China, Korea, and the Persistence of Mendacity
It’s nice to see Koreans calling China on its P.R. blunders with greater frequency these days:
In its feature on the 60th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, the International Herald Leader, a newsweekly of the Xinhua News Agency, said the North Korean army launched the war by crossing the 38th parallel and seizing South Korean capital Seoul in three days.
The article immediately drew attention, with some placing significance on China’s first admission of military aggression by North Korea at the start of the war.
However, the article was soon removed from the weekly’s Web site as well as the sites of Xinhua and other portals. It is suspected that the Beijing government had a hand in removing the pieces, fearing the repercussions from North Korea. But the fiasco leaves us feeling bitter, as our two states could form a constructive and mature partnership based on an accurate acknowledgement of historical events. [Joongang Ilbo]
We apologize for the fault in the subtitles. The persons responsible for sacking those who were just sacked, have been exiled to the countryside.
This is completely off-topic and about twenty years old now (although it demonstrates how little things change in North Korea) but someone posted a link to this on my blog and thought some of you might be interested. It’s written by a British doctor and psychiatrist who goes by the pen name Theodore Dalrymple who visited the country back in 1989:
http://blog.skepticaldoctor.com/2010/01/15/classic-dalrymple-the-wilder-shores-of-marx-excerpt-1991.aspx
I also linked to the article you cite here in a blog post of my own:
http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2010/06/whoops.html
Angrysoba, I loved that picture you made up.
Do you mean the one from the scanned book of “The US Imperialists started the Korean War”? It has been sitting on my shelf for some time now, unread. I doubt I’ll ever read it, in fact, as life is too short. Feel free to use it any time if you like, though.