Tag: northkorea
NK Summit Trailer
4.5 hours silent staring
In 1969, United Nations Command negotiator and US Maj. Gen. James B. Kapp and North Korean Maj. Gen. Ri Choon-Sun sat across the table from one another for 11.5 hours without eating or using the restroom. The delegates were only permitted to leave the room if the person who called the meeting proposes a recess. Ri never did. In fact, the 2 men spent the last 4.5 hours of the meeting silently staring at one another. At 22:30, Ri stood up and walked out.
North Korean Interiors
In every refurbished building we visit, there is a peculiarly consistent style of preschool color schemes and shiny synthetic surfaces, the pastel palettes and axial symmetry giving an eerie feeling of walking into a Wes Anderson film set, or a life-size Polly Pocket toy… kindergarten kitsch is the logical next step for a regime intent on projecting an image of carefree prosperity. It is architecture as anaesthetic, a powerful tool for the state to infantilize its people.
design has suddenly become nk’s best export.
Decoding NK slogans
Let the strong wind of fish farming blow across the country! More stylish school uniforms and quality school things for our dear children! Electricity is the lifeline of the national economy.
nk’s #1 export are rumors
When the country isn’t issuing condemnations of purged elites, complaining about forbidden ski lifts, or threatening World War III, it’s getting caught Photoshopping military exercises in an attempt to inflate its hovercraft arsenal. The mixture of genuine threat and laughable incompetence shapes our perceptions, and opens the door for greater lies and claims to take hold in our imaginations. It creates ideal conditions for rumors that paint the country in a negative and often mocking light.
NK comments on the Interview
north korean pr needs some work:
We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places “The Interview” be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear.
NK messes with Sony
To be clear, the real act of terrorism is that sony pictures still employs Adam Sandler.
The new message made demands regarding the distribution of the controversial comedy film The Interview—which has been the target of the North Korean regime’s ire since it was first announced earlier this year. The Interview was “a film abetting a terrorist act while hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK by taking advantage of the hostile policy of the US administration towards the DPRK.”
NK collapse
The RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division has released a 297-page report on the likely consequences of a collapse of the North Korean regime, within the Korean Peninsula, as well as to China, Japan, the US and others
NK missiles fail geography
The paper map visible in that photo shows the Pacific on the left and the continental US on the right, with missile trajectories drawn from North Korea to a number of locations in the US, including Hawaii. The only problem: Missile trajectories from North Korea to the continental US fly over Kamchatka and Alaska… because the Earth is not flat. North Korea’s military probably knows about great circles, but its propaganda department obviously failed geography. Or perhaps the photo above depicts Kim Jong-un providing on-site cartographic guidance to his aerospace engineering team, and the problem will by now have fixed itself.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 