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Merged Kim Jong Il is dead / You must cry

The defining feature of a truly great leader, is that the country will continue to thrive regardless of the quality of his successors.
 
roger said:
I believe it also. The people that have managed to get into NK generally report that some people seem genuinely loving of 'dear leader', as have NK escapees.

OTOH, look at those videos. When is the last time you saw people dutifully file into rows, and then burst into tears? The history of the nation is filled with the citizens in Pyongyang 'spontaneously' demonstrating their love for 'dear leader'. And of those refusing suddenly disappearing, along with a generation or two of their family behind and ahead of them. This is all well researched and reported - you make public spectacles on demand, or are never heard from again. It is required that you hang portraits of Kim & father, bow to them, and not hang anything else on that wall. If someone reports that you have been disrespectful - you disappear. As a tourist, if you take a picture of the endless pictures and statues of dear leader, you may have your camera confiscated if you don't do it 'correctly' - you know, he is not in the center, or you pose in front, or something. You, as a tourist, will be required to bow to the statues that you visit. Everyone in the country is required to wear a pin with Kim Il Sung. Children in Pyongyang, rather than receiving a normal education, are trained for hours every day to sing songs, do acrobatics, etc., all to venerate and entertain 'Dear Leader'. This is all referred to as Juche, which is basically the state religion of venerating the leaders as Gods.


So, ya, some people are genuinely sad. But if you don't cry in public, don't expect to be seen in public anymore.

edit: this video is as good as any to support my claims. Hoever, there are other excellent documentaries showing similar things.
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Here's an article that asks How genuine are the tears in North Korea?

It mentions the book Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (which is quite good and recommended to anyone interested in the country) by Barbara Demick:

[after Kim Il-sung's death in 1994] "The histrionics of grief took on a competitive quality. Who could weep the loudest?"

One young student in Pyongyang felt nothing as all around him were wailing, she noted. "His entire future depended on his ability to cry. Not just his career and his membership in the Workers' Party, his very survival was at stake. It was a matter of life and death."
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MG1962 said:
Does the author explain how she came across the information for the families she documented
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The people she writes about eventually defected--the book is based on her interviews with them on what life was like before they left North Korea.
 
AdMan said:
The people she writes about eventually defected--the book is based on her interviews with them on what life was like before they left North Korea.
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Okay thanks. I have watched and read a lot about NK over the years. Always interested in new sources of information. But seems what she did has been well covered by other sources

Though given the time period she is working in, the book might still find its way onto my Kindel
 
MG1962 said:
Okay thanks. I have watched and read a lot about NK over the years. Always interested in new sources of information. But seems what she did has been well covered by other sources

Though given the time period she is working in, the book might still find its way onto my Kindel
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Have you read The Cleanest Race by B. R. Meyers? Or watched his lecture on the book available on CSPAN?
 
Do you think it would be worrisome to be a tourist in NK right now? The thought of having to cry on demand for Dear Leader or disappear is a little scary, or are they more relaxed with visitors? I don't think I could ever visit that place, because I wouldn't be able to hide my contempt for that now-dead bag of piss.
 
AdMan said:
The "You must cry" part of the thread title came from the thread that was merged with this one.
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you didnt answer me, why do you favor a north Korean Psychopath, and I asked you if you want to make something of it, its that or your lunch money....
 
Tonight on NatGeo Explorer, they are rerunning a show from 2007 called Inside North Korea. Lisa Ling went there with some doctors on a humanitarian mission. I saw the show when it first aired. They met with an elderly woman who was going to undergo surgery to restore her eyesight. When asked what she was looking forward to the most, she gushed "Now I'll be able to see our Dear Leader."

Steve S
 
TheAnachronism said:
Do you think it would be worrisome to be a tourist in NK right now? The thought of having to cry on demand for Dear Leader or disappear is a little scary, or are they more relaxed with visitors? I don't think I could ever visit that place, because I wouldn't be able to hide my contempt for that now-dead bag of piss.
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Why go to a place where trouble with the officials is likely?
Why go to Iraq to hike?
Afghanistan is looking for tourists hostages.
There's lots of places in the world where crazy isn't normal.
Visit those.
 
TheAnachronism said:
Do you think it would be worrisome to be a tourist in NK right now?
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Probably not very. The norks need cash, really badly. Doing something to a tourist would hurt the cash flow that tourists bring in. They don't have much incentive to do that.

The thought of having to cry on demand for Dear Leader or disappear is a little scary, or are they more relaxed with visitors?
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That's not the sort of demand they make of visitors. You're prohibited from doing a hell of a lot of things, but from what I've seen, there's not a lot they make you do. You'd be a fool to talk smack about Kim, but you probably wouldn't face much more than deportation and maybe having anything you brought confiscated. They're paranoid about security, but they really want the hard currency tourists bring.
 
steve s said:
Tonight on NatGeo Explorer, they are rerunning a show from 2007 called Inside North Korea. Lisa Ling went there with some doctors on a humanitarian mission. I saw the show when it first aired. They met with an elderly woman who was going to undergo surgery to restore her eyesight. When asked what she was looking forward to the most, she gushed "Now I'll be able to see our Dear Leader."

Steve S
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That was one of the best doco's I've seen on the country. It was the first time I really started to wonder just how badly these poor people had been brainwashed.

We all want the regime to collapse, but short term I wonder how we deal with the the worlds biggest psycho ward.
 
The show just ended. At the end, they're in a roomful of people who have had cataract surgery and their eyes are still bandaged. The doctor removes the bandages from the eyes of a young woman who has been blind for years. Once it's clear she can see, her father immediately begins praising the Dear Leader for restoring his daughter's eyesight. One by one, as each person has their bandages removed, they start praising Kim and promising their loyalty to him. One old man said that he would use his eyes to shoot the evil Americans. Must be frustrating for the doctors. It's bad enough when people praise god, but when they praise a psychotic elf it must really gnaw at you.

Steve S
 
MG1962 said:
That was one of the best doco's I've seen on the country. It was the first time I really started to wonder just how badly these poor people had been brainwashed.
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The older folks probably still remember what normality was like. But for the younger ones who have been completely raised in the cult, they're probably brainwashed. Remember that their parents are probably terrified to say anything bad about the regime out of fear that the kids will repeat it to someone, so the kids never hear anything contrary to the steady flow of propaganda.



We all want the regime to collapse, but short term I wonder how we deal with the the worlds biggest psycho ward.
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The south is afraid of millions of unemployable refugees flooding across the border.

STeve S
 
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I confess. The morning I learned of his death I took a finger puppet I have of Kim Chong Il and had him sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" over the top of my cubicle wall.
 
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http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/index?id=7369649
 
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