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Tag Archives: North Korea

Moon's Pyongyang Connections?

Given what we already know about the character of Reverend Sun Myung Moon (chiefly, that he is the head of a strange cult-like church which believes the only way to world peace is to establish a global theocracy with himself at the head) and the closeness of his ties to our national government (do you [...]

North Korean Soccer Fans

Both the Marmot's Hole and North Korea Zone reported on the violence that accompanied North Korea's loss to Iran during a World Cup qualifying game earlier this week. However, this quote from KCNA is amazing (emphasis mine):
At the end of the match all the spectators were angered and vigorously protested the wrong refereeing by the [...]

Korea in '16 Military Wives'

When I first noticed this, I assumed that I was making some sort of mistake. In the video for "16 Military Wives," we learn about the majority of characters through their Model United Nations affliations. As you can see from the picture on the right, one of the United States' three friends is the Republic [...]

North Korean Pots Upbraid US Kettles

If you replace every occurrence of "US" with "North Korea" in this KCNA article, it actually makes more sense.
Upset by this, it is employing a trite trick to divert worldwide criticism of it elsewhere by pulling up other countries over "human rights issues". But such a base and sinister method will get it to nowhere.
This [...]

The Korean People's Army Orders You to Cease & Desist

From Matt Yglesias comes an interesting website on Pyongyang's subway system. While the public system seems relatively small (only 17 stations), there are indications that the secret military subway system is far larger:
The extent of the secret system can be guessed by the number
of trains purchased from Changchun, more than twice the minimum number
needed [...]

KCNA RSS Feeds

Renzomatic's comment reminded me that I had not read KCNA in a while. Recalling that creating a RSS feed for Haaretz increased the frequency with which I read the publication, I decided to do the same with KCNA. A quick search found a Bloglines feed that has not been updated in almost a month, and [...]

North Korean Explosion Redux

I was looking through my stats page (sorry, no public access) when I noticed a ridiculous amount of traffic to my post about the Ryongchon explosion, along with several search queries for various permutations of "north korea explosion." "But that I happened in April," I thought, "that's really old news." Then the obvious truth hit [...]

North Korean Web Portals

North Korea zone reports on a new official website for North Korea. Located at kcckp.net, Naenara-DPRK looks a lot "slicker" than the other site (2000 called. They want their non-standards based Dreamweaver 4 website back). The new site looks more like a web portal than the source of North Korean propanganda. However, once you actually [...]

Taepodong 2

As you may recall, in February and March of last year, the Bush Administration made the case that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States (although they may have not used those exact words), due to the fact that it would be able to directly threaten the United States with WMD.
What does this [...]

Surprise Surprise

…even Communist newspapers have to tell the truth sometimes. It is a relatively terse article, considering the scope of the Ryongchon distaster, but it's better than nothing, I guess.

Explosion in North Korea

Having finished today's classes (5 hours!), I settled down in front of my computer, and began to read the New York Times, as I am wont to do. I immediately jumped up again as I read this article:
The cable television network YTN estimated that up to 3,000 people had been killed or injured in [...]

"Sanctioning" Repression

Rebecca Mackinnon writes about the uselessness of sanctioning North Korea without the support of other countries. Matthew Yglesias agrees.
I feel that more pressure should be put on the European countries and our allies in regards to presenting an united front towards repressive regimes. Similarly, there should be more stringent enforcement of penalties against [...]

License to "Il"

He'll have my head for forgetting his birthday. Join in the celebration.

the KCNA

There is something about the state newspapers functioning in totalitarian governments that tickles me. It is the same with supermarket tabloids and the Iraqi information minister; they must know that they are not telling the truth (I assume, perhaps wrongly, that the journalists at the Korean Central News Agency are allowed access to external [...]