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Friday, the Washington Post published its annual summer concert guide. Flipping through the listings (who knew Pat Benatar still toured?) got me to thinking about musically themed news items….
Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Pat Benatar): Friday KCNA carried the North Korean military’s response to the recent incident in which images of Kim Jong-il and other regime heavyweights were used for target practice by the South Korean military. In the interest of preserving bandwidth, I have edited down the statement (though I was tempted to retain that bit about defending Kim Jong-il “even if the sky falls and the earth breaks apart”):
“The Lee Myung Bak group of traitors…. staged such rowdyism as setting up a target and daring fire at it, a thrice-cursed criminal act of hurting the supreme dignity of the DPRK.
This is nothing but hysteric spasm hard to imagine with a normal brain and a height of confrontation with compatriots, action shocking all the Koreans….The recent hideous provocation is a never-to-be pardoned treason...
There were in the south "Yusin" dictator [ed. note: Park Chung-hee] who earned an ill fame for escalating confrontation with fellow countrymen and a military fascist man-hunter who made the nation shudder. But they dared not hurt the supreme dignity of the DPRK…
The Lee group betrayed without hesitation its true colors as maniacs keen on confrontation with fellow countrymen who would make even the successive fascists blush and as gangsters ignorant of even elementary ethics and morality.
Much upset by this, the Lee group is pretending to know about it for the first time and the puppet military warmongers are staging such poor farce as floating the story that "it was an "individual action." The group, however, can never shirk the responsibility for its treason.
The General Staff of the KPA clarifies the following stand, reflecting the towering resentment of the KPA and people against the hideous provocation committed by the group and their unanimous will to take a thousand-fold revenge upon it:
1. The south Korean puppet authorities should take a measure for immediately meting out a stern punishment to the prime movers who committed the above-said most hideous crimes against the nation…
2. The south Korean puppet authorities should make a formal apology to the whole nation for the hideous provocation and provide an official guarantee for thoroughly preventing its recurrence…
3. From now on the units of the three services of the KPA and the Worker-Peasant Red Guards will launch practical and overall retaliatory military actions to wipe out the group of traitors at a stroke.
It is the final conclusion drawn by the DPRK that there is no need to sit face to face with the Lee group of traitors hell-bent on the confrontation with fellow countrymen and that it is necessary to settle accounts with it only by force of arms…
All the units of the three services of the KPA and the Worker-Peasant Red Guards will escalate the practical and overall retaliatory military actions till the puppet authorities have taken measures to punish the prime movers for the recent cases and make an apology for them.
The world will clearly witness what are the retaliatory actions to be taken by the whole army and all the people to protect the supreme dignity of the country and nation and what destiny will await Lee Myung Bak, the traitor for all ages, and the puppet military warmongers running wild without any fear.”
This is pretty rich coming from the folks who have yet to apologize for actual (as distinct from pretend) killing. The South Korean authorities have announced that the offending targets have been replaced with conventional ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-i4FaPhNxI
Shot by Both Sides (Magazine): We previously blogged on the case of the South Korean jailed for operating what authorities say was a seditious website. His appeal is currently before the Supreme Court. Now the Ministry of National Defense has discovered that seventy soldiers, including 26 officers, were subscribers to the banned pro-North Korean website. The officers include one colonel, five lieutenant colonels and five majors. Seven or eight of these individuals reportedly posted comments to the site. According to the Joongang Ilbo, the colonel told military prosecutors that “he joined as a member to study the pro-North activists’ logic and to develop logic to counter them.”
Nice suit, Howard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUTJgk0HFqw
Gangsta’s Paradise (Coolio): North Korea has announced that it is permit the operation of a casino and nightclub in the Mt. Kumgang resort zone, shuttered since the killing of a South Korean tourist in 2008. This would not be North Korea’s first foray into gaming: in the 1997, it reached an agreement with the Emperor Group out of Hong Kong for a horizontally integrated casino-hotel-bank operation in the Rajin-Sonbong zone. The complex opened in 2000 and has a subsequently checkered history: it was closed in 2004, in the words of the DailyNK after a Chinese official "squandered a fortune of public funds there." (According to the DailyNK, the casino re-opened last year, catering to Russians, Chinese, and bored North Korean cadres.) The Hyundai Asan, the putative operator of the Mt. Kumgang operation, had no immediate response to the North Korean announcement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-K0bRlJEsE
Never Been in a Riot (the Mekons): the Chosun Ilbo citing an unidentified “North Korean source” reports that North Korea pre-emptively formed a special riot control force late last year to quell public demonstrations, possibly spurred by concerns over events in the Middle East or succession. “The troops are armed with pistols and batons and trained in crowd control at train stations, town plazas, schools and parks. “ Their source claims that the regime is jittery. "Officials who are deemed an obstacle to the succession" from leader Kim Jong-il to his son Jong-un “are being purged, and fears are mounting among high-level officials that they will be replaced by supporters of Kim Jong-un."
