November 18, 2004

What's up in North Korea? Yesterday the first stories about this began to break on international media sites leading to much speculation and not a lot of attention by media here in the States. Today Kim Jong-Il makes an appearance to front line troops.

If anybody wants to take a stab at playing a CIA analyst, I'm all ears...

posted by mecurious 20 years ago
  • That's a really weird / interesting story. Thanks, mecurious. My guess would be there's a safe (containing the secret documents) behind one of them, they just don't know which it is.
  • I havn't been reading KNCA for a while now, but the story about the visit to the troops seems fairly typical of the kind of thing that shows up there all the time. It doesn't seem significant to me. The portraits thing, if true, would be highly significant. However, this has apparently been going on for a long time. One would expect a shift in power to be far more rapid. One explanation would be a temporary shift in power before Kim took power again. Another would be that somebody took a picture down for cleaning and now people are seeing more of them, since they're on the lookout.
  • Oh, and media in the West never pay nearly enough attention to North Korea. Nobody over here understands the place, and that includes a lot of highly placed security people I talk to.
  • What's Up With North Korea?...currently the five scariest words in show biz. Right up there with Why Is Tokyo In Bits? and Fidel And Kim Secret Lovers! Actually that last one could be positive and sort of alright, though I imagine the poor old devils would have godawful phone bills and the hissy fits would be spectacular.
  • Perhaps he's just having new ceremonial robes and crowns painted over the old images, in an update of his image.
  • He really really liked "Team America World Police" and is having strings added to all his portraits.
  • If it is a coup, that's probably good news. Committees of generals tend to be less keen on going down in flames than mentally unstable dictators. People suggesting the Koreans will suddenly divest themselves of nukes and cuddle the US are in la-la land, though.
  • Someone give Argh a CIA contract.
  • Unless that Committee designates another unstable dictator type as its leader.
  • It's been ordered by Kim Jong-Il. He's in mourning for his favourite concubine and is having a revamp due to his emotional state. He doesn't think its proper for people to worship him so much since he couldn't prevent the death of the woman.
  • This sort of ties in with those recent reports (summer?) of the North Koreans tearing up their powerlines and railways to sell the scrap metal for food and burn the wood for heat. I think their infrastructure is dying at an accelerated rate and with that, so is the central gov's control on the people. I read somewhere recently that the NKs are asking for 100,000 tons of emergency-aid fertilizer in addition to the 'normal' 350,000 tons of emergency-aid fertilizer they ask for each year. I'm on break, so I apologize for not researching and posting links to support my opinion
  • Chairman Billy Shears, eh?
  • If the Dear Leader died, and nobody noticed, would it still make a difference?