Today’s Fake News

South Korean civic groups today announced the temporary withdrawal of all anti-American protest signs and slogans after a sudden epidemic of cognitive dissonance (photo). The outbreak followed a U.S. announcement that it would pull 12,500 troops out of Korea by the end of 2005. Anti-U.S. groups, which had demanded a total U.S. withdrawal for years–a result they apparently never considered even faintly possible–reacted to the Pentagon’s announcement with a mixture of sharp criticism, strong approval, apathy, ambivalence, and panic. At least two protestors had to be hospitalized after being hit by their own Molotov cocktails, and several more reported soft tissue injuries to both sides of their mouths.

The cognitive dissonance outbreak came as little surprise to university psychiatrists, who have been writing prescriptions furiously after their patients reported that they overwhelming hate Americans, wish more of them had died in Iraq, prefer that they be segregated away from Koreans as much as possible, and want them to stay in Korea indefinitely.

The groups hope to resolve the cognitive dissonance outbreak in an upcoming round of talks, the First Annual Future of the Anti-U.S. Alliance Talks, to be held next week at Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel, an unfinished behemoth that dominates the city’s skyline as it slowly sinks into the silt by the banks of the Taedong River. Delegates to the upcoming talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, downplayed the possibility of a quarantine. “I have been living with this disease and treating only its superficial symptoms for years,” said one carrier. All of those interviewed expressed confidence that the talks would conclude with a joint statement opposing the U.S. move as soon as Hankyoreh reported what the move would be.