It's fascinating how the west will claim that the DPRK worships this guy and his every action and bowel movement is mentioned on the evening news over there, but like, the only place actually obsessing over what his personal habits are is the west.
Like it would be uncarved? That was created a century ago. Nothing to be proud of. I'm not moving the goalposts, I'm pointing out it doesn't matter. The point isn't the statue/picture, it's the obligation.
They have pictures of the dear leader everywhere TODAY. The point is they are forced to venerate them now.
If it doesn't really matter, and everything is the same, go to Pyongyang, and denounce then in public. Compare that to denouncing a past or even current president either at Mount Rushmore or on Pennsylvania Ave.
The DPRK has only existed as a political entity for 75 years. Kim Il-sung is their founding father. He died in 1994.
Do you expect them to not venerate him to some extent? The WPK ejected the Japanese and Amerikan imperialists who raped and murdered millions of Koreans -- who stripped them of their national and cultural heritage, their language, their names, their fucking humanity. The WPK brought that all back. Kim Il-sung was chairman and president. The last president before the position was abolished, hence the title "Eternal President".
Kim Jong-il was his son and helped manage to maintain Korean sovereignty in the face of the collapse of most of the socialist world, in the face of the west turning its guns towards the now destabilized smaller socialist nations. He died in 2011. He was general secretary of the WPK.
If Abraham Lincoln died 12 years ago, how do you think Amerikans would treat his memory? If George Washington died 30 years ago...
I do not know why I waste my time. Maybe for those reading this actually interested in learning, for those reading this that are not so horribly racist as to utterly dehumanize an entire people. Your complete ignorance of the ways Amerikan civil religion permeates this nation is very telling, as is your abstraction between Amerikan and Other civil religions.
I live on Washington street. It borders Monroe street and Jefferson street. All literal slaveowners. Yet you take umbrage with a nation's reverence for the man who helped lead his people in liberating themselves from people with mindsets just like yours... in living fucking memory! Those poor, brainwashed Koreans. They just need to be Westernized/Japanized/liberalized/vaporized/insert-whatever-racist-bullshit-you-believe-here, right? Not like they're human beings with the agency to make their own fucking choices. Fuck you.
Americans are so used to their leaders being dogshit useless racists that they literally can't fathom that another nation's leaders actually earned the admiration they get.
Hey, thanks for writing this up. I really enjoyed the passion that you've used to write this.
Having a picture of your leader is when you are also when you are obsessed with his every bodily function, apparently.
If I were kept starving I'd be fascinated by the eating habits of literally anyone who had enough to eat.
Love to see you feed a population after having your entire country reduced to rubble.
The DPRK is food insecure because of sanctions imposed by your evil ass country. The DPRK is food insecure because they are still rebuilding from the carnage wrought by your sadistic idols.
Who told you everyone is starving, anyway? Or is it just "common knowledge", you illiterate fool?
It's difficult for Anglo-Europeans not to imagine people in other countries starving because it's so widespread and normalised in the imperial core. With such abundance yet so much hunger in the west, it's no wonder that westerners struggle to comprehend how other states could feed their population with just enough to go around (i.e. no great abundance). (Not that libs tend to care what the actual food stats are in AES, just like they don't care what the yanks said about calorific intake in the USSR.)
They're just trying to say it will be harder for him to "throw his weight around."
I'll leave now. :P
"Kim Jong Un's hairdo continues to be absolutely trash. Here's 5 reasons why bald guys are the best things on Earth" - Another headline from a bezos owned property, I suppose
Never underestimate the endless wilful stupidity and bigotry of liberals. They just need any excuse at all.
As soon as the DPRK comes up, what brain cells remain for critical thinking immediately shut down. You can say literally anything about the DPRK, as long as it is negative they will eat it up.
I only had to scroll down 2 comments more more
Edit: link doesn't seem to work for me, shows me the response to the comment I copied the link of. Maybe a bug in Jerboa?
Didn’t really think that comment through in hindsight; especially considering there’s a lot of politically biased articles are out there.
Although the original comment felt a lot like it was trying to say anything left leaning would be bad journalism, which is a BS way of approaching this kind of problem
I understand what you are saying. I do not think "unbiased" news exists, and outright prefer when the biases of news outlets are presented front and center.
I recommend checking out the YT channel First Thought for important world news. They're really fast on the trigger, and do not hide their leftist bias one bit. "The most biased news show", they call it. I respect it far more than bourgeois outlets owned by literal billionaires peddling propaganda while pretending to be unbiased.
I don't know if this article is new, but if I recall correctly there was a bunch of articles like this around the second wave of COVID, as people were speculating he had dropped a ton of weight due to being super sick. If this is from that time, that's probably the angle they were going for, rather than gossiping about his eating habits like a tabloid magazine.
It’s not, it’s two years old. You’re on the right track, but it’s not exactly that, but more covering the speculation, even quoting an interview mentioning it as ridiculous and absurd.
Gift link for seeing the actual article.
"Now, you might think this means there is more food for the starving citizens of North Korea, but, our sources indicate that Kim is actually eating more than he has ever been, and his weight loss is due to his new workout regime (an authoritarian workout regime at that) that he has adopted simply out of spite for his citizens and the desire to deprive them of food." -- RFA, probably.
South Koreans freak out and make headlines when their pop idols lose 0.0005 grams or earn 0.00003 grams of weight. This is not surprising lol.
Honestly is this even real? Wtf is that lack of spell checking, “pored” instead of “poured”???
It seems silly, but it could indicate that he is either taking care of himself now, even he can't get enough food, or he is sick. All of this could have implications for the Kim regime and their relationships with the external world.
Best case scenario is a slow and steady retreat from dictatorship into a more democratic governance model. I don't think that'll happen, but I don't feel too chipper about a relatively feeble and economically and politically unstable country purchasing any nuclear arms at all.
Your usage of "dictatorship" to describe the Democratic People's Republic of Korea along with the rest of your statement shows your ignorance about the entire country.
I don't feel too chipper about a relatively feeble and economically and politically unstable country purchasing any nuclear arms at all.
So then the US should get rid of their nukes, correct?
The label of dictatorship by itself is not a meaningful indicator due to the constant redefinition of words by the Liberals. The Liberals had redefined dictatorship to mean absolutism and no 20th century Communist countries use dictatorship to refer to a political system where one people have absolute power. I could also suspect that the Soviets did not realized that the Western European diaspora redefine dictatorship to mean absolutism. The accusation that USSR, other Communist countries, or Non-European diaspora populist government support absolutism is a better indicator that a person either know nothing about the people who they are criticizing or that they are lying. However, I do agree that the US should follow the moral standard that it imposes on non-western European diaspora and remove its nuke, especially when Pax Americana supporters claimed that violence was never the solution. The Liberals like Fukuyama used Cold War as an "example" that "Liberal" pacifism is a better solution than violence to end war.
So I think I was pretty tired when I wrote that. But in case I wasn't clear, I meant that I don't like the thought of countries, such as North Korea, who are only relatively stable, in possession of nuclear arms.
I really was not talking about the United States. We have our own issues, but I don't think we're about to start any nuclear wars on a whim. Yes our politics are pretty screwed up at the moment, but I don't see it as likely that any yahoos, like that bodily fluids air force guy in Dr. Strangelove, can just start a nuclear exchange.
No, I don't think the US is going to give up it's nukes anytime soon, there's lots of politics in play, and half the point of NATO is that it's under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella.
By dictatorship I mean a government with extreme accumulation of government, and usually military, power in less than a handful of individuals with ineffective or even lack of democratic elections.
Edit: so what's up with all the N. Korean defenders here???
By dictatorship I mean a government with extreme accumulation of government, and usually military, power in less than a handful of individuals with ineffective or even lack of democratic elections.
In order to be able to tell if a government is a dictatorship or a democracy, one has to know how said government works first. Make sense, right?
So, in order to make sure you're not talking out of your ass here, I have to ask you the question: What do you know about the inner workings of the government of the DPRK? What are the component parts of the government, their function and how are their members choosen? How many and what parties are there and how do they take part in politics? What position does Kim Jong Un occupy? Do you know any other polititians beside him? Is there any elections?
If you can't answer any of these questions, on what basis exactly are you claming that the DPRK is a dictatorship?
Strange that this ostensibly weak and unstable nation has such a strong intelligence agency so as to be able to pay us to defend them online.
FWIW I'm a broke statesian. Here's the thing as well, you parrot propaganda and then disengage when it is examined critically and thoroughly, something many of us have devoted literal days of our lives doing.
I am more aware of the inner workings of the DPRK state than any bourgeois "journalist". Many of us are. If you'd like to learn with us, I'd suggest not implicitly accusing us of being bots or paid actors.
A paragraph or two... I mean, I can give you a couple of examples I suppose.
Kim Il-sung is called the "Eternal President" not because of some esoteric, Oriental mysticism that posits that he is still president of the DPRK, but because he was the first and last president of the DPRK. He is the eternal president quite literally, and it's fucking weird how much western media obsesses over this as if northern Koreans believed his spirit still ruled over them or something.
The DPRK never "abandoned" Marxism-Leninism or socialism in favor of "Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism" or Juche. The WPK are scientific socialists, and honest science necessitates changes in understanding and practice. Juche is not an economic system, Juche is a sociopolitical ideal intended to rectify the contradictions between the self and the other, between the individual and the community, between the proletarian, the professional and the intellectual. Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism could be read more closely as Socialism with Korean Characteristics, if one would want to. It is not deviation or abandonment.
"Supreme Leader" is a term often weaponized to evoke that same sense of Oriental mysticism and brainwashing.
The DPRK's parliament is called the Supreme People's Assembly. The WPK leads the SPA. What do you think the chairman of the WPK (a position which Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un were all elected to) would be called?
I am unsure what else to say. DPRK is great on disability rights. A majority of the country has a mobile phone. There are video games in hospitals. People eat groceries. Kids go to school. The beaches look wonderful. Pyongyang has a fantastic public tram service.
Any time a news outlet claims DPRKorea said something negative about other "races" (notably in that shitpile "The Cleanest Race") they are deliberately mistranslating the word "nation" or "nationality" in order to construct the narrative they desire. Any specific questions?
Wow, I didn't expected a "they payed you to say that" kind of argument so soon (unless that's somehow not what you're implying here). You already out of talking points to throw at us 4 measly comments in the conversation?
I'm actually from france, but just for the sake of argument, let's pretend you are right: I am a fealthy fed payed by the big bad dictatorship to spread propaganda, you've unmasked me, you most intelligent random internaut had piersed the secret, your gazed, sharpened by nights and days of scrowling through thousands of internet shitposts, has seen through my digital mask, what a trully amazing intellect, what a brilliant insight, congratulation, sherlok holmes called, he want you on his team.
So what? Is that all you can oppose to my pro autoritarian propaganda? Do you not want to warn others of my terrible and dangerous actions? As a fervent defender of democracy, should you not make sure to dismentle my argument so that poor souls stumbling on this post and on the verge of getting brainwashed by my evil propaganda could see my devious ploy for what it is and not fall to my evil conspiracy? Surely, as a citizen of the free and democratic world, the last, proudly standing bastillon of liberty on this earth consumed by autoritarianism you can't let that happen! You can't stand still, just letting such a weak responce and risk to make your side, the side of FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY, look less resonable than the evil totalitarians, the side that defend a dictator that eat all the food his country produce all by himself and surely eat babys as well! Can you?
So what are you doing? Where is your responce to my argument? What aren't you using that mesmerizing intelect of yours, that sharp and precise analysis and that flawless deducting skills that you have, that had seen through my digital mask, seen the sham for what it is, to counter me? Where is the ruthless and effective dismenteling of my argument? Where is the methodic dissecting point by point? Where is the witty yet proffound comeback? Surely, since I'm nothing but a dirty propaganda shill lying through his teeth it can't be hard for you, Ô enlightened westerner, to show with sources and logic that I'm a dirty liar, can it?
Surely, you are able to anwer my questions right? Of course you are! You are so incredibly intelligent, you have shown us such a deep insight, such a profound reflection, your previous responce is such an intricate condensate of witt and unchallengable pure logic it has me trembling at the mear thought of what you could respond to this one. I can't wait to read your carfull and toughtfull dismenteling of the so called north corean "democracy" exposing the evil dictatorship for what it is!
Honestly I don't really have skin in the game aside from being a human on this earth. I'm not going to respond to your whole thing because it is not worth it. I'm not trying to pick a fight with you.
Uh america has problems but how is a leading economy on the planet "unstable" in any way compared to north Korea?
typical braindead liberal
literacy is a gift and you fucking waste it. Shameful and sad.
The audacity of Amerikrackers to kill 20% of a nation's population and then call everyone in that nation crazy and brainwashed for fighting back... it's incredible.
Tangentially, here's a painting of George Washington literally becoming God. It's in the capitol rotunda.
buh buh I saw a bideo once! what the fuck is wrong with you?
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All of this has convinced me that AmeriKKKa is not a country, its a evil fascist death-worshipping cult.
So instead of reading and gaining valuable information about something you know nothing of you reject it. Why?
This is truly an opportunity to understand people who obviously don't agree with you, and yet you reject it, again, why?
We don't agree with what the US says about a country it doesn't like, so you'd think you'd wanna understand other perspectives.
Could the second, third, and fourth largest bank collapses in US history a couple months ago be an indicator of the stability of the economy? (Not to mention how they were acquired by the literal riskiest bank)