Nothing to Envy, Except …
From KCNA:
All the people should unite close around General Secretary Kim Jong Il and dynamically accelerate the on-going advance for a great surge to materialize President Kim Il Sung’s noble idea of believing in people as in Heaven and thus glorify this significant year as a year of great prosperity to be recorded long in the history of the country, urge papers Thursday in their editorials. [….]
It is the unshakable resolution and will of Kim Jong Il to bring about radical changes in improving the people’s standard of living this year which marks the 65th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea and open a gate to a great prosperous and powerful nation without fail in 2012, the centenary of birth of Kim Il Sung.
Kim Jong Il is making indefatigable forced marches for field guidance, setting forth scientific strategy and tactics for the building of a thriving nation and giving free reign to the mental power of all service personnel and people. This dynamic guidance provides a sure guarantee for winning a great victory in the drive for significantly improving the people’s standard of living.
The on-going campaign for a significant improvement in the people’s standard of living is sure to be crowned with success as Kim Jong Il is leading the drive to build a thriving nation with the most ardent love for the country and its people and indomitable revolutionary spirit and extraordinary energy. [KCNA]
I read significance into stories like these. The regime wouldn’t see the need to publish them if it wasn’t worried about a decline in its popular support. What I don’t claim to understand at all is why the regime publishes these stories in English on KCNA, where it knows the world is watching and drawing inferences.
Another pattern that tends to manifest itself during hard times in North Korea is more reporting on “miracle foods.” The latest idea? Kiwi fruit.
You just have to wonder if anyone still believes any of this, particularly the people who write it.
This link describes the hardy form of kiwi fruit — but it is still unlikely to survive in North Korea: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-208.html. As for the KCNA article, it looks like a premonitory obituary, about how Little Kim worked himself to death in the service of making a great DPRK in 2012. That also suggests a blood-letting of those who contributed to his early and unnecessary demise. There are nasty fights going on in the upper reaches of the Party-military command.
The bit about “miracle foods” reminds me of a hilarious bit in Esquire Magazine’s “Dubious Achievements” awars a few years back. They quoted some North Korean propoganda reporting on the invention of a drink that improves “poor vision” and then Esquire asked, “How about inventing a drink that cures ‘hunger?'”
Kim Jong-il is now in China, it appears. Maybe this note was a reminder for the people to behave while the Dear Leader is away.
Given what happened when he went to Beijing a few years back, maybe this could really be his last will and testament. I seriously wonder if anyone is plotting a coup right now. Maybe offing Pak Namgi for the botched currency reform was a message to everyone up on top to stay in their places.
Funny, I thought the same thing when reading that article. I’ve almost never seen something urging the people to rally around KJI. Usually, the articles insist how much the people love him and have unshakeable faith in him, and bristle at the notion of anything less.
A lot of KCNA articles in recent years have a sort of any-minute-now quality when discussing future prosperity. It’s a no-win game for the regime. As things get worse, they have to become increasingly insistent that better times are right around the corner, yet when those times don’t show up, they lose more and more credibility with the general population.