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Category: Useful Idiocy

June 17, 2010

The World Cup: Shut Up Already.

What would it take to get me to watch a World Cup match? Easy. Hold in it Glasgow, pipe free gin into the stands, and issue kilts. That way, there’s at least an even chance of something more entertaining than the scoreless ennui of soccer breaking out, like say, the cry of a thousand slurred brogues rising from a chundering mass of corpulent, bottle-swinging hooligans. There are several reasons why I’ve found the coverage of the World Cup especially tedious...

Categories Media Criticism/Useful Idiocy
June 17, 2010

Friends With Benefits: Another Silly, Tired “Engagement” Debate

My general impression of the new North Korea blog 38 North is that it’s mostly the same old crap from the same old people who’ve been proposing the same demonstrably failed approaches to North Korea for the last 20 years. They’ve finally published one thing of interest to me, however, a response to John Feffer by Roberta Cohen of the liberal Brookings Institute. If anyone can show me that anyone to the right of Cohen has ever been published on...

Categories Useful Idiocy/Washington Views
June 14, 2010

Kaesong Death Watch

Contrary to a recent North Korean statement suggesting that the regime was shutting down Kaesong once and for all, the factories are still shipping goods, although the experiment itself is pining for the fjords. The complete failure of South Korea or the United States to respond to the sinking of the Cheonan with sufficient measures to deter the next attack, on one hand, and the failure of North Korea to extract more money from South Korea or the United States,...

Categories North-South/Sunshine/Useful Idiocy
June 10, 2010

Why I Don’t Give a Damn About Gaza

Ethan Epstein sees hypocrisy in the silence that prevails among leftists over a blockade far more total and deadly than anything ever imposed on Hamas: For example, Gazans are permitted to receive items such as medical equipment and medicine, insecticide, coffee, tea, and, best of all, hummus paste. North Koreans, on the other hand, live under a total blockade, one imposed by their government. They are only permitted to receive what their government allows them ““ and that isn’t much....

Categories Media Criticism/Useful Idiocy
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 26, 2010

On Second Thought, Don’t Keep Your Day Job, Either.

As a public service to OFK readers, I’d like to remind you that on Day Two of the Cheonan crisis, Noam Chomsky’s favorite Korea analyst and military expert, John Feffer, was quoted thusly: “I doubt that North Korea was involved in the incident,” said John Feffer, co-director of the Foreign Policy in Focus program at the Institute for Policy Studies. “It didn’t seem to involve any artillery fire from the North. Feffer disagreed with the assumption that North Korea attacked...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Fiskings/Useful Idiocy
May 18, 2010

“Decisive” Evidence Implicates North Korea in Cheonan Sinking

As news reports suggest that an international investigation will soon announce that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, South Korean military sources are leaking information that, if true, seems reasonably conclusive: “In a search using fishing trawlers, we recently discovered pieces of debris that are believed to have come from the propeller of the torpedo that attacked the Cheonan,” a high-ranking government source said Monday. “Analysis of the debris shows it may have originated from China or a former Eastern-bloc country...

Categories Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Korean Politics/Useful Idiocy
May 14, 2010

Selig Harrison: Lee Myung Bak “Invited” Cheonan Attack

I don’t know whether North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Lee Myung Bak has invited retaliation by repudiating the commitment to coexistence and eventual confederation enshrined in the two summit declarations negotiated with Kim Dae Jang and Roh Moo Hyun. [Selig Harrison in the Hanky] Did this widely-quoted North Korea “expert” just excuse an unprovoked sneak attack that killed 46 South Korean sailors? This is not meant as an excuse for the North...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
May 2, 2010

So Christine Ahn Was Right After All: Kaesong Really Has Brought the Koreas Together!

Here is our latest edition of the Kaesong Death Watch: Last week, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met with two former presidents, Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Young-sam, who reportedly suggested shutting down Kaesong in response to North Korea’s suspected role in the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship. [….] In a statement released in early April through the official Korean Central News Agency, the North said it would “entirely re-evaluate” its involvement in the Kaesong Industrial...

Categories Appeasement/Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
May 1, 2010

The Head of the World Health Organization Bears May Day Greetings from Pyongyang! (Update: No Signs of Obesity There!)

It could have been worse, I suppose, had I awakened this morning to the clatter of panzerkampfwagens rolling through the D.C. suburbs blaring the Horst Wessel Lied from loudspeakers. But if the prospect of the U.N. as Government of Earth horrifies you any less, get a load of what Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, holds up as the very model of a peachy health care system: UN health agency chief Margaret Chan said on Friday after...

Categories "United" Nations/Fiskings/Useful Idiocy
April 13, 2010

Nothing to Offer, by Glyn Ford

Glyn Ford was a socialist member of the European Parliament until, under even its fringe-friendly rules, he lost his seat by placing fifth in the EP elections. Ford, an early defender of North Korea’s right to possess nuclear weapons, now finds himself with one less demand on his time, and so he reviews Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy. I’m not sure whether Ford himself or the Tribune Magazine is responsible for the headline under which his review is published: “North...

Categories Books & Films/Fiskings/Useful Idiocy
March 28, 2010

Video of the ROKS Cheonan Suggests External Explosion; Plus, John Feffer Already Knows North Korea Didn’t Do It (Update: A North Korean Mine?)

Via this CNN report, which carries video from YTN, we get our first brief glimpse of the hull of the ROKS Cheonan (see also here). It’s just a glimpse of a small piece of the keel from the half of the ship — the bow, apparently — still floating on the surface, but at 2:59, you can see that the metal next to the break appears to be dented inward, lending support to theories that some sort of external explosion...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
March 8, 2010

North Korea Re-Re-Declares War, Threatens “Merciless Physical Force,” Demands Peace Treaty

So Operations Key Resolve and Foal Eagle have started again. I boldly predict that this year, as has been the case for each year for the many decades we’ve had troops stationed in South Korea, the exercise will not end with an American invasion of North Korea. Just as predictably, North Korea is threatening the United States and/or South Korea. The challenge for North Korean propagandists is always how to make each year’s threat stand out from such previous-year classics...

Categories Diplomacy/ROK Military/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military/Useful Idiocy
March 5, 2010

Kim Il Sung’s Personal Shopper Writes Tell-All Book

Kim Jong Ryul, who spent 16 years under cover in Austria, also described how the “great leader” and his son and successor Kim Jong Il spent millions pampering and protecting themselves with Western goods — everything from luxury cars, carpets and exotic foods, to monitors that can detect heartbeats of people hiding behind walls and gold-plated handguns. The colonel’s account — told in a new book by Austrian journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi — shows the deep divide between...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
March 1, 2010

Alejandro Cao de Benós Interview – Part 4

Surprisingly, my favorite Cao quote from the fourth and final installment isn’t even about North Korea: “In general, U.S. cities frighten me, after 7 p.m. all the white people go home, and black people and beggars take to the streets.” Cao also talks about Robert Park. Once again, thanks to Enzo Reale for allowing me to publish this. Please visit his blogs at 1972 and Asiaeditorni, or on Twitter.

Categories Interviews/Useful Idiocy
February 12, 2010

Alejandro Cao de Benós Interview – Part 3

This week, Cao informs us how he maintained his porcine figure even as he watched North Koreans starve to death all around him, and explains that The Great Confiscation was designed to foil widespread foreign counterfeiting of the North Korean won, for which there would seem to be as much incentive as inventing imitation tofu. Cao also says that the food situation in North Korea these days is just peachy, which is rather remarkable statement, given that not even Kim...

Categories Interviews/Useful Idiocy
February 7, 2010

Alejandro Cao de Benós Interview – Part 2

Following Part 1, here’s Part 2 of Enzo Reale’s interview with Cao. This week, Cao informs us that North Korea’s public distribution system is in perfect working order, that there are no concentration camps in North Korea, that Kim Jong Il eats the simple peasant fare as everyone else and does not in fact live in a palace, and that every single North Korean agrees with every decision the government makes. Surely I exaggerate, you say. No, Cao actually says,...

Categories Interviews/Useful Idiocy