23 March 2010
Collective Spirit Update: Open News reports a rising number of kkotjaebi (homeless orphans) in North Korea, even as the elite continue to snap up expensive luxury goods imported from China. And this: “According to sources, Pyongyang has more than 1,000 millionaires.” Those sources may or may not be wrong, but what more evidence do you need than this that North Korea has a profound economic imbalance? You know, if Christine Ahn really hurries, she might be able to arrange a trip to North Korea soon enough to retract everything she’s said over the course of the last ten years and salvage some shred of her reputation.
Yodok survivor and Chosun Ilbo correspondent Kang Chol Hwan profiles the recent history of Kim Jong Il’s blunders, and the scapegoats who face firing squads for them.
For once, the State Department gets it right, saying that it will consider resuming food aid to North Korea if Kim Jong Il stops refusing to accept it. There is an important condition: “‘If we (provide humanitarian assistance) in the future, just as we’ve done that in the past, our efforts will be to make sure that the aid actually goes to the North Korean people who need it most and is not diverted to other groups such as the military,’ Crowley said.” I’d go a step further and support food aid to the soldiers, too, as long as international aid workers distribute the food.
I’ve been blogging about North Korea for more than five years now, and I’m still struck by the madness of a government that can’t provide for its people, yet which denies them both food aid and the means to provide for themselves.
Sixteen more North Korean refugees have made it to Thailand. Usually, refugees who get to Thailand are charged with illegal entry, interned briefly, and then flown to South Korea. Hopefully, this group is home free. The group, which includes three kids, had traveled for 20 days.
And speaking of refugees, the increasing effectiveness of their reporting on events in their homeland has inspired this KCNA masterpiece — truly, one for the ages:
The puppet conservative group, obsessed by an anti-DPRK confrontation ruckus, is using even human scum including defectors to the south as a shock brigade in escalating it only to be jeered by the public at home and abroad.
The group whipped together such riff-raffs as defectors to the south, calling them “future forces for unification”. It is busy fabricating what it called the “Alliance for the Movement of Free North”, the “Solidarity of NK Intellectuals” and other anti-DPRK plot-breeding organizations. It is even contemplating organizing a preparatory committee for forming a political party called the “Solidarity of Persons for Unification” and letting its candidate to run for the elections to “local self-governing bodies.” [….]
What should not be overlooked is that the puppet group has made no scruple of hurting the supreme headquarters of the DPRK, not content with raising a hue and cry over its situation while working with blood-shot eyes to spy it with human scum involved.
And this:
It is as clear as a pikestaff that betes noires will make only vituperation just as a crow will never be whiter for often washing.
Um, say what?
Further on, the article threatens the exiles as “living corpses” and warns that they will face “stern trials,” no idle threat for a regime that has abducted and assassinated people inside South Korea. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. On February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list. Discuss among yourselves.
Sure, it’s great to be featured in the Daily NK — it’s a favorite of mine, after all — but I will know I’ve arrived if KCNA ever talks about this blog. I could hope for no greater honor than to be called “brigandish.”
Hmm, trying to dissect that last piece of vitriol:
It is as clear as a pikestaff that betes noires will make only vituperation just as a crow will never be whiter for often washing.
“as clear as a pikestaff,” I guess that’s like “as clear as the tip of a spear” or something.
“betes noires,” From Wiki:
“The term bête noire (pronounced /ËŒbeɪtˈnwÉ‘r/ or /bÉ›tˈnwÉ‘r/; French: [bÉ›tnwaÊ€], “dark beast”) is used to refer to an object or abstract idea that is particularly disliked or avoided.”
“Vituperation,” “verbal abuse or castigation; violent denunciation or condemnation.”
The whole “crow” thing seems to me like “A Leopard never changes its spots.”
Sooooo……It’s clear as the tip of a spear that dark forces will always stir the pot because a leopard can’t change its spots.
I much prefer the ranting, “I just got dumped on MySpace and I’m gonna break out my thesaurus and sound deep,” tirade KCNA goes on.
pike·staff (pkstf) (n.)
1. The shaft of a pike.
2. A walking stick tipped with a metal spike.
I learn something every day.
Looks like a translator overslept and they resorted to babelfish.
“Plain as a pikestaff” and “a crow is no whiter for being washed” are traditional English proverbs, sayings or saws. But no one under the age of 75 is likely to have used them in normal conversation. One is continually struck by the antediluvian linguistic references that are found in KCNA’s tirades. They are made humorous by the process of literal re-translation — but they also suggest that the propaganda sections have a knowledge of English that is entirely book-learned.
Have you seen the latest Good Friends, #4 of March, report which shows just how disastrous the last few months have been for workers?
Word on the street is that Pyongyang is very interested in English teachers these days, especially English speakers with a Brit accent. Canadians are also welcome, as a teaching delegation can only have a limited number of Americans. Another sign that North Korea is a’changing.
Which reminds me of the time I met a refugee who would speak in the thickest Pyunganbukdo accent I’d ever heard but could switch to perfect Queen’s English like flipping a light switch. One of the most surreal experiences of my life.
It is great to see a KCNA writer cranking out ye olde vitriol again. We missed scoring the rants, and there were some great ones a few years ago. Maybe they are out of their slump. More Juicheâ„¢!!!
Perhaps the embargo and frequent juche book burnings have meant they are getting by on pre-WW2 dictionaries found in used book stores in Calcutta.
Re Christine Ahn and message to her if she’s listening:
I’m actually glad that Christine Ahn’s article was published here at OFK (thank you Joshua) and while many assertions are not, in my opinion, factually based, her passion is obvious and not dissimilar to the those who are quietly trying to effect change in NK for the better (religious conservatives and liberals alike), but Christine, please, if you are listening, take a look, in the same critical context as your article is posed, at what the politicians in the democratic party have done (or not done).
“Tightening the noose around North Korea via sanctions and further isolating it has not worked before and will not work this time to improve the human rights of the people living in North Korea. What sanctions may do is force more Koreans, especially Korean women, to cross a dangerous border to face a highly exploitative system that has developed in the area to take advantage of these vulnerable people.”
As Jack pointed out earlier in another post, why isn’t the Obama administration whom you rightly criticize, at the very least, engaging the “vulnerable” to the same extent as they are “trying” to engage the wrong people in the NK regime – furthermore, I agree that our policy is a losing game and one has to wonder, why are we deluding ourselves into thinking that the NK regime will come our way when “the North Korean regime understandably sees (our policy) as a regime-change policy designed to bring about the collapse of their regime through economic pressure.”
Finally, yes, I do feel some solidarity with Christine as an Asian American and would hope that she, too, will wake up to the abhorrent hypocrisy among certain politicians within the democratic party (and certain left-leaning media pundits).
For starters, Christine, why didn’t former President Clinton allow for the immediate admittance of the “vulnerable†North Koreans during the “famine†of the 1990’s, similar to what John F Kennedy did for many Chinese during Mao’s great leap forward “famine†– what is behind their recent policy to limit the number of northeast Asians in our country through various insidious means, to well under 1%…furthermore, wake up to the fact that there is indeed a “link†BETWEEN the rampant political bashing scapegoat tactics used by politicians of the democratic party and by every presidential candidate including Gore and Obama (I witnessed several campaign speeches where this was evident fueled by certain media pundits), AND the riots in Los Angeles where Koreans were targeted – to this day, have never recovered AND the senseless murder of Vincent Chin in Michigan where former employers of an auto plant murdered him as he was celebrating his birthday at a “Chinese party†AND countless suppressed unheard stories (thanks to the left-leaning media) of, yes, oppression by democratic party – ask my husband, he knows I cringe every four years listening to the democratic political speeches designed to “rally support†when in fact, they fuel hatred towards Asians. How they (democratic politicians) have the gall to accuse other parties of hatred and race-baiting, or, own up to their own brand of fear mongering is beyond me… Holier than thou attitudes among some liberals not only make me distrustful of them but are downright dangerous.
Just some food for thought, Christine, if you’re listening.