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.