Open Sources
Fighting Words, Part I: In an “only in North Korea” moment, soldiers go on TV to boast about shelling a village full of civilians:
On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program marking Kim’s appointment anniversary and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage. “Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy’s shells being fired into our sacred waters,” soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed colleagues. Their ranks were unknown. “At the order of ‘fire,’ we poured our merciless thunderbolt of fire at the enemy,” he said in a loud, oratory-style speech.
A soldier whose uniform was full of military decorations expressed his loyalty to Kim Jong Il. “Facing the enemy’s provocation, we shouted, ‘Let’s dedicate our lives to fighting the enemy and giving them a merciless death for our dear leader and supreme military commander,'” Kim Kyong Su said.
Their speeches constantly drew applause from the audience — mostly uniformed soldiers who spoke separately and vowed to get tougher with South Korea. They all later sang a military song together.
Fighting Words, Part II: Take that, hippies!
“We can’t afford to have division of you against me in the face of national security, because what’s at stake is our very lives and the survival of this nation,” Lee said in a national radio address. Lee said it was divided public opinion in the wake of the North’s submarine attack on one of South Korea’s navy ships in March, killing 46 sailors, that prompted Pyongyang to bombard a South Korean island near disputed sea border last month, killing four people. North Korea denies attacking the naval vessel. “It is when we show solidarity as one that the North dares not challenge us. Their will to challenge breaks.”
If Lee’s objective is to shame the imbeciles and Fifth Columnists who circulated and supported Cheonan conspiracy theories, I’m with him. If his objective is to justify censorship of the imbeciles and Fifth Columnists, I’m most certainly not with him.
Good evening, welcome, and remain indoors!
North Korea could fire missiles at South Korea next year, analysts predicted Monday, as the isolated North’s hostility toward the outside world deepens while it undergoes a hereditary transfer of power. [….]
Expect the pendulum to swing back in the other direction in 2011, the Institute for National Security Strategy warned in a report published last week and posted to its website Monday. The country could conduct a third nuclear bomb test and wage more attacks on front-line islands — like Yeonpyeong, which was bombarded in shelling that killed four South Koreans last month, the report said. North Korea may even fire missiles and more artillery at front-line South Korean islands, chief researcher Lee In-ho told The Associated Press after the report’s release.
You know, I can’t understand why the North Koreans made the horrendous propaganda blunder of attacking South Korean civilians. From their cold calculus, wouldn’t it have made more sense to shell some U.S. Army target to split South Korean and U.S. public opinion? By now, that window of opportunity has closed. It’s pretty clear by now that they’ve alienated South Korea’s silent majority. Even the Hankyoreh hardly dares to defend them.
Fascinating: I guess I can take that FOIA request to the Office of Foreign Assets Control off my bucket list, since the New York Times has already done it. I’m going to append some of this information to my Litigation page, and see to it that the lawyers suing North Korea have this information. It might be a lucrative source for collecting on those judgments they’ve obtained. Big hat tip to Kushibo for this.
Even the New York Times, which has the worst North Korea coverage of all major U.S. newspapers, occasionally delivers something of interest, if you can just skim past their they-just-want-to-be-loved narrative:
For nearly four years, an unrelenting barrage of government propaganda has promised that North Korea will be strong and prosperous by 2012, the centennial of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founder and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-il. That is now 18 months away. And prosperous is the last word one would use to describe North Korea’s shuttered factories, skimpy harvests and stunted children.
Thus, the Times concludes that what the North Koreans really want is trade and peachy relations with Earth. Hence, they went for a whole weekend without shelling any fishing villages. Is there some kind of chip they get for that, like in A.A.?
The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad profiles Joe Bermudez’s fascinating KPA Journal.