Search Results for: Jean H. Lee agricultural reform farm

September 25, 2012

North Korean Reform Watch 6

We don’t know how extensive North Korea’s agricultural reforms are meant to be, but we do know that North Korea wants us to think that it’s instituting big reforms in its agricultural sector, because it took the AP’s Jean Lee on a show tour of a collective where the “farmers” were primed to tell her it was so. Is it too cynical of me to tend to disbelieve any fact that North Korea wants me to believe is true? Props...

Categories AP Watch/Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
January 26, 2014

Five ways to spot a bullsh*t story about North Korea

Some people, including at least one TV station in Arizona, are reprinting reports circulating on the internet that North Korea claims to have landed a man on the sun. Those reprinting this report are giving it the too-good-to-check treatment – they imply that they don’t quite believe North Korea said it, but they’re also too lazy and sloppy to check. Follow the trail of links to the source, however, and you come to a blog post that’s an apparent parody,...

Categories Media Criticism
September 19, 2012

Open Sources, September 19, 2012

MELANIE KIRKPATRICK’S BOOK ABOUT NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES is out, and while I doubt I’ll have time to read it for weeks (if not months), John Bolton has published a review here, at National Review. Not only does the ludicrously named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) continue its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs unchecked, but the oppression and misery of its citizens remain unequalled. Not even Kim Jong Un’s recent hereditary accession to power as his family’s third Communist dictator has caused serious...

Categories Anju Links