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Category: Humor/Satire

February 21, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel, Part 2

Lorin Maazel could really use a publicist who understands the concept of “stop digging.” Just when we thought we’d put this flame war behind us, he goes off again, in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page. With time for further reflection and careful editing, here’s how he rephrases his central point: If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Human Rights/WTF?
February 16, 2008

Damn You, Henry Kissinger!

That bastard Kissinger … thanks to him, Gong Li will never knock on your door to borrow a cup of sugar, and all of our lives will be poorer in ten million ways: Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chinese leader Mao Zedong made what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States. “You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said, according...

Categories China/WTF?
February 11, 2008

Goodbye, Old Friend

  What words?  My wife and I both feel as if an old friend we’d meant to visit again had been murdered, stolen from us by a deranged killer, a thief of beauty and history.     Anyone who has lived in Seoul recently knows that it can and will be rebuit with faithful perfection.  But like the Golden Pavillion of Kyoto, which I would not call Namdaemun’s equal, it will be never be the same, either. As many have already...

Categories History/Korean Society/WTF?
February 8, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel

I’ve  already said that I’m  ambivalent about the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea.  They will play some  good music,  which will probably do little harm and little good.   If we would just accept the music on its face value without injecting politics into it, this visit wouldn’t be taking on  such a  pernicious odor.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently. Spurred on by the mendacious appeaser  Christopher Hill, the Philharmonic  now imagines itself as an...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Human Rights/WTF?
January 14, 2008

I am so ready for a North Korean spy scandal right about now …

[Update: He resigns. Kim Man-Bok claims that his motive in leaking the tape was to dispel speculation that he met with Kim Yang-Gon to try to influence the South Korean election. Using Nordpolitik is a well-established way of trying to influence South Korean elections, and I’m not sure exactly how Kim M.B. expected to reassure anyone about what’s not on the tape. To me, one missed significance of this is the casual ease with which Roh’s people accepted North Korea’s...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column/WTF?
January 10, 2008

One less ransom to pay

One of the 264 people listed by a civic group as possibly abducted by North Korea was found safe in Japan last month, the group investigating North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens said Tuesday. According to the Investigation Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea, the 48-year-old man from Akita Prefecture went missing in 1981 from a place where he was working part-time in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture. [Kyodo News] I understand that Bill Richardson  has already  claimed credit...

Categories Abductions/WTF?
November 25, 2007

If you’re hungry for dog meat, why not dine with ‘The Pariah Family?’

You’ve seen the unintended comedy of Japanese, Chinese,  and Koreans decorating their wares with English, badly.  You’ve seen the hilarity of  British people  tattooing such Chinese  marks of distinction  as, “Coca-Cola” or  “At the end of the  day, this is an  ugly boy,” on their bodies. Now, see what happens when Hangul-challenged Chinese try to ride the Korean Wave.  And fail (one, two, three, four).

Categories Humor/Satire
April 8, 2007

Why Moonbats Will Never Run the World

The “Crawford Peace House” run by Kim Jong Il’s unwitting ally, Cindy Sheehan, is the latest victim  of financial irregularities, unmedicated emotion, and  a characteristic  absence of any moral perspective:  “There are people who have said, `Don’t say anything because you’ll hurt the peace movement,’” Oliver said. “But if the peace movement isn’t pure and transparent and holy as it can be at its heart, then it’s just like George Bush:  lying, thieving, conniving, backstabbing bastards.” This is certainly a...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/WTF?
April 8, 2007

Hey everyone! Roh Tae-Woo’s brother is going to make me rich!

Well, just imagine my feeling of serendipity at seeing this in my in-box today!    My rat race is over at last!   Just whatever you do, don’t tell the crack cyber-cops at the Ministry of Information and Communications…. Greetings from me and my family. Getting your contact was not an easy task because since I am not computer literate, I ordered my son to seek  a partner very far away and he went to the institute of International Business...

Categories Unintended Humor
March 27, 2007

Colin McAskill Threatens to Sue Over Release of Funds to DPRK Gov’t

McAskill, the man who sells Kim Jong Il’s gold and  who recently bought  the  bank through which most of North Korea’s European investment is channeled, has heretofore been  a strident and articulate advocate of releasing the  $25 million  frozen in BDA.  Overnight, he has become the main obstacle: In two letters sent to the Monetary Authority of Macao, [Daedong Credit Bank] has said that it will take legal action if any of its frozen funds are moved in accordance with...

Categories Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/WTF?
March 16, 2007

N. Koreans May Have Given U.N. Counterfeit $100 Bills

[A]  new twist now emerging in the Cash-for-Kim scandal is that while the UNDP has been giving Kim real money, Kim’s regime may have been handing over counterfeit banknotes to the UNDP–which apparently had a stack of counterfeit $100 bills sitting in its office-safe in Pyongyang.  [National Review] We owe this revelation to — who else? — Claudia Rosett.

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WTF?
March 6, 2007

Take the OFK Statesmanship Quiz

You are a  major political leader of one of the world’s major industrialized democracies.  An actor-turned-author publishes a book in which he photoshops the name of the country’s top newspaper into a picture of the World Trade Center on 9-11.  Just to make sure there’s no room for ambiguity, he says, “I want to become a terrorist ….  The newspaper is the sole monolithic monster remaining in [this] society.” As a statesman, your response is to: a.  Jail the man...

Categories An Alliance?/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. & Korea/WTF?
February 20, 2007

A Rumble at Kouvola

Fred Frey International brings us the story from this  remote Finnish border post, which  was recently the scene of two North Koreans going a bit overboard in protecting the diplomatic pouch they were carrying.  They weren’t carrying diplomatic passports, but the Finns were ultimately willing to overlook that.  None of this would have happened if the North Koreans had just shown their tickets. I wonder what was in the pouch…. Update:   See also Antti’s great blog with the unpronounceable...

Categories Diplomacy/Europe/WTF?
February 7, 2007

OK, But in All Fairness, Chomsky Pyschosis Is a Diagnosis, Too

John Feffer could be more accurately described as a  hack  apologist for  its regime than an authority on North Korea.  Feffer recently won  himself a  Bruce Cumings  Prize  for the  year’s  most  spectacularly ill-timed defense of the indefensible.  What the Soviet archives did for Cumings’s academic reputation,  the Havel-Wiesel-Bondevik report  ought to have done for Feffer’s denial of Kim Jong Il’s culpability for the great famine  that sacrificed millions of lives for nukes and missiles,  had anyone actually read what...

Categories Media Criticism/Unintended Humor/WTF?