Tag: Kim Jong Il

North Korea’s Young (oppressed) Talent Time

The Dear Leader has passed. But his cultural legacy lives on thanks to these clips of North Korean children performing song and dance… It’s what you get when you cross Young Talent Time with a dictator who wears platform shoes.

A certain percentage of these children grow up to become this…

This post was inspired by this video, which the uploader dubbed “creepy” I dub it “odd benefit of a bizarre and oppressive regime”… these kids are cute, and their synchronised head bobbing is something to behold.

Somebody mashed a couple of those videos up with some Metallica… Good times.

Tumblrweed: Kim Jong Il Dropping the Bass

He might be gone. And Kim Jong Il Looking at Things may have been supplanted by Kim Jong Un Looking at Things (like carpet).

But a little known fact about Kim Jong Il is that nobody dropped the bass quite like he did. And there are photos to prove it.

Tumblrweed redux: Kim Jong Il looking at things…

Just so you know – I’m still pretty addicted to this site.

That is all.

Tumblrweed: Kim Jong Il looking at things

I am contemplating making a regular feature of weird single serving blogs on Tumblr. This one features photos of Kim Jong Il looking at things.

It’s odd. And provides some sort of insight into the style of staged Public Relations shoots in North Korea. Somehow the idea that Kim Jong Il looks at things must provide some succor to his legions of loyal, browbeaten citizens. Everything about his reign is stage managed. Which means the oddness is intentional.

Obama cuts face, Third Eagle is in his element

There’s nothing like a Korean conflict to get the Third Eagle excited. Nothing. Except, perhaps, for a presidential shaving mishap…

Obama’s 12 stitches on a lip injury are great fodder for numerological bizarreness.

Obama is the last king of the south… and Kim Jong Il is the last king of the north (from Daniel 11)… or maybe it’s Vladimir Putin. And nuclear weapons are a “strange god”…

My question is still where does this guy get his water backdrops from?

Losing is such a shame – when you’re from North Korea

The North Korean football team started the World Cup on such a high note – going down 2-1 to Brazil – that the nation’s cultural apparatchiks decided it would be good for moral if the next game was televised live. North Korean history in the making… but things didn’t go quite to plan. The North Koreans fought valiantly in the first half – but then Portugal put their feet to the North Korean team’s throat – and smashed them 7-0. This was unacceptable. And made Kim Jong Il feel very ronery.

It turns out, by the way, that the North Korean fans who made their way to South Africa were in fact Chinese ring-ins who were paid to be there.

When these players, and their poor coach (who became the fall-guy during the tournament, as players were instructed to blame him for the results – I guess the North Korean administration learned something from the English, Argentinians and most importantly – the French).

Since returning to the Peoples’ Republic of Korea the players and coach have been put through a rigorous process of public shaming at the hands of the nation’s administration. The coach copped the worst of it:

“The team’s coach, Kim Jong-hun, was reportedly forced to become a builder and has been expelled from the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The coach was punished for “betraying” Kim Jong-un – one of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il’s sons and heir apparent.”

Kim Jong Ill with Bieber fever?

Rule One for running competitions online in the 4 Chan era must surely be “though shalt not run competitions that allow unsolicited responses…”

Teen “sensation” Justin Bieber ran a web competition for fans to choose his next tour destination. 4Chan got wind of it. Justin Bieber, if he honours the competition, is now going to North Korea.

The BBC reported the story with unwarranted seriousness.

“Given the fact that almost all citizens of North Korea are denied internet access and there are restrictive controls over all media, it is unlikely that any of the votes have actually come from within the country.”

Really?

Via BoingBoing.

Ronery… so ronery

Just when you thought I couldn’t get any less holy – I open a post with a Team America reference. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie… don’t. I can’t recommend it in good conscience. However, I will continue to quote it because it’s actually very funny, and now surprisingly (well it’s actually not really a surprise) relevant given situations in North east Asia. It seems the craziest man ever to wear platform shoes has taken short man syndrome to the next level. Crazy Kim the coiffured nepotist from North Korea has decided to flex his military muscles by sending 7 really expensive missiles to the depths of the Sea of Japan. It says a lot about a man’s character if he’ll gladly waste seven missiles when his people are starving. There were plenty of better places to aim the missiles. The Big Brother house maybe. Channel 9. Boy, am I mister current events or what… Why didn’t he test them by firing them at a terrorist you might ask? Well for starters Hazem El Masri was indoors… and secondly Kim Jong Il is a terrorist in training. He’s just not very good. Yet. He clearly needs more practice – the US reported that one missile fizzled just 40 seconds after launch. There’s a lot of places you can take missile jokes. But I won’t. One can only hope his missiles didn’t harm any whales. I suspect that’s why the Japanese have imposed trade sanctions – it’s certainly the only reason anyone can think of for imposing sanctions on the Japanese. I think the popularity of karaoke would be another one, and the popularity of anime… and those stupid game shows… and umm… well I guess there are lots of potential reasons actually. But I feel sorry for the poor Japanese, not only do they have to put up with a crazy irascible despot on their doorstep, they’re not allowed to snack on their favourite meal in the whole world. Whale. For some reason the rest of the world doesn’t see taste testing as a scientific test. Last I heard science was the use of the senses (observation) to test a hypothesis. I think on that basis Japan can eat all the whales they want.

Another man who is apparently lonely at the moment, allegedly, is Michael Costa. The New South Wales politician who bares a striking resemblance to Dr Evil (oh no, now I’ve also referenced Austin Powers… I’m scraping the bottom of the pop culture barrel tonight)
has apparently (allegedly) been visiting ladies of the night. More specifically a lady of the night. An anonymous lady of the night. An anonymous lady of the night who anonymously made the announcement on talkback radio. Rather than letting the event fade into obscurity Costa decided to sue for defamation – now everyone knows he was the politician named (Merrick and Rosso cut the caller off almost immediately and released an apology without naming said politician). Costa needs a new PR adviser. I fail to see how suing a radio station where the hosts were clearly not culpable (they could perhaps have beeped out the name if their production team had been working on the industry standard 3 second delay) will achieve anything. Particularly if Merrick and Rosso can prove the claims to be true – truth is a defence to defamation provided it’s in the public interest (and the moral conduct of a politician probably falls into that category – some would argue that this shouldn’t be the case, but if you’re going to hold yourself up as a public figure of good moral stature then there has to be accountability). Thankfully we now have uniform defamation laws to make defences easier to remember – it seems these new laws scrapped the public interest element too. Hooray. Defamation was the one area of law I was actually good at. I figured it might come in handy.