Category: Kremlinology

You should read any report about Kim Jong Il’s health with skepticism. News of Great Fishwife’s health is surely among the most closely guarded of state secrets, the unguarded discussion of which must be punishable in some very harsh ways. The most obvious examples of nonsense stories of this kind were the reports that Kim Jong Il’s brain scan was intercepted by South Korean intelligence, or that after the stroke, Kim Jong Il had recovered to the point where he...

I’m not sure what pains me more — the thought of all the tawdry traffic this post will bring in, or knowing that a part of me actually wants the traffic. According to the account by Mi Hyang, a former member of one of Mr Kim’s “pleasure squads” ““ groups of attractive young women enlisted to provide entertainment and sexual services ““ the leader could be sentimental when drunk, and even shed tears. His favourite delicacy contains the reproductive organ...

I’m not sure where Open News is getting its insider information about Kim Jong Il’s comings and goings, but if true, this would seem significant: According to a high-official North Korean, Kim Jong-Il could not visit the Mt. KeumSu Memorial Palace on New Years Day, where the formal chairman Kim Il-Sung is buried, missing out on one of the major new years events in North Korea. It is stated that there was not a single year since 1995 when Kim...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is suffering from chronic laryngitis – probably because of excessive smoking and drinking – and he can’t work without resting every other day, a news report said Wednesday. The disease worsened last month, though the 67-year-old leader has recovered much from last year’s reported stroke and a kidney disease, said the Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea, a radio station specializing in North Korean news. [AP] Hmmm. Maybe if we sent Madeleine Albright back...

This just in …. In lieu of flowers, condolences in the form of ground corn may be sent to the people of North Korea, whose life expectancy is inversely proportional to the duration of his rule.

The Daily Telegraph looks at Kim Jong Il’s private train and stations. Feel free to express your outrage about … like you know, American sanctions that starve North Korean babies and, like, stuff: The traveling comforts of North Korea’s ailing Stalinist dictator come as a UN report estimated that at least 8m people are facing dire food shortages as a result of the militaristic regime’s “callous” disregard for ordinary citizens. Personally, I wouldn’t go to print with a story with...

Interestingly, Jimmy Carter observed the same thing about Kim Il Sung in June of 1994, when he thought he’d brought back Peace In Our Time and prevented North Korea from going nuclear. Wrong and wrong, Jimmy. It would take a few more years of Carterian presidential drift before North Korea tested its first nuke, but it wasn’t even a month before all that sam-gyop-sal and child-flesh finally got The Great Leader wheeled off to the Great Meat Locker. But then,...