aria
Former Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 4, 1977
- Posts
- 39,546
This article was more amusing than the title -this dictatorship is hillarious in its self-aggrandizing ineptitude(and also kind of scary because of it). Saddam had nothing on these guys.
Just a quick reminder: They had a massive train explosion the other day.
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April 29, 2004
North Korea's Top Priority Remains Secrecy After Blast
By JAMES BROOKE - NY Times
TOKYO, April 28 - To hear North Korea's state media tell it, in the midst of an inferno of exploding rail cars and dying children, several heroic women made the ultimate sacrifice, running into blazing buildings in frantic attempts to save treasured portraits of Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung.
"Many people of the county evacuated portraits before searching after their family members or saving their household goods," the Korean Central News Agency wrote approvingly from Ryongchon, the railroad town where a huge explosion killed at least 161 people and wounded 1,300 last week. "They were buried under the collapsing building to die a heroic death when they were trying to come out with portraits of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il."
In North Korea, where the state personality cult is stronger than in Mao's China or Stalin's Russia, loyal citizens need no reminder that their leaders are more important than their own children.
A staple of North Korea's propaganda mythology, tales of people sacrificing themselves for portraits of Kim Jong Il, known as the Dear Leader, are being reissued at a time when speculation unleashed by the explosion is swirling.
For starters, where is the Dear Leader?
One week after the blast, the state media has not chronicled any new doings by North Korea's secretive leader. Admittedly, Mr. Kim lives a Wizard of Oz existence. In his 30 years of political life and 10 years as supreme leader, he is not known to have given a public speech. To prevent assassination attempts, the North Korean media never give clues as to where he is or will be.
On April 21, Chinese state television reported that he had just left Beijing for home; everyone knows it is a 12-hour train ride to Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.
South Korean reports said his train passed through Ryongchon before dawn on Thursday, about eight hours before the blast.
In the days after the blast, reporters in Dandong, on the Chinese border, said Mr. Kim's entourage had been joined by a decoy train when he crossed the border into North Korea, a standard safety precaution.
Another nagging question: what caused the blast?
Without citing a source or witness, KCNA, the North Korean news agency, said the "explosion was caused by the contact of electric lines during the shunt of wagons loaded with nitric ammonium fertilizer and tank wagons." This explosion, KCNA said, was "equivalent to the blast of about 100 bombs each weighing one ton."
How that information could be known remains unclear. Photographs and accounts of foreign aid workers allowed to tour the scene give a picture of total devastation, deep craters surrounded by hundreds of yards of debris and desolation. It is unlikely that any witness to the ignition could have survived the blast.
Children accounted for almost half the death toll. About 500 of the 1,300 people wounded were blinded; scores of them were children, according to foreign aid workers who toured hospital wards in Sinuiju, the regional center. Some analysts have speculated that the children were lined up to wave at the train of a passing dignitary.
"So let's ask why half the casualties were kids and why so many of them have facial/eye injuries," Robyn Lim, a conservative military analyst in Japan, wrote Tuesday in a Web site posting. "This might indeed be consistent with the theory that they were lined up."
Answers are hard to come by because North Korea refused to allow admittance to a group of foreign journalists who gathered at Dandong, about 15 miles north of Ryongchon. To prevent interviews with survivors, North Korea ignored Chinese offers of treatment for victims at hospitals in Dandong.
Indeed, North Korea's response to the train tragedy has been consistent with its larger survival strategy: maximize economic gain and minimize political risk.
Although the Ryongchon is only a six-hour drive from Seoul, North Korea refused to allow relief goods to arrive by truck from South Korea.
South Korea sent its aid by a ship, which arrived at Nampo, on the western coast and about a five-hour drive to Ryongchon, on Wednesday night.
The aid, mostly instant noodles, blankets and bottled water, is the first installment of what is certain to be a large outpouring of help from South Korea, where telethons and charity drives are complementing aid plans offered by lawmakers from the Uri Party.
KCNA announced on Wednesday that the destruction of the core of Ryongchon caused about $350 million in damages.
Just a quick reminder: They had a massive train explosion the other day.
----------------
April 29, 2004
North Korea's Top Priority Remains Secrecy After Blast
By JAMES BROOKE - NY Times
TOKYO, April 28 - To hear North Korea's state media tell it, in the midst of an inferno of exploding rail cars and dying children, several heroic women made the ultimate sacrifice, running into blazing buildings in frantic attempts to save treasured portraits of Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung.
"Many people of the county evacuated portraits before searching after their family members or saving their household goods," the Korean Central News Agency wrote approvingly from Ryongchon, the railroad town where a huge explosion killed at least 161 people and wounded 1,300 last week. "They were buried under the collapsing building to die a heroic death when they were trying to come out with portraits of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il."
In North Korea, where the state personality cult is stronger than in Mao's China or Stalin's Russia, loyal citizens need no reminder that their leaders are more important than their own children.
A staple of North Korea's propaganda mythology, tales of people sacrificing themselves for portraits of Kim Jong Il, known as the Dear Leader, are being reissued at a time when speculation unleashed by the explosion is swirling.
For starters, where is the Dear Leader?
One week after the blast, the state media has not chronicled any new doings by North Korea's secretive leader. Admittedly, Mr. Kim lives a Wizard of Oz existence. In his 30 years of political life and 10 years as supreme leader, he is not known to have given a public speech. To prevent assassination attempts, the North Korean media never give clues as to where he is or will be.
On April 21, Chinese state television reported that he had just left Beijing for home; everyone knows it is a 12-hour train ride to Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.
South Korean reports said his train passed through Ryongchon before dawn on Thursday, about eight hours before the blast.
In the days after the blast, reporters in Dandong, on the Chinese border, said Mr. Kim's entourage had been joined by a decoy train when he crossed the border into North Korea, a standard safety precaution.
Another nagging question: what caused the blast?
Without citing a source or witness, KCNA, the North Korean news agency, said the "explosion was caused by the contact of electric lines during the shunt of wagons loaded with nitric ammonium fertilizer and tank wagons." This explosion, KCNA said, was "equivalent to the blast of about 100 bombs each weighing one ton."
How that information could be known remains unclear. Photographs and accounts of foreign aid workers allowed to tour the scene give a picture of total devastation, deep craters surrounded by hundreds of yards of debris and desolation. It is unlikely that any witness to the ignition could have survived the blast.
Children accounted for almost half the death toll. About 500 of the 1,300 people wounded were blinded; scores of them were children, according to foreign aid workers who toured hospital wards in Sinuiju, the regional center. Some analysts have speculated that the children were lined up to wave at the train of a passing dignitary.
"So let's ask why half the casualties were kids and why so many of them have facial/eye injuries," Robyn Lim, a conservative military analyst in Japan, wrote Tuesday in a Web site posting. "This might indeed be consistent with the theory that they were lined up."
Answers are hard to come by because North Korea refused to allow admittance to a group of foreign journalists who gathered at Dandong, about 15 miles north of Ryongchon. To prevent interviews with survivors, North Korea ignored Chinese offers of treatment for victims at hospitals in Dandong.
Indeed, North Korea's response to the train tragedy has been consistent with its larger survival strategy: maximize economic gain and minimize political risk.
Although the Ryongchon is only a six-hour drive from Seoul, North Korea refused to allow relief goods to arrive by truck from South Korea.
South Korea sent its aid by a ship, which arrived at Nampo, on the western coast and about a five-hour drive to Ryongchon, on Wednesday night.
The aid, mostly instant noodles, blankets and bottled water, is the first installment of what is certain to be a large outpouring of help from South Korea, where telethons and charity drives are complementing aid plans offered by lawmakers from the Uri Party.
KCNA announced on Wednesday that the destruction of the core of Ryongchon caused about $350 million in damages.
