Regards.

Enzo

Enzo

Original post here is quite interesting, glad to see it up. Haven’t met David Hawk (or most of y’all, to use a bit of my native Minnesotan argot), but now have something to go on. So it’s all helpful. And I love the Hwang Jong-yop paparrazzi shot in particular — it reminds me of the time I was trapped between Chris Hill and a swarm of East Asian reporters after a public conference we did at the State Department in 2006. I do believe Joshua has had some choice comments in the past about Hill’s enjoyment of the culture of media spectacle.

I would give it about 25% credibility or less.

It is pretty much a given that the reporter was given a tour which means everything was prepared for his viewing. It is no different than those massive Arirang Games and other staged elements in the shows they put on for foreigners when they go to NK. That is why they don’t allow tourists to stray away from the minders much less roam freely around the countryside.

I can remember reading bits and pieces over the years from defectors about how even students at the top universities in NK had to get special permission to read the works of Carl Marxs and Lenin and other leading communists from Russia and China.

Of course, things can change – even in North Korea. But, given all we can see in contemporary NK, it would take much better evidence than what foreign reporters are allowed to see before I’d believe the government allows North Koreans to visit the library and read most any Western book they please….

…For that matter, I can remember going to the South Korean National Library in the late 1990s, and I could not browse the book stacks. You have to locate the title and info of a book in their holding, fill out a slip, give it to a staff member, and wait for them to return with it….

…it was a national library rather than a regular library. It was more a repository for books and other such material and designed for researchers and storage, not casual reading.

http://www.repubblica.it/2009/10/sezioni/esteri/corea-nord/corea-nord/corea-nord.html

I find this news really surprising. Does anyone of you have some information about that? Is it possible to check it? How would you explain such thing?

Thank you for your time.

Regards.

Enzo

A couple of years ago, when the NK Human Rights Week happened in the US, I noticed that a small number of groups like The Heritage Foundation were uptodate on taking advantage of multimedia and the spread of broadban access.

There is no reason why conferences like this should have a short, conference-like shelf life – where the bulk of the people are influenced by it beyond one day’s news coverage are those who read the papers presented —- who are generally people who already know about NK and the situation and are already interested in it.

Video of “boring” conferences might not generate much more interest in the topic spreading more information — but it would reach more than using no multi-media of these events…