Students required to get Kim Jong-un haircut

Anyone planning a trip to the barber, in honor of "Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With The Socialist Lifestyle Day"?

It's probably not true but, frankly, I hope it is!

So the Beeb airs reruns now?

This has already been debunked: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2 ... ircut.html

Got to love that picture though.

Even without that, it should be common practice to take "news" coming from the US State Department with a Truman Building-sized grain of salt.

Most leftists fail to do so because of what I have decided to call the "North Korean exception". Radical leftists spend the whole day mistrusting and debunking "bourgeois media", which is obviously so emotionally draining that they need a release valve. So when you get these crazy news reports about North Korea, everyone is like: "Oh come on, this is so silly that it has to be true. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Stop being such a paranoid Stalinist."

As I said in my OP, it probably isn't true. But it is hilarious. And, let's face it, it isn't so far fetched.

Comrade Gulper wrote:

As I said in my OP, it probably isn't true. But it is hilarious. And, let's face it, it isn't so far fetched.

Judging by the fact this is a country that says Kim Jong-Il's birth made it go from night to day by magic, in their own propaganda, then yes.

Also their official propaganda of a 300ish page book used the exact phrase "The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-Sung" an average of 7 times a page. I counted myself. What the shit?

Blah blah cultural chauvinism blah. Saying dear leader is a lot less worth being concerned over than the imperial encirclement of the only soverign Korean people.

Non sequitur.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

Blah blah cultural chauvinism blah. Saying dear leader is a lot less worth being concerned over than the imperial encirclement of the only soverign Korean people.

Best Korea: the country so sovereign it relies on South Korean food imports to not starve. The country so sovereign you don't even get to choose your local Party cadre. The country so sovereign it makes people disappear overnight and damnatio memoriae'd with haste of less than 48 hours.

Stalinism: not even once

North Korea the only country on the penninsula that isn't Japan/America's bitch. Try something more substantive somewhat. Your rhetoric is as boring as the Wall Street Journal.

@loz: Hardly. Your ilk are overly concerned with social forms and not with the impending doom of imperialism. But no tell me again loz how capitalism will be better for North Koreans.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

North Korea the only country on the penninsula that isn't Japan/America's bitch. Try something more substantive somewhat. Your rhetoric is as boring as the Wall Street Journal.

@loz: Hardly. Your ilk are overly concerned with social forms and not with the impending doom of imperialism. But no tell me again loz how capitalism will be better for North Koreans.

hahaha

Oh dear.... You can hardly be saying a welfare state would in fact be worse than the shite they have?

Sorry man, it's a shithole. One that'd dependent on foreign rice not to starve and run on a black market economy. Claiming "b-but it's independent!" is silly because really, you can't eat that. As they and their stunted mean height have found out.

And you argue "be more substantive" in a one-line response. OK mate.

Okay then tell me how imperialism can be progressive. Because only the government of the DPRK is standing in the way.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

North Korea the only country on the penninsula that isn't Japan/America's bitch.

Because it's China's bitch... Though one cannot blame all of DPRK's suffering on the Kim dynasty. The U.S. and its allies have isolated North Korea from the rest of the world.

China isn't the same to North Korea the way America/Japan are to South Korea. China itself has it's fingers deep in the ROK. But yes the hardships of the DPRK are due to hostile enemies and half friends like the PRC.

somewhat wrote:

Judging by the fact this is a country that says Kim Jong-Il's birth made it go from night to day by magic, in their own propaganda, then yes.

Where does it say that? I don't know much about Korea's postwar history but I wasn't able to find what you said. I read that he was officially born in Korea as opposed to really being born in Russia but I couldn't find any official sources that states what you have mentioned above.

Yeqon wrote:

Where does it say that? I don't know much about Korea's postwar history but I wasn't able to find what you said. I read that he was officially born in Korea as opposed to really being born in Russia but I couldn't find any official sources that states what you have mentioned above.

It's in the Best Korean book I talked about, can't recall the name but it was published in Pyongyang in '86.

But seriously, do you actually want to defend people who have the most laughably over-the-top, desperate propaganda? Just go to KCNA and laugh your ass off. The Cubans have a great form of left-wing journalism; the DPRK stuff is just ridiculous.

Also: the forced and terribly-acted crying when Kim Jong-Il died. Yeah.

Oh, and people sayng "b-but they're keeping the planned economy super intact!" then http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=sovietempire&path=subst/home/home.html/Capitalist-North- ... B00APO647E

inb4 imperialist lies and propaganda

somewhat wrote:

Best Korea: the country so sovereign it relies on South Korean food imports to not starve. The country so sovereign you don't even get to choose your local Party cadre. The country so sovereign it makes people disappear overnight and damnatio memoriae'd with haste of less than 48 hours.

Stalinism: not even once

Enver Hoxha pointed out in the late 70s that the DPRK was heavily indebted to the Soviet revisionists, and remarked how absurd his personality cult was.

Kim was no more "Stalinist" than his friends Tito and Ceaușescu. All three were opportunists who replaced Marxism-Leninism in favor of their own chauvinist ideologies.

Ismail wrote:

Enver Hoxha pointed out in the late 70s that the DPRK was heavily indebted to the Soviet revisionists, and remarked how absurd his personality cult was.

Kim was no more "Stalinist" than his friends Tito and Ceaușescu. All three were opportunists who replaced Marxism-Leninism in favor of their own chauvinist ideologies.

As opposed to Hoxha, the Marxist-Leninist so sincere his own hand-picked successor backstabbed the entire country.

Where there's smoke, there's incompetence. And I hardly think he had the greatest ground to criticize cults of personality, what with his own name being carved into the side of a mountain

Hoxha had an axe to grind with everyone who didn't join in on his oh-so-awesome pillbox personality cult. That said he's right about Kim and you won't find many "Stalinists" who defend the structure of North Korean barracks communism. However unlike some we don't eagerly await the implosion of the nation, or it's eradication by imperialist hands. And yes parroting imperial propaganda, at this point of weakness for the international proletariat and massive strength of international capital, feeds only into the imperial machine. Neither communist nor Korean gains from joining in the chorus of DPRK slander, other than to appear more palatable to liberals.