Monthly Archive: December, 2010

Fighting Words, Part I: In an “only in North Korea” moment, soldiers go on TV to boast about shelling a village full of civilians: On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program marking Kim’s appointment anniversary and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage. “Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy’s shells being fired into our sacred waters,” soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed...

North Korea, which President Bush removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened a “sacred war” against South Korea. Well, that’s just great — even godless atheists are getting in on the whole “jihad” thing.______________________________________________________________________ If your thoughts turn to the unfortunate people of North Korea this Christmas, LiNK is raising funds to help them.______________________________________________________________________ Hmmm. Can’t link it, but I’ve just been passed an assessment by a respected publication that says there’s...

But they’re still members in good standing: The UN General Assembly passed a resolution Tuesday condemning and expressing deep concern over human rights violations in North Korea. By a vote of 106-21 with 55 abstentions, the assembly backed a November 18 committee resolution condemning “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment… public executions, extrajudicial and arbitrary detention” in the hermit state. It also condemned the communist nation’s use of capital punishment for political and religious reasons, as...

In an effort to put an empirical measurement on the immeasurable, The Washington Post reports that South Korea is creating a North Korea Situation Index. If this is what I think it is, it’s a series of survey questions the South Korean Embassy has sent out to people it considers “experts” on the subject (and through some grievous error, I was also asked to fill this out). The survey consists of a series of questions about North Korea’s economy, its...

So North Koreans also find South Korean dramas to be dull and formulaic? We have more in common than I’d ever suspected: “In South Hamgyong Province, only a few households are able to capture TV signals, but reception is quite good in Hwanghae or South Pyongan provinces,” Kim said. “People there look forward to the evenings when dramas are broadcast.” He said North Koreans also enjoy watching news and current events programs as well and power their TVs with their...

Former chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill was quoted by VOA as saying that the North’s disclosure of the uranium enrichment plant proves that the regime lied in the six-party talks. May these words be engraved on a tablet as the epitaph of all agreed frameworks. Still, it’s a bit hard to take Christopher Hill’s outrage that he was lied to at face value, given how much he helped them lie to the rest of us. __________________________________ South Korean-based broadcasters...