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DPRK media goes on misogynistic rant about RoK head
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...rean-president
""We accuse Park the *****""
"stresses the fact she has never married or had children"
"Old cat groaning in her sickbed".
""well over 60""
"Park put thick makeup on her old, wrinkled face and rambled on."
No state that so willingly lauds and celebrates the sexist derision of women and the marginalization of half the human race (and working class) can lay any kind of claim as a revolutionary worker's movement (alongside the other numerous problems with the DPRK).
North Korea launches misogynist tirade against South Korean president
Park Geun-hye is described as a 'cold-blooded animal' and 'little girl' in official newspaper after speech on reunification
The South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, gives a speech in Dresden, Germany. Photograph: Jens Meyer/AP
North Korea has launched a vicious, misogynist tirade against the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, after she gave a speech on reunification in Germany.
While the North's propaganda is often vitriolic, the highly personalised and sexist nature of the attack – the latest salvo is titled: "We accuse Park the *****" – is more unusual.
The three-part series, which ran in the official newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday, describes her as a lunatic, idiot and "cold-blooded animal". But it also stresses the fact she has never married or had children and claims she "jabbers like a little girl", in a string of insults presented as quotes from ordinary North Koreans. The subtitle of one piece reads: "Old cat groaning in her sickbed".
Perhaps to emphasis the youth of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, it also describes her as a dotard who is "well over 60". Kim took power when his father Kim Jong-il died at the age of 70.
North Korea's first reference to Park after she came to power last spring sniped at her "venomous swish of skirt", employing a phrase used to disparage women seen as acting aggressively.
But this week the country has stepped up its attacks in the wake of her speech on inter-Korean relations in Dresden. The official news agency KCNA compared her to a babbling peasant and wrote: "Park put thick makeup on her old, wrinkled face and rambled on."
Seoul urged Pyongyang to "act discreetly", AFP reported, adding: "The North is showing senseless behaviour in using unspeakable language to attack our head of state's diplomatic activities."
Rüdiger Frank, an expert on the North at the University of Vienna, said that as the South Korean president, Park was unlikely to be treated kindly by the North's media.
"But this is a new dimension of name-calling and language, and you wonder what it means," he added.
He noted that it was in part a reaction to Park's recent speech on inter-Korean relations in Dresden. "They were a bit unhappy over the repetition of attempts by [her predecessor] Lee Myong-bak to say: 'If you behave, we will pay you well,'" he said.
The North also resents the joint military drills by the US and South Korea each spring. Its initial reaction was relatively subdued this year, but earlier this week, it exchanged fire with the South close to a disputed sea border.
"Kim Jong-un is showing his impatience with what North Koreans regard as provocation," Frank said.
Pyongyang also appears to be preparing the ground for a fourth nuclear detonation, having warned that it plans a "new kind" of nuclear test.
"That means creating the impression that the enemies who surround them are stepping up their efforts at attacking North Korea and this is justified self-defence," suggested Frank. "They want a fourth test and now they need a good reason to actually conduct it."
He suggested the Ukraine crisis had also "created an environment where North Korea feels much more comfortable … It's no longer them versus the rest of the world, but two camps emerging."
It may also be encouraged by its improving relations with Japan.
Andrei Lankov, a specialist in Korean studies at Kookmin University, said Pyongyang still sought aid from Seoul and was "annoyed with Park Geun-hye because she is not bringing the money they wanted".
He added that her Dresden speech – which promised huge investment if the North abandoned its nuclear weapons programme – was "in a long tradition of gratuitous proposals from both North and South, which have some caveats or conditions which are clearly unacceptable for the other side".
One of the Rodong Sinmun articles points to Park's father, the late dictator Park Chung-hee, warning: "Like father like daughter, this proverb just suits the case of the notorious Parks in a very bad sense."
Park's mother was murdered by a pro-North-Korean assassin aiming at her husband in 1974. "It seems they hate Park Geun-hye [but] not only because of her origins – it seems highly likely in the depths of their heart they have a grudging admiration for Park Chung-hee," said Lankov.
"The other reason is because she is a woman. We are talking about a very chauvinist culture.
"While in the unofficial black market economy, women are very powerful, in the official sphere you cannot see any women except a few in token jobs created for propaganda purposes.
"[A woman's] proper place is to serve her husband and family and in-laws, and she is incapable of doing anything … It's an inborn male chauvinism probably strengthened by the experiences of the Kim family, who are notorious womanisers and obviously tend to look at women very pragmatically and physiologically."
In 2009, the North's foreign ministry described the then US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as a "funny lady" who looked like a primary schoolgirl or "a pensioner going shopping".
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Coincidentally enough I posted this on facebook yesterday. Yea of all the possible things one could accuse park of the fact that they accuse her of being a poor mother is pretty sexist considering the possibility she rigged the previous elections, the banning of opposition parties, walking in the footsteps of her military dictator bloodline, and being an American puppet. I mean it's not that by a long shot they had nothing else to go with.
I wouldn't go as far as to say this, plenty of people "within the revolutionary worker's movement" have made problematic statements before that were worse than this. I'd imagine Marx and Engels joking that Lassese was a homosexual nigger loving jew was worse than this. What excludes the DPRK from the worker's movement is it's actual treatment of woman. I wouldn't criticize the DPRK so much if it was born yesterday and the status of woman was bad, but the plain fact is that they've been on this earth for 80 years now and their historical projectory has placed them farther and farther from woman's liberation rather than closer. espectually in light of the fact that in the last decade they've banned woman from driving cars, limited their hair styles to ten pre-selected styles, and only recently removed the ban on jeans, and really that's only the tiniest tip of the iceberg for what Korean woman have to suffer
Men vanish from earth leaving behind them the furrows they have ploughed. I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.
~Helen Keller
To despise the enemy strategically is an elementary requirement for a revolutionary. Without the courage to despise the enemy and without daring to win, it will be simply impossible to make revolution and wage a people’s war, let alone to achieve victory. ~Lin Biao
http://commiforum.forumotion.com/
The only problem I have with stories that claim to come from KCNA is that they are linked from KCNA.co.jp (English language website in Japan) and not KCNA.kp which is the official state media outlet that has all the stories in English. Some of the stories match, not all of them do. It makes as much sense (maybe even less considering Japans historical relationship with Korea) as the US using Russia to host a weird text only 1998 version of Voice of America.
I suspect that it's a spoofing website because the real official N.K. sites make no claim to it - that I can find. Which if my suspicions are true means that the bar of journalism is lower than I had even imagined.
"Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is." - A. Shakur
"There is nothing here, no oil, no strategic location. We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."
- Rwanda, 1994
true or not, sensational news about the DPRK gets liberals and soft lefts in a frenzy. While, the former dictator's daughter, Park Geun-hye's crackdown on the ROK left gets hardly a mention by the libs and soft lefts.
Nice to see the Guardian continue flying the flag of human liberation
"It is necessary for Communists to enter into contradiction with the consciousness of the masses. . . The problem with these Transitional programs and transitional demands, which don't enter into any contradiction with the consciousness of the masses, or try to trick the masses into entering into the class struggle, create soviets - [is that] it winds up as common-or-garden reformism or economism." - Mike Macnair, on the necessity of the Minimum and Maximum communist party Program.
"You're lucky. You have a faith. Even if it's only Karl Marx" - Richard Burton
The Guardian articles make reference to the Rodong Sinmun paper. I went there, and the English website has no reference to this language. But when you run the Korean site through a translator, three pretty questionable articles come up, which come close to using the language described in the Guardian article:
http://www.rodong.rep.kp/ko/index.ph...015&chAction=T
http://www.rodong.rep.kp/ko/index.ph...016&chAction=T
http://www.rodong.rep.kp/ko/index.ph...017&chAction=T
It's kind of funny how something like Google translate garbles the text, but it's clear enough that they are using sexist terms to refer to Park.
lol:
The reason that gets hardly a mention is because no leftists defend the ROK. There are leftists who defend the DPRK, so that is why people rightfully jump to criticize them. Criticizing South Korea would be preaching to the choir.
It is true that there are a lot of sensationalist stories about the DPRK, and I am the last person to trust Western media, but I don't think it's fair to call people who get upset by actions of the regime "soft leftists."
when in doubt, cry 'propaganda!'
Or just throw out all sense of critical analysis and jump on the nearest boat destined to "let others do my thinking for me" island.
Brospierre-Albanian baseball was played with a frozen ball of shit and tree branch
"History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union."
Henry L. Stimson: U.S. Secretary of War
Take the word “fear” and the phrase “for what, it’s not going to change anything” out of your minds and take control of your future.
[I]Juan Jose Fernandez, Asturias
"I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there's a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see"
True, although rednoise's post throws some more light on the OP and corroborates that the DPRK has used such questionable language in other articles, which would tend to suggest there is more than an ounce of reliability to the OP source.
That is certainly true - but I think the fact that this is their major political news sources and the fact that they have had a decade and a half to respond to the unfolding of the worker's rights movements among women and minorities makes the statements somewhat more troubling than the racist humor of Marx and Engels.
I would think that such codes and the nonsense in the article are indicative of the same misogynistic core.
Of course the fucking Stalinist pricks say that criticizing misogyny is "liberalism". Of all the things to criticize RoK for, the DPRK picks the fact that they are led by a childless mother who like all people suffers from the inevitable reality of aging (which for some reason is morally worse for women to do - I wonder if the DPRK's press mentions the fugly wrinkles of the late old Kim Jong Il). And you two assholes see this as worthy of defending, and anyone who brings it up as "liberal"? If you had it your way, this would me "MindlessTankieLeft"Nice to see the Guardian continue flying the flag of human liberation
No, to be honest I don't think anything is clear from the fairly garbled translation, and even if we had a literal translation, we would be missing the cultural context (i.e. terms with misogynist connotations might appear "neutral" in literal translation). That said, and as much as I am generally wary of claims that the DPRK does this or that, I don't think the original claim is that implausible.
However:
Now, the most consistent "defenders" of the DPRK on this site are the Marcyists (sorry, Leftsolidarity, but I don't think there is another name for the successors of the old Marcy-Copeland current), who generally consider the DPRK "socialist" (and their definition of socialism seems to be close to that of Stalin and Bukharin, so they don't consider the DPRK to have reached the communist society), but most of them, from my experience, admit that the DPRK has serious problems. But they are a minority on this site. Most people that "defend the DPRK" defend it against imperialist intervention, and some (in fact this is officially the line of almost every Trotskyist organisation) defend the state-owned, planned economy. This does not mean any of us think North Korea is some sort of paradise.Originally Posted by Ace Steel
Crypto-fascist patriarchal hereditary military dictatorship that dissapears whole families into gulags uses misogynistic language against opponent! next up, water comes out as wet!
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
Yep because anyone can look through your post history and just see a plethora of insightful, well-thought-out arguments....
What are you even trying to say with this? Speaking out against misogyny is liberalism? The DPRK is one of the most racist and reactionary states on earth, and there is plenty of real evidence to document this. If you think it's off the mark to think they could be spewing misogynist propaganda against the ROK president (who probably gets plenty of it from within her own country), then you really need to get your head out of your ass.Nice to see the Guardian continue flying the flag of human liberation
I can translate into English if someone can copy-paste the text in Korean into the the thread. I can get around the North Korea filters but it's a bit of a pain (having to use a certain computer at a research centre to make sure I'm not trading information with my handlers in the North....or use Tor stuff. I don't have time for either but I can translate if someone provides the text.)
Also, I'm an official volunteer/organizer with the May 18th foundation in Gwangju, huzzah. (for anyone who follows the specifics of Korean politics and political geography...it's more complicated than South=imperialist and North=communist, basically I'm living in the one wholly and consistently anti-Park area of the country)
catchphrase
Yes, my post history.
Brospierre-Albanian baseball was played with a frozen ball of shit and tree branch
"History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union."
Henry L. Stimson: U.S. Secretary of War
Take the word “fear” and the phrase “for what, it’s not going to change anything” out of your minds and take control of your future.
[I]Juan Jose Fernandez, Asturias
"I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there's a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see"
Apparently calling the South Korean President a "*****" wasn't enough, DPRK materials seem to be going in an intentionally offensive direction or something. Proof:
According to the Washington Post,
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
