Search Results for: rodman propaganda

August 1, 2017

Propaganda in the age of Kim Jong-Un: A discussion with Professor B.R. Myers

What follows is an email discussion between myself and Professor B.R. Myers of Dongsoo University, author of “The Cleanest Race” and “North Korea’s Juche Myth,” and keeper of the Sthele Press blog. At the end of the discussion, I thought readers might enjoy reading it, and Professor Myers graciously agreed to let me print it here. ~   ~   ~ Stanton: A few weeks ago, a commenter at my blog cited your work as evidence that North Koreans probably still...

Categories Interviews/Propaganda/Racism/Subversion
January 7, 2014

Lifestyles of the Deeply Stupid, Pyongyang Edition (or, Dennis Rodman, the accidental activist)

Despite the loss of his sponsor, Dennis Rodman is back in Pyongyang with several other NBA has-beens for what Rodman calls a “birthday present” basketball exhibition game for Kim Jong Un. Rodman appears to be taking his talking points directly from KCNA: “The marshal is actually trying to change this country in a great way,” Rodman said of Kim, using the leader’s official title. “I think that people thought that this was a joke, and Dennis Rodman is just doing...

Categories Sports/Useful Idiocy
December 25, 2013

Does this mean we can all forget about Dennis Rodman again?

Kim Jong Un has proven to be beneath the corporate image of the Irish online gambling company, Paddy Power, which has withdrawn from sponsoring Dennis Rodman’s basketball invitational, planned for Kim Jong Un’s birthday in January. Rodman’s mouthpiece says that he plans to continue with the game anyway, but The Simon Wiesenthal Center is asking other former NBA players to boycott the game: “Everyone it seems, except Dennis Rodman, understands that this is not a game to promote peace, but...

Categories Human Rights/Kim Jong Un/Useful Idiocy
December 13, 2013

AP protests “propaganda” photos of Obama after sponsoring propaganda photos of Kim Il Sung.

[UPDATE: Welcome, Weekly Standard readers.] The Associated Press, which in 2012 co-sponsored “A Joint Exhibition by the Associated Press and the Korean Central News Agency Marking 100 Years Since the Birth of Kim Il Sung,” is furious at the White House for using official photographers (rather than independent photojournalists) to “propagate an idealized portrayal of events on Pennsylvania Avenue.” Writing in the pages of The New York Times, Santiago Lyon, Vice President and Director of Photography at The Associated Press, assails...

Categories AP Watch
October 30, 2019

Report: Kim Jong-un starves his people, America blamed, women hardest hit

It has now been five years since a U.N. Commission of Inquiry found exhaustive evidence of Pyongyang’s culpability for “crimes against humanity, arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State,’” including “the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.” It has been less than a year since Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of witnesses to find that North Korea’s government has built a pervasive culture of rape, where officials prey on women with impunity. But now, a group...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy
July 9, 2015

The summer of their discontent: Is Kim Jong Un losing the elite classes?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a spate of reports about defections from North Korea. Broadly, this is nothing new. The defection, for example, of three crew members of a fishing vessel is life-changing for three men, but is no more likely to rend the fabric of Kim Jong-Un’s regime than 27,000 other defections, almost all of them of people the regime had written off as expendable.  Recently, however, we’ve seen multiple reports suggesting something very different, and vastly more consequential...

Categories Defectors/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
June 16, 2015

What we learned from the Koryo Hotel fire: AP Pyongyang is not a news bureau (updated)

If one place in North Korea is the vortex of “engagement” with Kim Jong Un’s regime, and of every tendentious argument that this engagement will coax him into glasnost and perestroika, Pyongyang’s Koryo Hotel is that place. By North Korean standards, it’s luxurious, with a casino, a revolving restaurant, a hard-currency gift shop, and a lovely selection of listening devices. For years, it had been the favored venue for diplomats, tourists, investors, aid workers, and the occasional imbecile with more...

Categories AP Watch
October 10, 2014

Kim Jong Un is a no-show again (updated 11 Oct 2014)

TOKYO – The mystery surrounding the whereabouts and status of Kim Jong Un deepened on Friday, when the North Korean leader missed a celebration for the 69th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party. It is now more than five weeks since Kim was seen in public, and his absence, coupled with surprisingly frank official reports that he is suffering from “discomfort” have sparked rumors of every malady from obesity to overthrow. As with most things concerning North...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
August 15, 2014

Pyongyang, as Leni Riefenstahl might have seen it*

Last week, a slick new video of Pyongyang by Rob Whitworth and JT Singh infected many writers and readers who don’t know much about North Korea with the Madonna Syndrome, defined as the illusion of entering virgin territory actually while plodding along a tired, well-worn, loveless, and morally ambiguous path in the footsteps of Dennis Rodman. The chirpy reaction of Washington Post blogger Abby Phillip was typical: A new video aims to show a different side of Pyongyang. It is...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Propaganda
May 7, 2014

Really? North Korea called President Obama “a wicked black monkey”? (Update: It’s worse than that; Update 2, now with full translation)

Oh, yes they did: Park made waste water-like reckless remarks slandering the DPRK’s line on simultaneously developing two fronts after inviting her American master reminiscent of a wicked black monkey to visit south Korea on April 25…. The people are unanimous in deploring the fact that there is no remedy for curing Park’s mental disease as she has gone so mad with hurling mud at the nuclear deterrence of justice which the fellow countrymen in the north have had access...

Categories AP Watch/Diplomacy/Racism/WTF?
April 30, 2014

Eagerly awaiting Christine Ahn’s reaction to North Korea’s sexism and homophobia

Now that North Korea’s state media have called South Korea’s female president a “whore,” a “prostitute,” a “crazy bitch,” and a “comfort woman,” no one will ever have to invent sexism again to deflect criticism of North Korea’s crimes against humanity, and whoever does will, from this date forward, have to argue her away around real, vicious, state-sponsored misogyny. What Park did before Obama this time reminds one of an indiscreet girl who earnestly begs a gangster to beat someone or a capricious whore who asks her...

Categories Anju Links/North-South/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy/WTF?
January 22, 2014

Open Sources, January 22, 2014

~ 1 ~ PARK GEUN HYE, WHO HAS a (ruthlessly) capable intelligence agency to inform her, sounds quite convinced that North Korea is about to “provoke” the South, and at least publicly, some U.S. officials say they’re worried, too. President Park Geun-hye called for an “airtight” security posture against North Korea from South Korean soldiers and other officials on Saturday, viewing the North’s recent charm offensives as a possible prelude to imminent military provocations. “In India, Park ordered the (South...

Categories Anju Links
December 12, 2013

KCNA: Jang Song Thaek executed for plotting coup against Kim Jong Un (Update: Also, vaporized)

KCNA has just announced that Jang Song Thaek was executed shortly after this party meeting, after confessing to “attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods.” It also released this picture of him, possibly the last of his life. Such a nice, clean suit, too. [via Yonhap] As they say around these parts, sic semper tyrannis. As I noted this morning, Jang had many victims of his own in the camps. Most of them left...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
October 30, 2013

Open Sources, October 30, 2013

~ 1 ~ AGREED FRAMEWORK III WATCH: Yesterday, I fisked Ambs. Bosworth and Gallucci for calling for talks with North Korea despite the concession by one of them (Bosworth) that a deal could never be verified, and despite North Korea’s repeated statements that they would never disarm. As if on cue, the North Koreans have said it again! SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Yonhap) — North Korea said Wednesday that its nuclear weapons program is not a bargaining tool and slammed South...

Categories Anju Links
September 27, 2013

RAND’s study of N. Korea collapse should be required reading at State, USFK

This week, the World Bank recently analyzed a series of governance indicators to conclude that the North Korean regime is stabilizing. Not surprisingly, not everyone agrees. Bruce Bennett of RAND has just published an indispensable, readable, and plausibly terrifying new study of the regime’s stability, and he reaches a very different conclusion. To Bennett, a violent and chaotic collapse looks increasingly likely as North Korea tries to consolidate succession to its third hereditary ruler. (Thanks to a reader for forwarding)....

Categories Reconstruction/Regime Change
September 10, 2013

Breaking: Baby Born in Pyongyang. Not Breaking: 600 Others Die in Wonsan

If I could ask Dennis Rodman one question, notwithstanding the fact that the answer would only be a string of obscenities and non-sequiturs anyway, it would be this:  Would you have played Sun City? I’ve already argued the comparison between North Korea and South Africa once, so I see no need to rewrite it. I went to work in South Africa for three months in 1990–after Mandela was released, and after the government had begun to repeal the apartheid laws. I’m...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Sports/Useful Idiocy
March 1, 2013

Say, do you think Kim Jong Un might just be a complete doofus who happens to have nuclear weapons?

SO THE FIRST WELL-KNOWN AMERICAN to meet with Kim Jong Un is not an AP interviewer, a tribute-bearing Bill Richardson, a ransom-bearing Jimmy Carter, or first choice Michael Jordan. It is this man: Strain, if you must, to make this into some sort of soft power diplomatic coup; it really looks like a tragic sequel to “Being There.” The very weirdness of it all is evident in some priceless exchanges from yesterday’s State Department daily press briefing. Delectably, the AP’s...

Categories AP Watch/Kim Jong Un/WTF?