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Charming

They got away with murder, thanks to the ChiComs, and now they’re flaunting it:

north-korean-poster.jpg

Rough translation: This is what happens to people who f**k with us.

The PSPD was not available for comment. Remember — the world’s most gullible people are often those who call themselves “skeptics.”

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26 Responses

  1. Is it just me, or does the sailor heroically crushing the enemies of the Glorious Republic look slightly, shall we say, slow?

    Maybe the decline in the quality of the propaganda speaks to the overall decline in the quality of life in the DPRK?

  3. That is not the Ch’ŏnan, which is PCC 772. YMS 508 is the Kanghwa, which was taken by the North before the war, I believe.

    There’s your deniability right there.

  4. Justin inquired:

    Is it just me, or does the sailor heroically crushing the enemies of the Glorious Republic look slightly, shall we say, slow?

    With the 쌍꺼풀 on that guy, maybe they’re saying the Russians did it.

  5. MS 508 is the Kanghwa, which was taken by the North before the war, I believe.

    Link? I caught that the number wasn’t 772, but good on you finding the significance of 508, if you have the goods. But I’m still sticking with the deniability being contrived just so that people still get the message.

  6. I don’t think Kushibo was implying that the number changes the significance of the picture, either. He was just the first to wiki that number, and more power to him.

  7. According to this record, the Kanghwa (sic) was sunk in 1959.

    http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/history/smallships/yms.htm

    But, the preceding Wikipedia link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republic_of_Korea_Navy_ships#cite_note-multiple3-20)notes: Gangwha (YMS 508; formerly USS YMS-245; “To South Korea 1948 as Kang Wha; went to North Korea in 1949)

    I’m not sure how to reconcile these two passages.

    And, Joshua, skeptics keep an open mind until falsifiable evidence allows for a conclusion that a majority of skeptical minds can reproduce with the same methodology.

  8. I think your trail runs cold, Kushibo. I am not an expert on military affairs at all, but my brief research indicates that while the number is indeed that of the Kanghwa, the Kanghwa was an auxiliary minesweeper. Judging by drawing, the poster depicts a modern-day Pohang-class vessel of the same make as the Cheonan (two turrets in front, two in back…). YMS ships look nothing like that.

    Here’s how the Cheonan looked intact:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PCC-783.jpg

    Here’s how a YMS class ship looked:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yms324.png

  9. The point is Kushibo, if the source is correct by assertion, the insider Chinese business person’s information (May God bless his clandestine self if true ) proves accurate, this is a VERY recent poster displayed in P’yeong’yong central district and throughout the city with immenent replicas forcasted to be printed. Whether is depicts the Cheonan sinking is irrevalent, except for the for the fact that the smashing hand now depicts a corvette ship. Therefore the DPRK has officially produced propoganda of the north Korean fist smashing a corvette.

    And notice how there is no “puppet” American flag on the said vessel in the depection.

  11. 308 is the number depicted marking the ship. Joshua, can you research to see if the number 308 has any significance.

  13. This trope was made equally obvious (although it was unnoticed by almost everybody) in a KCNA dispatch of June 9 which I’ll excerpt here in its entirety for the convenience of those behind that unfortunate KCNA firewall in South Korea from whose shadow I only just escaped:

    Story of Kim Jong Suk
    Pyongyang, June 9 (KCNA) — One day in September Juche 36 (1947) anti-Japanese heroine Kim Jong Suk, accompanying President Kim Il Sung, arrived at Lagoon Samil.

    After firing at a target floating on water, the President asked her to shoot, handing the pistol to her.

    It was not easy to hit a target playing hide-and-seek.

    She took a quick aim at the target and pulled the trigger.
    The officials admired the heroine for her marksmanship. Kim Jong Suk told them that though Korea was liberated, the southern half of the country was under the control of the United States and that the revolutionary soldiers of the President should be skillful in shooting in order to drive the U.S. imperialists out of south Korea and build a rich country.

    Reflected in her remarks was a profound truth that a revolutionary should not lay down his gun until the final victory of the revolution.

    You might also be interested in the many parallels between the Cheonan and the Pueblo incidents in these 1174 newly-declassified pages from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The collection includes testimony from all kinds of interesting people in 1968, but not, sadly, your favorite target Selig Harrison, as the hearings predate his first trip to Pyongyang by four years. Fortunately Dean Rusk is there to pick up the slack.

    In any case, the poster (and the KCNA dispatch, as allegory is news in NK) would seem to validate the general lines of B.R. Myers’ analysis of internal propaganda.

  14. And, Joshua, skeptics keep an open mind until falsifiable evidence allows for a conclusion that a majority of skeptical minds can reproduce with the same methodology.

    Amen to that, Left Flank

    Ditto81,

    Kushibo and Left Flank already explain what the 508 might mean. See their comments above.

  15. Oh please. You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. The symbolism here is obvious. There was even a KPA General bragging about this in speeches up north shortly after the Cheonan sunk.

  16. But is even this enough to stop the States going weak at the knees now that Pyongyang has rehashed the same, tired and tediously well-timed old statement “revealing” its “newfound” willingness to return to some negotiating forum or another?

    Hell no.

    Wow, this is some awesome on-the-job brinkmanship training for Kim Jong Eun, seriously. Top class, really textbook stuff.

  17. milton, Joshua, KCJ, et al. I apologize for any misunderstanding from my glib one-off that seemed dressed up as a serious comment.

    If that poster truly is as the businessman describes, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that it is supposed to represent the Ch’ŏnan, and I was merely suggesting (joshingly) a way out of sorts that the KCNA could take, just in case they were caught and the gig was up.

  18. I hope the hangul comes out correctly, but here is a direct translation word for word followed by more contextual ones

    덤벼들면 = If attack
    단매에 = one strike [with rod]

    매 = whip, rod, or to use such implements to strike.

    -> If anyone attacks us, we will get them back with one strike

    -> F**k with us, you die!

  19. I think Kushibo is quite right to point out where Pyongyang will use deniability. This isn’t to say that for domestic purposes people won’t know what is being said here. But if questioned by outsiders it is easy to say, “That? Oh, well it can’t be the Cheonan because it has the wrong number!”

  20. With the 쌍꺼풀 on that guy, maybe they’re saying the Russians did it.

    His nose is way too small to be a Russian’s nose as illustrated by a Korean. See news editorial cartoons or kids’ history manhwa like Rhie Won-bok’s controversial Meonnara, Iutnara series for examples. I think the doped-up looking ship smasher is a Korean naturally endowed with 쌍꺼풀.

  22. Sonagi, I think you’re taking my remark too seriously.

    BUT… that guy does have, in my view, a fairly strong nose. And he has the striped shirt characteristic of Russian/Soviet bad guys.

    But more importantly, are you suggesting that North Koreans and South Koreans have the same style of cartoons?

  23. No Kushibo, she is suggesting that people in Scotland eat Kimchi, in exchange for people in Korea eat Haggis…

  24. Like a “spiritual but not religious” American who calls himself a “seeker,” one is not ready to find answers if one insists on being a “seeker.” You just enjoy seeking.

    “Skeptics” are the same; they prefer answers that don’t require they take a really firm stance on anything, since the point is to stay skeptical.

  25. oranckay,

    You’re conflating philosophical skepticism (the position that nothing can really be known) with scientific skepticism (the position that we should only believe things that are well-backed with logic and evidence, and remain agnostic to things which aren’t). Skeptics in the latter sense do take firm stances on many topics, but they’re also modest enough to admit that they can only know certain things with varying degrees of certainty (it’s pretty arrogant to believe a tiny human mind can have the whole universe figured out, don’t you think?) For instance, scientific skeptics are pretty firm in their belief that the scientific method is the best way to acquire and verify new knowledge, or that gravity makes things fall to the center of the Earth, or that the sky is blue because of the way sunlight is refracted in the air.

    It is the latter sense of the word that is being used here. In his main post, Joshua used the word “skeptic” in the pejorative sense to refer to a chronic contrarian.

  26. But more importantly, are you suggesting that North Koreans and South Koreans have the same style of cartoons?

    No. In South Korean manhwa and cartoons, evil foreigners have irises and pupils like everyone else, not eerily glowing eyeballs.

    Clear explanation, Milton. Is that copyrighted?