North Korea Honors Dead Sailors for Saving Kim Portraits

Reports like these are a staple of North Korea’s cult propaganda. Similar reports after the Ryongchon explosion in 2004 evoked global pity and disgust. They’re at it again:

North Korea has poured honors on sailors who drowned to death while saving the portraits of the country’s leaders when their cargo ship sank off the coast of China in November, the communist state’s official media reported Friday.

Yonhap tells us that five actual human beings died when the ship sank, which would be pretty f**ked up if it were really true (which it isn’t). The story would be almost plausible if, say, some of the surviving sailors decided that it was more important to save the portraits than the heavy guys down in the engine room.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Seoul, said the awards, including the title of Labor Hero and the Order of the National Flag 1st Class, were posthumously conferred Thursday on the late sailors for “defending the headquarters of the revolution.”

That the dead were the ones trying to save the portraits is implausible enough that not even a North Korean Yonhap reporter would believe it.

Praising the late sailors for their “heroic self-sacrificing spirit and the revolutionary comradeship in rough wind and waves,” the regime delivered the medals to the bereaved and honored the survivors with medals, the KCNA said. The report did not say how the sailors managed to save the portraits but not their own lives.

Speaking of things that should make you suspicious, here are some pictures of the Jisong-5 crew immediately after the rescue. Who knew that North Korean sailors could write English so well, and that their handwriting looked so … Chinese?

The most difficult thing for me to believe in this whole story is the implication that tales like these still have any persuasive impact on North Koreans over the age of eight. Now more than ever, all of the available evidence — even with the obvious limitations there — points to the great majority of North Koreans being disillusioned or angry with the regime and in no mood to let believe fantasy over reality.