until 1976. Although the fervour of the first two years was not maintained, some areas of the country became almost ungovernable. In the cities, only the army prevented a complete breakdown of law and order.

Following Mao's death in 1976, his wife and three other radicals were officially blamed for launching and orchestrating the Cultural Revolution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19807561

China Cultural Revolution murder trial sparks debate

China Cultural Revolution murder trial sparks debate

The trial in China of an elderly man accused of murder during the Cultural Revolution has sparked online debate.

The man, reportedly in his 80s and surnamed Qiu, is accused of killing a doctor he believed was a spy.

The Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, was an era of violence against intellectuals and other alleged bourgeois elements.

Some have questioned why one man is on trial so belatedly when so few officials have been brought to account.

Prosecutors say that in 1967 Mr Qiu, from Zhejiang province, strangled the doctor with a rope.

Charges were filed against him in the 1980s and he was arrested last year, Global Times reported.

Mao's 10-year Cultural Revolution was intended to produce massive social, economic and political upheaval to overthrow the old order.

Ordinary citizens - particularly the young - were encouraged to challenge the privileged, resulting in the persecution of hundreds of thousands of people who were considered intellectuals or otherwise enemies of the state.

The BBC's John Sudworth in Shanghai says the topic of what went on during the Cultural Revolution remains highly sensitive in China and public discussion of it is limited, but that the trial has caused fierce debate online.

One user said on the Weibo micro-blogging site described the case as a farce, saying: "Do they really think this reflects the rule of law?"

The South China Morning Post quoted one internet user as asking: "What about those big names who started the Cultural Revolution? "How come they never took any responsibility?"

However some internet users was a step in the right direction.

"This is good, at least it sends out the message that those who did evil will pay back one day," wrote one user.

The state-run China Youth Daily published an outspoken editorial comparing the excesses of the period to the Nazi atrocities in Europe.

"The most shocking thing about the Cultural Revolution was the assault on human dignity. Insults, abuse, maltreatment and homicide were common. The social order was in chaos," it said.

It suggested that unless the period was finally allowed to be openly reviewed there was a danger of the chaos and violence returning, warning that many people harbour nostalgic views of it.

Analysis
Zhuang Chen Zhuang Chen BBC Chinese

Many Chinese today want the party to face up to the wrongs of the Cultural Revolution era. It is not as taboo a subject as the Tiananmen Square protests. The party's wrongdoings during the Cultural Revolution are discussed openly in the state media, but without discrediting or undermining the party's legitimacy.

Chinese children are not taught in detail about events from that period, which makes it difficult for the younger generation to understand the country's traumatic past.

Mr Qiu's trial has sparked vigorous public debate. Some say it's more important to hold those at the top responsible, rather than make one individual a scapegoat for the party's wrongs.

Nearly 40 years since the Cultural Revolution ended, China is still haunted by events from that period. As recently as last year, Premier Wen Jiabao said the country risked another "historical tragedy" like the Cultural Revolution unless it pushed political reforms.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21529138

Bruce Lee obtained legendary status as a martial artist in part because of a 1965 fight in Oakland, Calif., against Chinese kung fu master Wong Jack Man. It was the last fight of Lee's career.

For nearly 50 years, there has been much speculation and heated debate about what occurred inside of that gym, as very few people witnessed it. But the upshot of the bout is that it helped to develop Lee's views on Jeet Kune Do, which is the forerunner of today's mixed martial arts.

On Tuesday, Deadline.com reported that a movie about the fight that will be called "Birth of the Dragon" will be produced by QED International and Groundswell Productions.

Jack Man is reclusive and rarely does interviews and has rarely spoken of that fight. London said producers will approach him after finishing the screenplay. He said he hasn't reached out to Lee's family, either.

Lee's daughter, Shannon, who runs the Bruce Lee Foundation, said that the fight was significant in her father's life because of the impact it had upon him.

"It was a pivotal moment in his life because he was very disappointed after the fight," Shannon Lee said. "Happy that he won, obviously, and happy he won the right to teach whoever he saw fit is what the challenge was over, the fact that he was teaching non-Chinese people the art of kung fu.

"He was very upset and my Mom said he was sitting outside and had his head in his hands. He told her that he felt the fight had gone on a lot longer than he thought it should and he felt tired and winded from having to run to chase [Jack Man]. He felt his training had let him down. ... He thought it should have been over a lot faster, and it was really from that that he started to change his whole thinking on martial arts."

Wong Jack Man

Wong Jack Man (born c.1940[1] in Hong Kong[2]) is a Chinese martial artist and martial arts teacher, best known for a martial arts duel with Bruce Lee in Oakland in 1964.

Wong taught classes in T'ai chi ch'uan, Xingyiquan and Northern Shaolin at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. He retired in 2005 after teaching for 45 years. His classes continued under his student Rick Wing.[3]
The fight with Bruce Lee

Accounts of Wong's fight with Lee are controversial, as it was unrecorded and held in private.

According to Linda Lee Cadwell, Bruce Lee's wife, Lee's teaching of Chinese martial arts to Caucasians made him unpopular with Chinese martial artists in San Francisco. Wong contested the notion that Lee was fighting for the right to teach Caucasians as not all of his students were Chinese. Wong stated that he requested a public fight with Lee after Lee had issued an open challenge during a demonstration at a Chinatown theater in which he claimed to be able to defeat any martial artist in San Francisco. Wong stated it was after a mutual acquaintance delivered a note from Lee inviting him to fight that he showed up at Lee's school to challenge him. Martial artist David Chin reportedly wrote the original challenge, while Wong asked Chin to let him sign it.

According to author Norman Borine, Wong tried to delay the match and asked for restrictions on techniques such as hitting the face, kicking the groin, and eye jabs, and that the two fought no holds barred after Lee turned down the request.

The details of the fight vary depending on the account. Individuals known to have witnessed the match included Cadwell, James Lee (an associate of Bruce Lee, no relation) and William Chen, a teacher of T'ai chi ch'uan. According to Bruce, Linda, and James Lee, the fight lasted 3 minutes with a decisive victory for Bruce.

Lee gave a description, without naming Wong explicitly, in an interview with Black Belt.

"I'd gotten into a fight in San Francisco with a Kung-Fu cat, and after a brief encounter the son-of-a-bitch started to run. I chased him and, like a fool, kept punching him behind his head and back. Soon my fists began to swell from hitting his hard head. Right then I realized Wing Chun was not too practical and began to alter my way of fighting."

Cadwell recounted the scene in her book Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew:

"The two came out, bowed formally and then began to fight. Wong adopted a classic stance whereas Bruce, who at the time was still using his Wing Chun style, produced a series of straight punches. "Within a minute, Wong's men were trying to stop the fight as Bruce began to warm to his task. James Lee warned them to let the fight continue. A minute later, with Bruce continuing the attack in earnest, Wong began to backpedal as fast as he could. For an instant, indeed, the scrap threatened to degenerate into a farce as Wong actually turned and ran. But Bruce pounced on him like a springing leopard and brought him to the floor where he began pounding him into a state of demoralization. "Is that enough?" shouted Bruce, "That's enough!" pleaded his adversary. Bruce demanded a second reply to his question to make sure that he understood this was the end of the fight."[12]

This is in contrast to Wong and William Chen's account of the fight as they state the fight lasted an unusually long 20–25 minutes. Allegedly, Wong was unsatisfied with Lee's account of the match and published his own version in the Chinese Pacific Weekly, a Chinese language newspaper in San Francisco.

The article, which was featured on the front page, included a detailed description of the fight from Wong's perspective and concluded with an invitation to Bruce Lee for a public match if Lee found his version to be unacceptable. Lee never made a public response to the article. Wong later expressed regret over fighting Lee, attributing it to arrogance, both on the part of Lee and himself