How do North Koreans Really Feel About Kim Jong-il's Death?
MALVEAUX: Many of us are taken aback by these pictures. All right. So they show North Koreans crying hysterically over the death of their dictator, Kim Jong-il. All right. So we wondered, what if all that sobbing -- is it real, is it just for show? Are they crying for a man? Essentially, they are crying for a man who allowed them to starve while he built nuclear weapons, indulged in taste for cigars, cognac, gourmet food. He kept them isolated from the rest of the world. So you've got to wonder, how do they really feel? Our Stan Grant, he goes looking for the answers. He is just over the border, in the Chinese town of Dandong.</s>GRANT (voice-over): This man does not want to be identified. He's afraid even to talk. "There are many North Korean spies here," he says. "Many. Many. There are hundreds of spies." We'll call him Mr. Lee, a North Korean living on the China side of the border in Dandong. He says he risks death just being seen talking to us. "North Koreans don't speak openly," he says. "If anyone knows I'm talking, I'll be sent to prison. And there's no mercy there. I'd be shot dead." As we persevere, he opens up a little more, painting a picture of a harsh life across the border where people are starving, aid is scarce, and the only factories operating are for making military weapons. Right now he says he fears a desperate country with a potential power vacuum that could so easily lash out. "Before Kim Jong-il died, he was preparing the country for war and death," he says, "and to hand power to Kim Jong-un." Other North Koreans here are in mourning, weeping openly for the "Dear Leader. Flowers continue to be delivered to the North Korean consulate building. Korean businesses, restaurants normally flourishing, have closed their doors. (on camera): It's closed? (voice-over): Dandong is separated from North Korea by the Yalu River, about a kilometer, less than a mile across. Cross-border trade flourishes here. China props up the destitute North Korean economy. Dandong is a bustling, small Chinese city -- tall buildings, noise and traffic. On the other side, emptiness and silence. A lone, disused Ferris wheel a symbol of a colorless world. From this pedestrian bridge we can walk right to the edge of the border. So close, yet so utterly different. (on camera): This is the end of the line. This is about as far as the bridge goes. It stops right here, where this side of the line, I'm in China. If we step out from this bridge here, I enter North Korea. (voice-over): Mr. Lee knows too well what happens there -- a regime obsessed with pumping money into its military, while desperately poor people go hungry, he says. "Pig feed, that's all we can eat. Corn. No one can get full on that," he says. "There is no food, not even food from China. It's been blocked for three years." "Even if you have money," he says, "there is nothing to buy. Any goods are traded for what little food remains." Mr. Lee is well off by his countrymen's standards. He has relatives on the China side who run businesses. It's a lifeline for his family back home. Mr. Lee is able to work here on a limited visa, but he crosses back and forward just to keep his family alive. "I can't not go back. I have to. I have a son and daughter," he says. "If I don't go back, they can't survive." He has shed no tears for Kim Jong-il and harbors no great hope for the so-called "Great Successor," Kim Jong-un. But, still, he lives in fear of what the North Korean regime can do. Spied upon, afraid to speak out, as much a prisoner of the hermit kingdom as those whose lives are trapped in its borders. Stan Grant, CNN, Dandong, on the China/North Korea border.</s>MALVEAUX: More people are working now in dozens of states, and the national unemployment rate is now down. We're going to take a look at the bright spots in the job market. And for more than 40 years, McDonald's has been far away the biggest burger chain. But "The Wall Street Journal" may have just started a beef by projecting a new number two. The second place burger wars are sizzling.