Rimjingang: Police find bomb behind Kim Jong Suk statue in Hoeryong
Rimjingang has a pretty good reputation, but this would be extraordinary. Even they aren’t sure if the plot is real or fabricated by the authorities, but why would the authorities fabricate something like that? (Hat tip to a reader.)
Devil’s Advocate:
Maybe they (the authorities) are so out of touch with reality that they think an assault against their beloved mother of the country or whatever she is called will enrage the masses and get them to rat out smugglers?
The idea that the regime would acknowledge violent resistance to the state, particularly directed against one of its revered symbols, just seems unthinkable, even if true — especially if true. It could just be a rumor. Rimjingang doesn’t say anything about the source of this information. Maybe someone heard this in a market, and maybe Rimjingang has a source inside the security forces. On the other hand, Hoeryong is a mining district, and where there are mines there are explosives.
@Justin: For your theory to be true, they would have to announce the “attack” via official channels. AFAIK this story is only on Rimjingang. Why would the regime stage an attack on a sacred monument and not tell anyone about it?
True, it wasn’t a very well-thought out argument but I thought I would throw it out there.
No worries, it’s an interesting theory. I think false flag attacks are a useless tactic in general, because they quickly turn into a sort of Ponzi scheme where you’d have to keep staging more and more false events to maintain whatever lie the first event was supposed to support.
Still, I wonder how much the North Korean people believe the crap their regime spews about imminent attacks – they’ve been imminent for 60 years now.
That video reporting by Rimjingang is some of the bravest in world journalism today.
Something I thought of while I was falling asleep last night: As much as Rimjingang helps people outside North Korea know what’s going on inside North Korea, I think it’s infinitely more important that they let people inside North Korea know what’s going on inside North Korea. I hope Rimjingang has the tools necessary to, for example, let folks in Chongjin know about this act of defiance in Hoeryong.