North Korean News Is Funny

You can now buy drinks on the street in Pyongyang it seems. As is usually the case with KCNA’s “slice of life” stories, they report on some completely mundane thing presumably as evidence that things are going well in the country.

Except this looks suspiciously like private enterprise, which in the DPRK is not mundane at all. The story does not say that this is capitalism, but to me it’s odd that there is no clear implication of the Dear Leader, in all his largesse, having provided these supplies for the good of the people. Instead drinks and “Eskimo Pies” (they even appropriated and capitalized a Nestlé brand) are sold. Whether this really is some sort of market economy or not, the fact that the language of the story is not steeped in Communist rhetoric is interesting. Maybe they are learning how to write propaganda slightly less ineffectively?

On the other hand, this is Pyongyang, which means it’s only the country’s elite enjoying such luxuries in any event. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the rural areas are still in miserable shape.

The DPRK goverment would like to give the impression that people fish for fun in North Korea, and that the environment is clean enough to allow for fishing, even in the city. Hence, the report on the yearly angling contest held in Pyongyang. So there you have it: North Koreans have leisure activities.

If you ask for the DPRK’s official party line on Kim Jong Il, it is that he knows pretty much everything about everything. It should come as no surprise that he provided advice to a chicken farm about how to produce more. I think we need to get Obama to help the United States’ chicken industry in the same way.

Pyongyang has a ritzy grocery store that has been mentioned before here. KCNA seems to enjoy advertising it with odd and mundane details: apparently you can buy quail meat in packages of 1-3 kilograms. I believe this is the same grocery store that has an elevator that KCNA saw fit to report on.

Here’s another heartwarming story about Kim Il Sung. This one details how some commoners had their picture taken with him. That’s it. As of this writing, they even misspelled Kim Il Sung’s name in the headline, leaving off the last G. I presume someone is going to be in serious trouble for that.

On the same day that KCNA reported that the public Panwoldo public pools, for use of the citizens of Pyongyang, are overcrowded, they reported that a luxurious-sounding swimming pool complex has been built for foreign diplomats and their families. Seems like rather than building that, the cash-strapped country could have done well to build more pools for its own people — or, even better, to feed them!

It is a common theme for KCNA to call attention to the purported dictatorial rule in South Korea. Certainly some people are unhappy but elections in the South are reasonably legitimate. There isn’t actually a dictatorship there. So why does the North persist in publishing this easily refutable nonsense when people can just go to Seoul and check for themselves? My guess is that it’s a combination of the writers actually believing what they write (after all, they probably haven’t actually seen the South) and nobody being allowed to admit in any way that things are far better south of the 38th parallel.

Kim Il Sung wrote (for a presumably very loose definition of “wrote”) a song about Korea entitled “Patriotic Song”. This is now being featured on commemorative postage stamps in the DPRK. Well, I guess the name of the song is, if nothing else, simple and to the point.

What with the recent US/ROK wargames and the slightly less recent sinking of the Cheonan, KCNA propagandists have put their thesaurus into overdrive. Presumably whoever is now responsible for English there has had far heavier exposure to the English writings of other communist regimes than he or she has had to the English writings of current native English speakers, but the desire is there to make the text sound a bit more interesting. So this patchwork of odd word choices results.

On their website, KCNA often publicizes editorials which appear in Rodong Sinmun, a prominent state-controlled newspaper in the DPRK. In general those editorials are the usual blather about how great the North is because the Dear Leader is great, and how things are only going to get better from here, and how the US imperialist aggressors hate Korea and just want to control it, and so on. There is also often mention of a “great leap forward”, which is the DPRK term for forcing everyone to work even harder for a period of time to meet the latest harebrained production quotas.

This one, however, adds a bit at the end randomly mentioning the production of iron, fiber, fertilizer, and what I assume to be CNC machine-tool technology. An odd mix — perhaps these are what they are focusing on during the current great leap forward?

That the existence of a restaurant in the nation’s capital would make national news would be farcical in any other country. This restaurant serves “nearly ten kinds” of rice cake. Is that eight kinds? Nine kinds? Nine and a half kinds? The story goes on to quote a local resident who likes the food. I suppose the idea was to give the impression that restaurants are a usual thing there, and that anyone is allowed to go to one, just like in a real big boy country.

From time to time, KCNA posts apocryphal stories of the Kims doing great or endearing things. In this story from 1966, Kim Il Sung made a random visit to a citizen’s house to see what they were eating for dinner, and to see what food they had around. They had vegetable soup in a pot, as well as rice and soy-based food elsewhere in the kitchen.

Why would KCNA think that non-North-Koreans would care about this story at all, let alone be impressed that there was food in a house over 40 years ago? I guess the idea is to suggest that they always had food in the DPRK, despite the Korean War, and that the Kims totally did not mismanage and destroy the country.

It’s amazing that a country with such incredibly good negotiators (no sarcasm intended – they have gotten almost everything they want from the world while giving very little in return) would have such a terrible propaganda arm.

Someone in the DPRK has somehow lived to the age of 100. This despite years of famine and, um, the “sorrow of a stateless slave” who could not lead a “genuine life” until the “liberation of Korea”. If this woman actually exists, color me impressed. I hope she enjoys many more years of eating her favorite foods, which are “dishes made of bean”.

A new Maltese group has apparently started a website called “The Group for the Study of Juche Philosophy and Songun Politics of Malta”. As with much North Korean news produced by the KCNA, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone outside of KCNA would care. As of this writing, Google even seems to disagree about the existence of the Maltese website. I can’t find anything but links back to the KCNA story when I search for that title. You’d think KCNA would at least include a link.

Well, it’s not really named that, but the DPRK has invented an electric piano named Sobaeksu-2. It can make 150 tones in 87 rhythms, and can even play the world-famous tune, “Where Are You, Dear General?”. I wonder how likely the average North Korean citizen is to ever see one of these, despite the boundless generosity of the Dear Leader.

North Korea seems particularly proud of its new waterproof liquid, which appears to be a floor sealant. As a point of reference, any nonpolar liquid (e.g. oil) is waterproof, but this one is a floor sealant! Yeah, I’m not that excited either. All hail a new era of flooring in the DPRK.

This is actually propaganda about propaganda. Some new posters were made, and I guess the KCNA wants to make clear that the DPRK doesn’t mess around with this sort of thing. Huichon speed!

A belated congratulations to Rason City! They have been officially designated a municipality in the DPRK. Let the celebrations commence!

Anything the Kims did, no matter how boring, is spun as an impressive story by KCNA. In this case, Kim Il Sung happened to mention that he liked red pepper and it should be available. That’s it.

That is actually the name of a factory in North Korea. I assume the Korean version of that name sounds a little more elegant.

In the same article, Kim Jong Il “underlined the need to intensify the drive for making a road revolution so as to bring about a new turn in the road construction”. Could it be that the KCNA translators have discovered lame wordplay in English?

It sounds a little comical but the DPRK’s corn husk shoes actually look to be kind of interesting. I suppose the idea is that processing corn husks to use as raw material for shoe manufacture would free up much-needed leather and rubber for use in other industries.

That a North Korean nursery is growing trees in paper bags filled with dirt is important national news is odd but not surprising. The usual propaganda has of course not been forgotten: on the same day, KCNA fiercely denounced the “fascist suppression” of South Korea.

No, it’s not a porno flick, it’s an actual elevator. Kim Jong Il insisted one be installed in Pyongyang’s new grocery store to accommodate the elderly and handicapped. Never mind the store is only two stories tall, and presumably common citizens are not allowed to visit in the first place. The KCNA cites this as Kim Jong Il’s “noble outlook on the people”.

In a thoroughly bizarre incident, a South Korean citizen citizen has defected to North Korea according to KCNA. He must have been pretty nuts (or his life in ROK pretty amazingly terrible) to want to do this. There must be more to the story. But at any rate, it makes great press for North Korea as it bolsters the lie that North is preferable to the South, something it has been feeding its citizens (rather than, for example, food) for many years. Contrast this with the reality of North Korea’s need to defend its border with China — to keep its own citizens in.

Amusingly, the last sentence of the KCNA story: “He is now under the warm care of a relevant organ.”

Both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have had flower species named after them in North Korea.  They are called, unsurprisingly, Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, and like their namesakes, are always described in glowing terms in the DPRK media. I’ve never heard of a Hitleria or Polpotia, but there you have it. Thus an exhibition of these flowers in China gets a mention by KCNA. Interestingly, 2012 is mentioned as the year the Korean people will “open the gate to a thriving socialist nation at any cost”. I wonder what that means.

Kim Jong Il’s mother, Kim Jong Suk, as part of her heroic anti-Japanese efforts in 1937, unraveled her underwear and knitted a pair of gloves for Kim Il Sung from it. The article ends by stating that she must have gone through incredible hardship without underwear during the winter. So, she had given away her only pair of underwear? I hope Kim Il Sung appreciated his gloves made from used panties.

(It’s worth mentioning that even in recent times, it’s hard for regular DPRK citizens to get ahold of underwear. So the North Korean public may not perceive weird sexual overtones in this story and only see that they meant to show Kim Jong Suk’s love and concern and such. But regular citizens don’t have Internet access, and this story is meant to sway external parties…so it’s still weird.)

The existence of an indoor swimming pool in North Korea, complete with automatic revolving door, is apparently important enough for national news. Not sure what the propagandic purpose of this story is exactly. But good for them I guess.

The North Korean medical establishment has apparently been busy publishing books. Mostly the titles make sense. For example “Molecular Control of Metabolism of Lipoprotein” sounds like legitimate biology research. But then there’s the following:

The book “Liquor Treatment” gives the base and kind of liquor treatment, diagnosis and clinical data for it. The book advances applied questions for the liquor treatment of the symptoms of various diseases and gives answers to them.

Barring methanol poisoning, how many ailments can you possibly treat with ethanol? I think the number is pretty darn close to zero.

It’s probably just an unfortunate choice of words, but what the KCNA calls “taffy” has some interesting ingredients: “sesame, pine nuts, walnut, black pepper, cinnamon, powdered ginger, [and] pounded jujube”. Also, “taffy mixed with cinnamon, dried ginger, agarophyte, Japanese apricot and the like is used as expectorant”. That is, they use certain kinds of pseudo-taffy to assist in coughing up phlegm. It’s clear now that my taffy experiences in life have been woefully lacking (and that they don’t have a Western-born editor working at KCNA).

It’s national news in North Korea when a grocery store opens. Notably, this store, with its “fragrant merchandise” such as “fresh apple, pear, grape and other fruits” and its goal to “to make the streets full of people’s happiness”, is located in Pyongyang, a place where most DPRK citizens are not allowed to travel. Even if they could, it’s unlikely they could afford very much there.

One day Kim Jong Il came across a straw mat in the road with some wet rice on it. Instead of having his limousine drive over it, he figured some farmers were, for some reason, drying rice in the road, and in great kindness decided to move it instead. This is the usual tripe about how great the Dear Leader is, but it’s telling that the farmers decided to dry their rice in the road — the absence of traffic is a clue into how desolate the DPRK can be.

The KCNA loves to report on every floral basket in North Korea for some reason. Thrilling!

Kim Jong Il suggests that the cabbage due to be harvested should indeed actually be harvested, as it is every year. What’s more, kimchi should be prepared from it for the winter months — as is also done every year. This stunningly obvious bit of advice is, however, nothing less than “an epic of great love”.

Kim Jong-Il never fails to amaze those around him with his on-the-spot guidance. This time, he wore a pair of padded shoes for a week during the summer, apparently enjoying his extremely warm feet, and yet came up with a tweak to their design to improve their performance in winter. What’s the tweak? Add more rubber to keep the water out. Genius! We can now add “shoe designer” to the Dear Leader’s miles-long list of accomplishments.

It’s impressive what passes for national news. Apparently a restaurant in the DPRK has installed fish tanks from which customers can select the fish they want to dine on. Of course, I’d be shocked to hear that any North Koreans but the party elite are allowed to actually go there.

An ostrich farm in the DPRK? Seriously? I don’t know much about ostriches, but the article says they are “acclimatizing” ostriches from the African desert to the, um, substantially different climate of the Korean peninsula. I wonder how long that’s going to last. For the moment, anyway, “the fattening cotes teem with ostriches”. I think there’s an awesome band name in there somewhere.

Maybe it’s a typo, or maybe KCNA is not quite sure what the word “flayed” means. Contrast to this story.

Also, I hardly need to mention the irony of the DPRK accusing Lee Myung-Bak of being a dictator, and of lamenting an attack against the free press. In their words: “The Lee Myung Bak conservative ruling forces are scheming to gratify their ambition for long-term office even by putting media under their control while trampling upon democracy of society, serving only the privileged circle”. Replace “Lee Myung Bak” with “Kim Jong Il” and you have a pretty accurate depiction of the DPRK.

The North Korean government beer, Taedonggang Beer, is described as being “rich in gas content”. Also, “[t]he refrigerator vans carrying beer have a traffic privilege on the streets of Pyongyang like cars carrying soybean milk to children”.

Beer elevated to the rarefied status of soybean milk in a national news story and granted right-of-way on the road must be awesome indeed. Though, by all accounts there is virtually no traffic in Pyongyang, so “traffic privilege” would mean little, but it’s the thought that counts, I guess.

By the way, I have a bottle of hard liquor from Pyongyang (purchased on the other side of the DMZ). It tastes like liquefied hell. As such I don’t have high hopes for Taedonggang.

Seems strange to me but apparently DPRK farmers accepted help from Cambodia. If your country is in worse shape than Cambodia you’ve got some problems. Especially interesting is the sentence “Staff members of the embassy handed aid materials to the farm”, since the DPRK doesn’t like to publicize its receipt of international aid. Presumably if it were ROK or the US (two large donors to the DPRK) instead of Cambodia there wouldn’t be a KCNA story about it.

This KCNA story describes the merits of making noodles using wormwood. As a reminder, wormwood is the psychotropic ingredient of interest in absinthe. Assuming they mean the same wormwood as we do in the West, either there is not very much of it actually in the noodles, or eating these noodles is quite an experience.

This KCNA story discusses the ROK military’s use of the South Korean version of eminent domain to appropriate land for military exercises. It’s funny because KCNA’s support of the protesters suggests that the needs of the individual inhabitants of the land should trump the needs of the military and therefore the state, an idea which runs totally counter to the DPRK philosophy of communism. Also funny for the nonsensical use of the word “flayed”.