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February 14, 2018

The media fawning over North Korea’s Censor-in-Chief is indefensible, yet they still defend it.

A MEDIA CRITICISM OF DONALD TRUMP that weighs more heavily than their predictable policy and tribal differences with him is that his tepid repudiation of racists like David Duke and Richard Spencer “normalized” some of America’s most deplorable people. It’s going to be much harder for the Washington Post to make that charge stick after its reporters fawned over one of Earth’s most deplorable people — the Censor-in-Chief of a racist, homophobic, misogynistic regime that stands credibly accused by the...

Categories Censorship/Human Rights/Sports
November 10, 2015

North Koreans need food & medicine, not Guus Hiddink’s “futsal” stadium

South Koreans remember Dutch soccer coach Guus Hiddink as the man who led their team to a successful performance in the 2002 World Cup. But when the history of a united Korea is written, North Koreans are likely to remember him less fondly. Hiddink has just returned from Pyongyang, where he signed a deal to help Kim Jong-Un build yet another expensive leisure facility that falls low on the average North Korean’s hierarchy of needs — a new “futsal” stadium:...

Categories Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid/Sports
September 16, 2014

Because that worked out so well in 2008 …

The International Olympic Committee is seriously contemplating giving the Olympics to China again — the same Olympics that caused a wave of thuggery, censorship, bullying, and even rioting, and were a public relations fiasco for China. More relevant for purposes of this blog, it also led to a wave of round-ups of North Korean refugees. That means that the International Olympic Committee’s award of the Olympics to China will likely cost hundreds, if not thousands, of North Korean lives.

Categories China/Sports
January 11, 2014

Hey … isn’t that video of Dennis Rodman personally giving banned luxury goods to Kim Jong Un?

Skip to the two-minute mark. Well, that certainly looks incriminating. (Hat tip to a reader.) [I guess he picked the wrong week to quit drinking.] If you haven’t read my post explaining the ban on importing luxury goods to North Korea, you should probably start there.* And since you ask, yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe the bottles are engraved with likenesses of Kim and Rodman. Just to be clear, I don’t think Dennis Rodman should do time over five bottles of liquor,...

Categories Sanctions/Sports/Useful Idiocy
January 9, 2014

So, Dennis — other than that, how is the trip going so far?

Dennis Rodman’s September trip to North Korea included a trip to Kim’s yacht near Wonsan, which Rodman described as “like going to Hawaii or Ibiza.” Evidently, this trip hasn’t been as pleasant: A day after the former basketball star sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and led a squad of former NBA players in a friendly game, Rodman issued the apology through publicist Jules Feiler in an email message to The Associated Press. “I want to...

Categories Sports/Useful Idiocy/WTF?
January 8, 2014

And now, a long list of people who think Dennis Rodman is a tool.

Update: Jesus wept (hat tip): ~  ~  ~ Charles D. Smith, one of the former players who went to Pyongyang with Dennis Rodman, is still in Pyongyang, but he’s already saying he feels “remorse” for going because of the public backlash against the trip, and because of Rodman’s mouth: “The way some of the statements and things that Dennis has said has tainted our efforts,” Smith said. “Dennis is a great guy, but how he articulates what goes on — he...

Categories Sports/Useful Idiocy
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
January 6, 2014

Christine Hong really should tell us what she thinks about Kim Jong Un’s sweet new ski resort.

Kim Jong Un’s reign must be a dark time for North Korea’s apologists on the far left. Those who elevate equality above all other values (or say they do) must be hard pressed to find solidarity with a regime that has imposed the world’s most obscene case of economic and social injustice. Under Kim Jong Il, North Korea was no paragon of socialist equality. Since his dynastic succession, Kim Jong Un has added the arch-heresies of gaudy consumerism and an...

Categories Fiskings/Sanctions/Sports/Useful Idiocy
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
May 11, 2012

Who Let North Korea into the Paralympics?

The Chosun Ilbo reports: North Korea will participate in the Paralympic Games for the first time ever in London this summer. A Yonhap News report cites Tokyo-based pro-North Korean media as saying that its athletes have been gearing up for the 2012 London Paralympics, which will run from late August to early September. It adds that North Korea was granted provisional membership in the International Paralympic Committee in March, and that its athletes are now training in China. Have any...

Categories Human Rights/Sports
July 15, 2011

Just about everyone pans Sohn Hak-Kyu’s proposal to share the Olympics with N. Korea

It seems that I was not alone in my reaction to Sohn Hak-Kyu’s addle-brained suggestion of sharing the 2018 Winter Olympics with North Korea. The idea has since been rejected by the Chairman of the International Olympic Commission, the government of South Korea, and 73.3% of South Koreans. So that would seem to be that. Or so we can hope. Here, by the way, is what caused me to suspect that Sohn only proposed the idea to appease his hard-left...

Categories Sports
July 14, 2011

Sohn Hak-Kyu’s Olympic Folly

Why did I shudder when I heard that South Korea had won the winter Olympics? Because I knew it was just a matter of time before some imbecile had an idea like this one: Rep. Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the opposition Democratic Party, said Monday the party would push for “some events at the 2018 Winter Olympics to be staged in North Korea. He said he would also bring up the issue of forming a unified team with the North...

Categories Korean Politics/Sports
July 12, 2011

Hans Blix Goes to the Olympics

If I were pitching this as a script for a dark comedy, I describe it as combination of Boys Don’t Cry, Slapshot, and Team America: Professor Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC’s Medical Commission, has said he will look into the matter after North Korean defenders Song Jong-Sun and Jong Pok-Sim failed doping tests at Germany 2011. [….] Ljungqvist says he wants to know more about testing in North Korea, but is realistic about finding out more about doping checks...

Categories Sports
June 28, 2011

Once again, North Korea makes soccer entertaining.

And to think people wonder why I blog about North Korea. North Korea’s coach blamed his side’s 2-0 loss to the United States on his players getting struck by lightning in the build up to the Women’s World Cup. Kwang Min Kim claimed that some of them were hospitalised with electrocution after a training match on 8 June. Maybe their treating physician had one of those special transmitters, too. This probably calls for some kind of criticism session, though if...

Categories Sports/WTF?
August 30, 2010

North Korea and South Africa: A Study in Hypocrisy

After less than three weeks, FIFA has closed its investigation into allegations that players and coaches of North Korea’s losing soccer team were subjected to criticism sessions when they returned home. But when you go to FIFA’s web site, it’s apparent that FIFA’s “investigation” consisted of opening and reading a letter from the North Koreans denying it. I have no inside knowledge of whether the allegations are true, but I know that FIFA has no more idea of the truth...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Racism/Sports
August 12, 2010

So, it might have been “the game of their lives” after all.

Several of you have e-mailed me (thank you) about the announcement that FIFA will open an investigation into reports that North Korea has ordered “harsh ideological criticism” sessions and hard labor for the players and coaches of its unsuccessful World Cup team. “We sent a letter to the football federation to tell us about their election of a new president and to find out if the allegations made by the media that the coach and some players were condemned and...

Categories Sports