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Category: WTF?

May 27, 2009

What? That Is Your Day Job? (Part 2)

David Albright, who has spent the last several years discounting the evidence of North Korea’s nuclear cheating and cheerleading for diplomatic giveaways to Kim Jong Il, has joined the coalition of the willing.  Sort of: “North Korea’s thrown something in our face that we have to deal with now and it could have tremendous ramifications for the ability to stop proliferation in the future,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nuclear disarmament think...
Categories Washington Views/WTF?
May 27, 2009

What? That Is Your Day Job? (Part 1)

I never was a fan of Lawrence Eagleburger, and I see no reason to become one now: VARNEY: Would you — do you believe that the U.S. and/or China should now seriously consider and plan for a military attack? EAGLEBURGER: I have believed that for some time. So, you’re — you’re call — you are asking the wrong person, I guess, because I have felt, as I say, for the better part of 10 years, that we could see this...
Categories Washington Views/WTF?
May 22, 2009

The Banality of James Church

The pseudonymous author is asked to perform his only apparent talent for an interviewer:  writing dialogue between fictional North Korean bureaucrats — here, as based on Church’s assumptions about the ongoing captivity of Laura Ling and Euna Lee.  Judging from what Church wrote for this interview, I wouldn’t call Church a bad writer or an especially good one.  I suspect the final revelations about Ling and Lee, if we ever have them, will be unkind to some of Church’s assumptions,...
Categories Media Criticism/WTF?
May 21, 2009

Smart, Tough Diplomacy: Hillary Clinton Asks Bloggers to Free U.S. Journalists from North Korea

Because if there’s one thing Kim Jong Il simply cannot withstand, it’s that lethal instrument of soft power known as “snark:” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday urged women students to use the Internet to campaign for the release of two American women journalists held in North Korea. Clinton urged graduates of Barnard College, a women’s university in New York City, to show their opposition to Pyongyang’s detention of the two journalists who are due to go on...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Diplomacy/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 30, 2009

Korean Word of the Day: 막무가내

This word, pronounced mak-mu-ga-nae, roughly translates to that most untranslatable of Yiddish words:  chutzpah. On Tuesday, North Korea had the chutzpah to demand (막무가내로 우기다) that the U.N. Security Council apologize for the flaccid non-binding presidential statement it offered in lieu of any meaningful enforcement of the two Security Council resolutions North Korea’s recent missile test violated: The UNSC should promptly make an apology for having infringed the sovereignty of the DPRK and withdraw all its unreasonable and discriminative “resolutions”...
Categories "United" Nations/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 9, 2009

Despite “Sports Diplomacy,” Assholes Still Firmly in Control in North Korea

Here’s another brick that can be pried out of the wall of Unifiction idiocy. Shallow thinkers across South Korea once told us that sports diplomacy would be another one of those gentle, warming rays that would eventually give us a kinder, gentler North Korea. Proponents of that theory were willing to overlook some early setbacks from the 2002 Universiade Games at Taegu, when North Korean “journalists” attacked peaceful human rights protestors, and when North Korean cheerleaders became hysterical at the...
Categories WTF?
February 8, 2009

Life (in North Korea) Imitates ‘The Onion’

What motivates me to go on, day after day, you ask? NORTH Korea has declared it is actively pursuing a space program, amid reports from US and South Korean officials that Pyongyang is preparing to test fire a long-range missile. Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the ruling communist party, said the North had every right to develop a space program, as a member of the international community. “The DPRK’s (North Korea) policy of advancing to space for peaceful purposes...
Categories Humor/Satire/Unintended Humor/WTF?
February 6, 2009

‘Chosun Gripped With Boundless Emotion and Joy’

You have to wonder what goes through the minds of the people who write this stuff today. It’s so over the top as to suggest a subversive intent. KCNA’s words, my links: Pyongyang, February 4 (KCNA) — Upon hearing the news that General Secretary Kim Jong Il was nominated as a candidate for deputy to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly at Constituency No. 333, the entire army and people are full of great happiness and pride of having the peerlessly...
Categories Kim Jong Il/Unintended Humor/WTF?
August 24, 2008

Let Them Eat Grass: North Korea’s ‘Miracle’ Foods

Displaying its characteristic talent for attracting universal apathy punctuated by brief moments of global  disgust, the  North Korean regime claims to have invented noodles that make you feel full  … even when you aren’t.    North Korean scientists have developed a new kind of noodle that delays feelings of hunger, a Japan-based pro-Pyongyang newspaper has reported.  The noodles were made from corn and soybeans, the Choson Shinbo said.  They left people feeling fuller longer and represented a technological breakthrough, the...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/WTF?
August 22, 2008

Die, Swedish Imperialists!

The blog is writing itself again: The Communist North Korean government has declared Sweden their enemy and a US war puppet.  […]   According to information from the Swedish Armed Forces, this brusque message was first conveyed in a North Korean radio broadcast, then printed as an official document and distributed to the United Nations. The North Koreans’ attack is not directed against the Swedish government as such, but against Sweden’s and other neutral countries’ military observation missions on the...
Categories Europe/Unintended Humor/WTF?
August 21, 2008

N. Korea: We Have No Human Rights Issues, You Slave-Trading Imperialists!

If you haven’t read the full KCNA editorial denouncing the United States for not de-listing the North as a state sponsor of terrorism, the quotes the media I showed you here really don’t do it justice: Explicitly speaking, there is no “human rights issue” much touted by the U.S. in the DPRK. The Korean people fully enjoy genuine freedom and rights under the socialist system where all people form a big family. It is the consistent popular policy of the...
Categories Anju Links/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks/WTF?
August 5, 2008

N. Korean Defectors Escape Severe Malnutrition Only to Acquire “Chronic” Case of Munchies

Just when I think I’ve seen everything …. Two North Korean defectors living in Britain were jailed after they were caught working at a secret cannabis farm, a U.S. broadcaster reported Saturday. Radio Free Asia (RFA), monitored in Seoul, said a Liverpool court sentenced this week the North Korean men — who lived in the country under refugee status — to jail terms, after they were arrested in March during a police raid of a cannabis farm in Southport, a...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Refugees/WTF?
April 7, 2008

Coreana Tries to Suppress Blogger Criticism of Nazi Ads

So instead of engaging in a moment of introspection about its tasteless Nazi-chic advertising, Coreana goes after Brian for putting the ads up on YouTube. And while they have removed Hitler’s name from the ad, the obvious Nazi symbols remain. Says CNN: A Korad official, Seo Sang-hee, confirmed the ad was meant to invoke a Nazi soldier and Hitler, which she said symbolize “revolution” in keeping with the lotion’s “revolutionary” dual functions. Seo said the commercial was not designed to...
Categories Censorship/Korean Society/WTF?
April 3, 2008

Not Another Nazi Ad Campaign in Korea …

Yes, I’m afraid it is. Hurry and see the video on this Naver page before it’s taken down. [Update: Brian, praise be unto him, made YouTube videos, which you can see on a previous post at his blog. Oddly enough, I looked for something about this on YouTube and didn’t find them, but it’s good to record these things for posterity.] “Even Hitler didn’t unite the East and West.” Isn’t fascism erotic? I wonder how long she would have lasted...
Categories Korean Society/Racism/WTF?
February 21, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel, Part 2

Lorin Maazel could really use a publicist who understands the concept of “stop digging.” Just when we thought we’d put this flame war behind us, he goes off again, in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page. With time for further reflection and careful editing, here’s how he rephrases his central point: If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record,...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Human Rights/WTF?
February 16, 2008

Damn You, Henry Kissinger!

That bastard Kissinger … thanks to him, Gong Li will never knock on your door to borrow a cup of sugar, and all of our lives will be poorer in ten million ways: Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chinese leader Mao Zedong made what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States. “You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said, according...
Categories China/WTF?