North Korea

“Moving forward” has a different meaning in North Korea.

“Let us move forward to final victory,” Kim Jong-un, the son and successor of Kim Jong-il, urged North Koreans assembled at a military parade in Pyongang at the weekend.

Kim Jong-un rocketed to the top of communist food chain in North Korea

Whatever that means. Jong-un’s speech came after the Obama Administration suspended a food aid agreement that would have helped alleviate the famine that grips the country - which they did in response to the hermit state’s (failed) missile launch last week. The aid would have come in exchange for North Korea halting its missile testing and uranium enrichment programs, and allowing international monitoring of nuclear sites.

One in three children is malnourished in North Korea, according to the World Food Program. This raises an interesting question. Should food be used as a foreign policy tool? Shouldn’t food be distributed to needy innocents regardless of what regime they live under?

What do you reckon? And what else is on your mind today?

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  • TimB says:

    09:51pm | 16/04/12

    I think it’s fair to say that a union credit card is issued for the purposes of union business Tim. Unless you’re seriously trying to tell me that union officials getting their rocks off can be counted as official business, you’re reaching and reaching badly. And if miusing funds like… Read more »

  • Tim says:

    08:43pm | 16/04/12

    And I’ve consistently said that what Thompson did might not have been illegal. Morality doesn’t even enter the equation, the legality is all that matters. The voters get to judge morality if they wish at the ballot box. This is simply due to the subjective nature of different peoples morality.… Read more »

 

Until Siimon Reynolds came along when I was 11 years old and scared the living daylights out of everyone with his Grim Reaper AIDS advertisements, the biggest abstract bogey man I remember was nuclear war.

A made-for-television event, which didn't quite go according to plan… Picture: AFP

Those Russians, they had the bomb, and they were possibly going to use it. It didn’t help matters that in 1986 Chernobyl fulfilled the nuclear nightmare, conflating two separate issues into one terrifying specter.

It’s probably a good indication of how little I had to worry about being a child in the 80s in rural Australia that I remember “the bomb” being on my mind every now and again.

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  • sunny says:

    08:29pm | 20/04/12

    @SteveKAG “While we waste $80bn of the NBN…......if the western world stopped all stupid projects right now we could pull Nth Korea and Greece out of the shite.” If you think the NBN is a stupid project maybe you’d better go and join North Korea and all their arse-licking style… Read more »

  • Steve Dunera says:

    09:22am | 17/04/12

    Part of the Cold War involved hot conflicts. Millions of people were killed in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. In the 1980s Vietnam was as close as the Y2K bug is now. The possibility of another hot conflict was high. Read more »

 

The world’s breathing a deep sigh of relief after North Korean authorities organised a carefully controlled tour of a rocket launch site

Nothing to see here. Pic: AP

All those silly paranoid nations that were worried North Korea was preparing to test nuclear missiles will sleep easy now they’ve been told that it’s just a civilian mission to launch a satellite into space to play a couple of songs and monitor forests.

Phew.

So now we know North Korea just wants to play a few tunes to honour late President Kim Il-Sung, what else is on your mind, Punchers?

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  • TimB says:

    06:08pm | 10/04/12

    Ridiculous. The Howard government ran surplus budgets for years. Then we had a bunch of rate rises near the end of their term and Swannie was bangning on about the ‘inflation genie’. Why would a surplus all of a sudden cause the opposite effect? Sounds like they’re laying the groundwork… Read more »

  • RyaN says:

    05:17pm | 10/04/12

    @AFR: That is what I did and so many before me, and it didn’t feel ugly at all, in fact it felt great. Read more »

 

Earlier this week, we learned that North Korean dictator and supreme being Kim Jong-un is the “Genius of Geniuses”.

Kim Jong-un descended from The Heavens Above on the back of a powerful horse god he personally tamed to deliver you this piece. Picture: The Glorious And Very Democratic Republic Of North Korea

This life-changing knowledge flowed gently into our puny human brains through the magic of a video presumably produced by Kim Jong-un himself.

So far, no one - except a bunch of people in gulags - has disputed this. And why would you? Who wouldn’t want a leader who is the official Genius of Geniuses? A crazy person, that’s who.

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  • Scotchfinger says:

    09:05pm | 13/01/12

    @john, yes the Asians are a bit of a puzzle to me, however I take for granted certain things; for instance, the importance of reason! And we can thank the ancient Greeks for that. One thing we should not underestimate with the NK situation, that is the application of fear… Read more »

  • john says:

    03:35pm | 13/01/12

    @Scotchfinger “however it would take a particularly uneducated, unsophisticated people to allow the situation to become so absurd.” Indeed absurd from our point of view, however the Japanese until the US nuked them believed right up until the very end that the emperor of Japan was a god and they… Read more »

 

It’s a sad day in North Korea. In truly Orwellian scenes, North Koreans are playing the game of of “I am more sad than you” after the passing of their “Dear Leader”, who starved, terrorised and tortured his own populace for decades.


It’s easy to make fun of the teary scenes in Pyongyang and elsewhere. For example, you could point out that there appear to be extra points for banging the pavement with your palm. But to paraphrase what they say on the Virgin Blue flights, there is a serious side to today’s flight of fancy.

Show an inappropriate level of misery (i.e anything less than full breakdown) and you risk being nabbed by the thought police. It’s terrifying stuff. We here at The Punch are genuinely torn between our initial instincts to make fun of a nation’s crocodile tears, and our sympathy for those forced to cry.

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  • John says:

    04:16pm | 22/12/11

    @Erick you can’t make a stupid comment making it a virtue of Bush for not nuclear bombing the world and then turn around and say that the left were saying it. YOU made that claim. who else said it was a positive of bush for not doing that thing? Read more »

  • Cookie Monster says:

    02:57pm | 22/12/11

    the enforcer says:06:13pm | 21/12/11 - you’d have to bring an army - and yes fairsfair is soft and flimsy - Read more »

 

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is dead. This means both many people watching the famous Team America “I’m So Ronery” clip, and potentially enormous global implications. For all the news see news.com.au’s coverage here. The Punch spoke to Associate Professor Felix Patrikeeff, who is Head of the Discipline of Politics and Master of Kathleen Lumley College at the University of Adelaide, where he is currently teaching the Comparative Politics of Leadership and Intelligence Studies (he is also the President of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs).


What do you think will happen now?
One of two things will happen. One is that the new leadership under Kim Jong Il’s youngest son (Kim Jong Un) will take shape fairly slowly behind the scenes until such a time as he can actually take power in his own right.

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  • Just Sayin' says:

    01:25pm | 21/12/11

    “Between the “faceless men”. Literally, they are faceless” So, they literally have no faces?  I sincerely doubt that. Read more »

  • Seth Brundle says:

    10:16am | 21/12/11

    Its good to see that this issue wasnt left to one of the usual Punch writers but that you instead brought in someone knowledgeable on the subject.  Knowing your limitations is an admirable quality. Read more »

 

Well. Hasn’t it been a crap year to be a ruthless dictator or all-round Evil Dude? All the big names are gone.

Adios. Picture: AFP

Kim Jong Il: dead. Osama bin Laden: dead. Gaddafi: dead. Mubarak: gone. Syria’s Assad: embroiled in a civil war. Twenty-two of the top 30 Al-Qaeda leaders: dead. Yemen’s Saleh: got bombed. Than Shwe of Burma: out of office.

Even Mugabe is sharing power with a democrat. It’s been a terrible year of tyranny. Watch out Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov.

It’s Tuesday, Punchers. What’s on your mind?

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The Korean War stopped for practical purposes in 1953, but technically, it never ended.

History repeats.Photo: AFP.

This is a matter of theory for most people around the world, but clearly for the North Korean leadership – and many of its brainwashed people – it’s a brutal reality.

This week’s shelling by North Korea of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong was just the latest illustration of this attitude.

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  • CityWorker says:

    02:22pm | 26/11/10

    Acotrel, if history has taught us anything, it’s that Australia “will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship”, and that “in the final choice, a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.” F.D.R. and Eisenhower… Read more »

  • PaulB says:

    07:31am | 26/11/10

    Adam.  The South Koreans know what to expect from the North.  If they knowingly provide a deliberate provocation then they share in the responsibility for what happens next.  And as for the torpedoed destroyer?  Do some research, some serious questions remain over the origins of the torpedo, which is why… Read more »

 

Not since the Trotskyist student uprisings at the Sorbonne in May-June 1968 have the French bunged on such an entertaining stink - only this time it involves the national soccer team. You can watch a news reports below, but the short version is that the players are in mutiny over their hapless coach Raymkond Domenech and have effectively gone on strike by refusing to train.

The trigger for the showdown was the explusion fron the national team of striker Nicolas Anelka after his four-lettered spray against Domenech who, among other things, he called a “dirty son a whore.” If there was any justice in the world the entire French team would have been sent home and replaced with Ireland, who lost teir qualifier against the French courtesy of a shameless handball by Thierry Henry. The upshot of all the French team’s revolution is that South Africans are now fantasising that after last week’s 3-0 drubbing by Uruguay Bafana Bafana will now come out and flog the fraying French in tonight’s final first stage match.

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  • Macon Paine says:

    01:19pm | 24/06/10

    @ Dan “China has done it successfully.” Firstly what is your definition of successfull? And this is key, do you know how they did it? ” I have. I referred you to their constiution and their military spending.” Ahh their constitution this will be good. Lets see what their constitution… Read more »

  • Dan says:

    01:11pm | 23/06/10

    ” So before that they where communists right? You cant just wipe away the results of decades of communism by changing your ideology, ask the east Germans or pretty much any country from the former eastern bloc. “ China has done it successfully. “Anyway can you provide a source please?… Read more »

 

So we’re now almost a foot closer to New Zealand, which has prompted many jokes about Bondi being swamped and our Immigration Department having a lot of work taken off their hands.

There are worse options than being closer to New Zealand - like moving in next to this guy, who likes testing his missiles.

I heard a Kiwi on the radio this morning hoping the airlines would drop their prices so he could go home and visit his family more often.

Apparently New Zealand’s been sneaking up on us, a few centimetres at a time, for years and last week made an almighty push during a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. Initially I was alarmed at the news, but now am beginning to think things could be worse.

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  • Bob says:

    05:44am | 24/07/09

    New Zealand gained an extra 29cm on the west coast but lost 1cm on the east coast. Must be another slow news day. Read more »

  • Amy says:

    06:15pm | 23/07/09

    Number 2 is a little low. Andrew McAuley did lose his life in that pursuit. Read more »

 

Conventional wisdom tells us that we should stand up to bullies.  But what do you do when the bully is of questionable mental health with access to weapons grade plutonium?

(Warning: The video clip below contains strong language which some will find offensive)

On Friday June 12, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1874, calling on all member States (nations) of the United Nations to expand sanctions placed on North Korea, sanctions that were first introduced in October 2006 following North Korea’s first nuclear test.  The sanctions call for tougher inspections of cargo suspected to contain banned items relating to the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile activities.  This is in response to the North’s most recent nuclear test in May.

North Korean reaction to the resolution was predictable.  The Korean Central News Agency reported that any new sanctions imposed against them would be considered a declaration of war; the Foreign Ministry stated that North Korea would “weaponise all plutonium” in their possession and would begin uranium enrichment – the first stage in producing viable nuclear weaponry.  The Ministry also stated that it considered any attempt at a blockade as an “act of war that will be met with a decisive military response”, and would “counter ‘sanctions’ with retaliation and ‘confrontation’ with all-out confrontation.”

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  • Sheep Dog says:

    05:28pm | 24/06/09

    Yes, just as America, Israel, China, India and Pakistan continue to behave badly and are rewarded for it. As long as the bully is one we, the sheeple, are told to approve of they continue to get away with murder, invasion, acts of terrorism, and hegemony. Kim is a dangerous… Read more »

  • Razor says:

    02:28pm | 24/06/09

    “In the final analysis, the UN is probably taking the right approach – the old “speak softly and carry a big stick” method.” What a load of rot.  The NKs continue to behave badly and then get rewarded for it.  The UN is completely useless and has done nothing to… Read more »

 

Loved by Stalinist baby boomers, Burgmann's art.

As the rest of the world watches North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-il with absolute amazement some of us believe we understand him at least a little bit.

I won’t say I ‘m close to him although he did once present me (through an intermediary) with a black lacquer vase (which I then declared on my pecuniary interests register as a gift from “the Dear Leader” as he is known ... and which no journalist in the NSW press gallery picked up as an issue).

At least I have as credentials for talking about North Korea the fact that I have been there twice.

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  • Ian F says:

    11:59am | 23/06/09

    The Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao had their share of political pilgrims, so it should hardly surprise that even North Korea’s hereditary communist dictatorship apparently has some too.  Aside from the weird spectacle of a member of the ‘Left’ giving de facto support to the principle of… Read more »

  • DS says:

    10:16am | 23/06/09

    The most reassuring thing about this article is the implication that Kim Jong Il isn’t a complete fruit loop - only mostly a fruit loop, but with some sense still. Whew! Read more »

 

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