“I’m so Ronry”
Posted on 11/18/2004 8:30:23 PM PST by Destro
Reports of Kim's demise exaggerated
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
November 19, 2004
"DON'T have a reaction, I'll leave it to the analysts," responded US State Department official Adam Ereli to questions about the significance of reports that North Korea's media had stopped calling Kim Jong-il "Dear Leader".
Mr Ereli was wise to resist the lure of Korean Kremlinology – the art of divining significance from scraps of enigmatic information that sometimes escape the world's most hermetic regime.
Within hours, Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, reported that Pyongyang newspapers were replete with the usual garlands reserved for Mr Kim's glorification, including "Great General" and "Great Leader".
His alleged titular downgrading had been taken as more evidence something was amiss for the bouffant-styled, Cuban-heeled leader of North Korea's collective dictatorship.
It began on Monday with a report by Russian agency Itar-Tass that on some official walls in Pyongyang, 63-year-old Mr Kim's portrait was no longer in its customary spot.
There were second- and third-hand reports of counter-revolutionary scrawlings on official posters, though a diplomat noted wryly: "The visitors who saw them couldn't read Korean so we don't know what they meant."
Factional strife within the 200 families who reputedly run everything that matters in North Korea – perhaps, even an uprising? More likely another sign of the threadbare nature of Korean Kremlinology, says the International Crisis Group's northeast Asia project director, Peter Beck, one of a couple of handfuls of American specialists who actually speak Korean.
"Some pictures missing from a wall do not a coup make," said Mr Beck. "What do these factoids mean? Maybe something, if there's enough of them, but at this stage probably nothing." In fact, as Mr Beck suggested, the real action is happening in Washington.
There President George W. Bush is expressing his frustration with the lack of progress in neutralising problems like the Dear Leader with a great overhaul of his foreign and intelligence services.
That is the space Mr Kim is probably watching most closely.
Please Kim Jong-Il, just die.
“I’m so Ronry”
This is a very interesting piece!
If I were Mr. Kim, I might arrange to have some posters come down, and to have the media stop calling me "Dear Leader" for a little while, to give the appearance that I was losing a grip on power, and thus, fomenting conditions for an attempted coup. Then, I would round up those people and, uh, re-educate them. Yeah, that's the ticket. Then the pictures would go back up, and the media ordered to resume their previous practices. And I would sleep a little better knowing that some unwanted chaff had been blown out of the society.
Not if those attacking Kim are from those 200 ruling families who have their own power base?
Wouldn't it be sweet if Kim fell during the GWB administration?!
That's what I was thinking too... a ruse to smoke out anyone who "had ideas."
Full Disclosure: America, F*CK YEAH!
Full Disclosure: America, F*CK YEAH!
Ping
From Paek-du mountains, 1000km long beautiful realm All look up to the General and cheer him. He is the people's leader to inherit the great work of the Sun. Long live, long live, General Kim Jeong-Il !
Millions of flowers on the earth tell us his love. Blue waves of the ocean sing of his work. He is the creator of happiness to grow the garden of Ju-che. Long live, long live, General Kim Jeong-Il !
He protects socialism with his courage like steel. He makes our country famous in the world. He is the defender of justice with a flag of autonomy. Long live, long live, General Kim Jeong-Il !
Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa Ooom-pa
Contest for Alternate Words?
Me first
He avoids explosions all over the place and hides his face Gets import round-eye hookers and French Cognac while people starve His Delusions of grandeur builds nukes and rockets so big Kim jung-il - Did someone finally have enough or are they all nuts...
He is Super Happy Fun dictator! Parents eat their own children in honor of his greatness which is in his own mind! He is small of stature but big of ego and he has big plan for Great Leap Forward which will only cost half of the lives of his people this year! Starvation and deprivation are the true path to abandonment of the body and therefore total Socialist Enlightenment! Long Live His Shortness!
Arafat's dead, then alive...then dead again....and alive again
Kim has plenty of dead - live cycles to go before he's actually dead.
"He is Super Happy Fun dictator! Parents eat their own children in honor of his greatness which is in his own mind! He is small of stature but big of ego and he has big plan for Great Leap Forward which will only cost half of the lives of his people this year! Starvation and deprivation are the true path to abandonment of the body and therefore total Socialist Enlightenment! Long Live His Shortness!"
LOL! I can just imagine that spot running on North Korean TV (all 3 of them) with a disclaimer attached: "I'm Alec Baldwin, and I approve this message".
He will.
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