"Soap Opera" Executions v Toul Po Chrey Executions

North Korea is the closest thing we currently have to what Democratic Kampuchea was between 1975 and 1979. The below is nothing more than a South Korean newspaper ventilating a rumor but even that rumor claims to be based on an account of an eyewitness (albeit one but nonetheless an eyewitness). There is very little that is available to either prove or disprove this allegation, except the common perception in the West that something like this would not be out of character for the North Korean leadership. This is very close to how much we know about the alleged executions at Toul Po Chrey. This is very odd for very distinct differences exist between what I call the "Soap Opera" executions in North Korea and the executions at Toul Po Chrey -- (1) North Korea is still a very much closed society; Cambodia is not; (2) The government in power in North Korea today is the very government that has allegedly perpetrated the "Soap Opera" executions and is therefore, by definition, interested in covering them up; in Cambodia, the government of the day is not the same government as the one that allegedly perpetrated the Toul Po Chrey executions; in fact, the government of the day is the one that brought prosecutions against the government that allegedly perpetrated Toul Po Chrey; and (3) No international investigation of the "Soap Opera" executions has been conducted; 7 years of well-funded investigation by two entities of a court with significant international participation has been conducted regarding the Toul Po Chrey executions. The upshot: We know little more about the allegation of Toul Po Chrey executions than we know about that of the "Soap Opera" executions (if anything the latter, unlike the former, allegedly has an eyewitness) and all we have to rely upon is our general perception of the character of the leaderships of Democratic Kampuchea and North Korea respectively and our perception that that character is generally capable of executing people for watching a particular TV show .