Saturday, March 31, 2007

Devils and Monsters in the DPRK

The pictures on the questions sheet are from here and here. Others I thought of including are this one with Peng Dehuai and this one, which is all over the Internet, in Russia with his family.

While looking for pictures, I found many a hilarious North Korean-run website. This one takes the cake for sheer unconscious hilarity. It's obvious the blogger really wants to criticize the west, but clearly has no idea what is going on. As far as I can tell, s/he doesn’t understand the Kiss and McDonald's references in the first picture (calling them "devils, monsters"), and, if you scroll further down, somehow finds dancing with your own daughter to cross the line into pedophilia.


But I wonder how much of this is honest naivite--does the author really think the US soldier has just slapped the two other people in the March 14 picture? Incidentally, the comments for this particular post are worth a quick look--it's an odd mix that shows apparent Americans and North Koreans attempting to interact. One of the posters, Peter Fallon, is a professor at Roosevelt University, and has a blog on DPRK ignorance.





3 comments:

Sayaka said...

Songun is a satirical blog mocking North Korea. There are lots of funny stories if you look closely, but also great video footage from North Korea.

redbean2 said...

It looks like I'm the April Fool. But does that mean this professor has bought the site, too, or is he in on the joke? Anyway, thanks for letting me know. I still think it's funny. :)

Peter K Fallon, Ph.D. said...

Sayaka has it right. But I'd go a step further: Songun is mocking not just Kim Jong Il and North Korea, but the entire political spectrum left of the Project for a New American Century (and that's a whole lotta spectrum). And he is based in Bucharest, Romania.

Essentially, he equates anyone who doesn't agree with the logic (such as it is) of Bush foreign policy with "Juche philosophy."

Yeah, I get the joke. I've gotten the joke for the last two years when I first found a link to my blog IN THE DARK on Songun's list of links. I find it difficult to believe (sorry) how many people actually think this "blog" is legitimate. Go figure.

His link to my blog is a sort of "guilt by association" and I've asked (very kindly) to have it removed. He hasn't seen fit. So now I just post everything I post on my blog in his comment section.

I've actually made a few converts.