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Category: Propaganda

June 14, 2010

Psyops Updates

Kim Jung-Wook, the Joongang Ilbo’s Washington Correspondent, thinks that the Cheonan Incident has revived the U.S.-Korea alliance, but frankly, the end result may well be the exact opposite. No, the incident didn’t raise tensions in a way that makes obvious the many conflicts in the two states’ interests, and yes, President Obama has shown more backbone than the North Koreans probably expected. The problem with this theory is that so far, there has been no significant response to the attack...

Categories Deprogramming/North-South/Propaganda/Subversion/The Fifth Column
June 4, 2010

How Al Jazeera Translates “Fair and Balanced” into Arabic

I had to see this for myself to actually believe it: Bjornar Simonsen, one of Alejandro Cao de Benos‘s obergruppenführers in the Korean “Friendship” Association, qualifies as an authority on North Korea in the eyes of Al Jazeera. But just to keep things objective and balanced, Al Jazeera puts Bjornar up against … John Feffer. You may not want to watch this if you’ve eaten processed meat or dairy products in the last hour or so, particularly if you have...

Categories Media Criticism/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy
May 29, 2010

Is the ROK Goverment Warming Up to N. Korean Defectors’ Leaflet Campaign?

The ROK government is still sending people to question the balloon people, but it’s not the Unification Ministry anymore. Even the Lee Administration clearly wasn’t comfortable with their activities. Now, however, it’s the boys from ROK Army psyops that are asking the questions. Although it’s not completely clear from this Joongang Ilbo article, I take this as a good sign: “Only a while ago, we had officials from the Unification Ministry telling us to refrain from sending leaflets,” said Park...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 25, 2010

Kim Jong Il Obviously Fears Rantings of Obscure U.S. Imperialist Running Dog

So no sooner do I publish my Capitalist Manifesto than I read that the Anjeonbu, notorious for operating all of North Korea’s large kwan-li-so prison camps except Camp 18, has been sent out among the provinces as a counter-subversion force: According to sources, special police squads have been formed in each province under the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM) to take action to block out information on foreign countries and root out anti-regime suspects. A source from Shinuiju reported on Tuesday,...

Categories Subversion
May 25, 2010

That’s More Like It: South Resumes Propaganda Broadcasting to North Korea

While most of the reporting has focused on the rather futile gesture of blaring propaganda from loudspeakers, it seems that South Korea is doing something else that’s more likely to reach a wider North Korean audience: South Korea’s military resumed radio broadcasts airing Western music, news and comparisons between the South and North Korean political and economic situations late Monday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military also planned to launch propaganda leaflets by balloon and other methods...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 18, 2010

Balloon People Keep Up the Pressure

“We’re going to send 500,000 propaganda leaflets, 1,000 CDs showing footage of a skirmish between South and North Korean Navies in waters off Yeonpyeong Island, 1,000 radios, and 3,000 one-dollar bills on three to four occasions until June 7,” said Choi Sung-yong, the leader of a group named Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea. “We have to let North Koreans and the international community know that the explosion of the Cheonan was a terrorist attack launched at Kim Jong-il’s orders....

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 5, 2010

Anti-Castro Group Working to Put Cheap Cell Phones into the Hands of Cubans

Another interesting cell phone idea: An anti-Castro blogger is asking readers to donate old cell phones: Cell Phones for Cuba takes old cellphone donations and using a recycling entity here in the States, uses the moneys generated from the usable parts of the old phones to purchase new, unlocked phones that work in Cuba. And then through various entities and other means, get said new cell phones into Cuba and into the hands of the Cuban people. I’ve heard that...

Categories Subversion/Technology
May 2, 2010

Freedom Rising, Cont.

The balloon people (officially, Fighters for a Free North Korea) have become much more sophisticated in the content of their payloads: Activists on Saturday let loose 10 giant balloons filled with radios, DVDs money and leaflets into North Korea in defiance of threats from Pyongyang. Around 200 hundred people, mostly defectors, gathered at a public park in Imjingak near the North-South border to release the balloons, which carried slogans such as “Abolish gulags” and “Down with Kim Jong-Il’s Dictatorship.” The...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 1, 2010

North Korea Releases White Paper on South Korean Human Rights, Hilarity Ensues

With such an abundance of great blogging material these days, KCNA has written what I can only describe as a screed for the ages. Even by KCNA standards, this simply re-sets the bar: The National Reunification Institute released a white paper Thursday indicting the fascist clique for having reduced south Korea to the land with the worst human rights record through sycophancy and treachery, fascist dictatorship and confrontation with fellow countrymen. Further down the litany of horribles: The puppet group...

Categories Propaganda/WTF?
April 26, 2010

More Blockade-Running Technology: Cheaper Satellite Phones

After this post on DIY cell phone base stations generated interest from readers, I followed one suggestion in the comments to see whether satellite phones have gotten any cheaper recently. They have, and how. This model is currently selling for under $235 new on Amazon.com. I have to think that they could be acquired for even less in volume through sources in India or China. Can anyone out there find a better price?

Categories Subversion/Technology
April 24, 2010

A DIY Cellular Network: Could This Work in North Korea?

[A]n open-source project called OpenBTS is proving that almost anyone can cheaply run a network with parts from a home- ­supply or auto-supply store. Cell-phone users within such a network can place calls to each other and–if the network is connected to the Internet–to people anywhere in the world. The project’s cofounder, David Burgess, hopes that OpenBTS will mean easier and cheaper access to cellular service in remote parts of the world, including hard-to-reach locations like oil rigs and poor...

Categories Subversion/Technology
April 22, 2010

Those damn North Koreans PUST us again!

Suckers …. A monument dedicated to Kim Il-sung was installed on the campus of the new Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Built with donations from South Korean and US Christians, it could tank intra-Korean relations for good. The 20-metre granite monstrosity embodies the Juche idea, North Korea’s quasi-religious state ideology. [Asia News, Joseph Yun Li-Sun] For good, he says? Hasn’t this guy ever read the Hankyoreh? As if the likely diversion of funds from Kaesong or Kumgang, or...

Categories North-South/Propaganda/Sunshine
April 20, 2010

Meet the New Boss, Part 4

The Daily NK claims to have obtained an “exclusive” of a propaganda tract with a quote by Kim Jong Il praising Kim Jong Eun: Entitled “Youth Captain, Comrade Kim Jong Eun Is another Mt. Baekdu Style Great Man to Whom Chosun Has Given Birth,” the material expands enthusiastically on Kim Jong Eun’s outstanding abilities and extraordinary personality in every field, quoting Kim Jong Il on a number of topics related to his son.

Categories Kremlinology/Propaganda
April 14, 2010

Götterdämmerung Watch

The Wall Street Journal has two must-read op-eds on the decline of North Korea’s capacity to control the flow of food, money, and information within its territory. Marcus Noland, sounding very much like Kushibo, sees a “tipping point” after The Great Confiscation: Once broken, the economy may prove difficult to repair. Prices for goods such as rice, corn and the dollar rose 6,000% or more after the reform. And while prices have come down from their peak as the government...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Subversion
April 8, 2010

Kim Jong Il, Global Fashion God

It’s moments like this when I most suspect that the people who write North Korea’s propaganda aren’t the hacks we’ve thought them to be, but are actually subtle, subversive, and satirical. Uriminzokkiri, quoting an article in communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun, said the modest-looking suits have gripped people’s imagination and become a global vogue. “The reason is that the august image of the Great General, who is always wearing the modest suit while working, leaves a deep impression on people’s...

Categories Propaganda/WTF?
April 5, 2010

Götterdämmerung Watch

Writing in Foreign Policy, Marcus Noland writes about discontent and dissent in North Korea, and the impact of The Great Confiscation as a catalyst for it. The surveys’ results suggest that the regime’s discomfort might be well founded. Countries such as North Korea, where people routinely hide their true opinions, are prone to sudden, explosive political mobilizations like the ones that swept Eastern and Central Europe in the late 1980s. Those mobilizations happen when nascent expressions of discontent cascade —...

Categories NK Economics/Propaganda/Regime Change/Subversion
April 2, 2010

Nothing to Envy, Except …

From KCNA: All the people should unite close around General Secretary Kim Jong Il and dynamically accelerate the on-going advance for a great surge to materialize President Kim Il Sung’s noble idea of believing in people as in Heaven and thus glorify this significant year as a year of great prosperity to be recorded long in the history of the country, urge papers Thursday in their editorials. [….] It is the unshakable resolution and will of Kim Jong Il to...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Propaganda
April 1, 2010

Hwang Jang Yop Calls for Ideological Warfare Against Kim Jong Il

I was too busy to see Hwang Jang Yop speak in D.C. the other day, but a few news services picked up his remarks: North Korea’s highest-ranking defector said “ideological warfare,” not military action, would help topple the regime of Kim Jong Il. “We don’t need to resort to force,” Hwang Jang-yop told a small audience Wednesday at the Center for Strategic International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “We need to use ideology and markets and diplomacy. We need to...

Categories Defectors/Propaganda/Subversion