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Tearful Kim Jong Il Apologizes to Starving Subjects for Blowing Their Kids’ Lunch Money on Missiles

I did not make this up, and I have the link to prove it:

North Korea’s state-run media reported Tuesday that Kim Jong-Il shed tears of regret during the country’s controversial rocket launch because he could not use the launch funds to provide aid to his people, the AFP reported. [….]

Kim “felt regret for not being able to spend more money on the people’s livelihoods and was choked with sobs,” AFP quoted ruling communist party paper Rodong Sinmun as saying. [Fox News]

This is one of the hazards of blogging about North Korea — sometimes, satire can’t top the real thing.

As noted previously, launching this missile probably cost much more than a year’s supply of international food aid. Apparently, this point isn’t lost on the people of North Korea, either. I wonder whether North Korea would have produced propaganda like this ten years ago. B.R. Myers has written about the maternalistic character of North Korean propaganda, and its tendency to infantilize the people as objects of the Leader’s attentive doting. Since the famine, regime propaganda has acknowledged starvation and suffering in the North, but the official reaction to this used to be much more stoic, reenforcing self-sacrifice to keep the Yankee hordes at bay. North Korean propagandists may seem unsophisticated to us, but they probably operate on a much higher, more subtle level to a North Korean audience. Clearly, they see the potential for popular discontent about how the nation’s resources are being expended. This is the first tacit acknowledgment I’ve seen of that potential.

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4 Responses

  1. “Apparently, this point isn’t lost on the people of North Korea, either. I wonder whether North Korea would have produced propaganda like this ten years ago. “

    Indeed I detect a deliberate tone of sarcasm in the KCNA report. I wonder if stuff like this is getting through because Kim is too ill to keep up with the media, and the censors either don’t care or are willfully allowing hollow praise as a form of criticism. I might just venture over and read the Korean version. It’s possible that the translators are able to sneak a little sarcasm into the English versions.

  2. Here is what Myers thinks is the reasoning for this news release:

    Brian Myers is an analyst in North Korean political propaganda at South Korea’s Dongseo University. He says North Koreans are used to the portrayal of their leader as too preoccupied with national defense to worry about the economy. He adds, the media reference to Kim Jong Il’s tears may have been a response to South Korean government public statements about the expense of the launch.

    “Ten years ago, I think this criticism would probably not have bothered Pyongyang very much, because the country was more or less sealed off from the outside world,” Myers said. “But, now, hundreds of thousands if not more North Koreans are accessing outside sources of information. And, I think this puts the Kim Jong Il regime under pressure to respond very quickly to the propaganda offenses of the other side.”

    http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-08-voa23.cfm

    Just all the more reason why defector radio stations broadcasting into North Korea should be funded because they are obviously having an effect in countering the regime propaganda.

  3. I poked around both KCNA and Rodong Shinmun stories and couldn’t find the quoted text in either Korean or English. I did find a story in Korean elaborating on some very generous gifts of foodstuffs and household items bestowed upon his subjects, who were reminded to think of him as a father figure. He certainly has never preoccupied himself with economic development, but I think the media does strive to portray him as a benevolent benefactor and provider.