The Hankyoreh: A Wealth of Embarrassments

The Hankyoreh watches North Korea TV for instructions analysis following U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 and pronounces North Korea’s reaction “moderate,” even finding reason to believe that it creates “room to negotiate.”  No, seriously:

In a Foreign Ministry statement released immediately after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 1874, North Korea announced it would weaponize all newly extracted plutonium, begin uranium enrichment and react militarily to a blockade. All three of these threatening measures fell within a range already predicted. Since the Foreign Ministry statement did not fully advocate the “retreat is defeat and death” and “desperate will” communicated in the North Korean news outlet Rodong Sinmun’s June 9 editorial, some experts are analyzing the statement as relatively mild.  [The Hanky]

And some “editorial experts” have enough shame to remain anonymous.  Meanwhile, in an alternative universe, those fists still aren’t unclenched:

In Pyongyang, a massive crowd of North Koreans packed the capital’s main square in a rally to condemn the U.N. resolution, footage from APTN in North Korea showed. The isolated, totalitarian regime often organizes such rallies at times of tension with the outside world.  APTN North Korea estimated the crowd at about 100,000.

“We strongly condemn and wholly reject the U.N. Security Council’s resolution on sanctions, fabricated at the instigation of U.S. imperialism hell-bent on its attempt at stifling” the North, Kim Ki Nam, a top Workers’ Party official, told the crowd.

Participants clapped and chanted “Condemn! Reject!” in unison, pumping clenched fists into the sky.  [AP]

I must lack the subtlety to see the veiled diplomatic outreach in this.

Honestly — do the people who write for the Hanky have any concept of objectivity or capacity to accept the obvious, or does all of the shilling for Kim Jong Il eventually induce neurosis?