Supposedly peace in our time is about to break out on the Korean peninsula with the announcement of a US-DPRK summit, but you would not know that if you only read the North Korean media:
Even after a historic announcement that U.S. President Donald Trump will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the first time as a sitting president, Pyongyang continued Saturday to denounce the U.S. for its sanctions and vowed never to bow to the pressure.
In an opinion piece attributed to an individual writer, North Korea’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Saturday that the regime won’t bow to “military power, sanctions or blockade.”
“We won’t let Americans determine good and evil according to their own ruler and trample upon justice and truth,” it argued.
It denounced the latest sanctions and secondary boycott by the U.S. and said they violated international law and infringed on sovereignty. It also called those disciplinary actions “very dangerous” and said they “might provoke a war.”
Neither the paper nor other North Korean media mentioned that South Korean envoys extended an invitation from Kim Jong-un to President Trump Thursday (local time) in Washington to meet to discuss the regime’s nuclear weapons programs and that Trump accepted it. [Yonhap]
This likely means that the state controlled media in North Korea will continue to take a hardline against the US until it is clear that the upcoming summit is going to lead to the concessions they want.
I would not be surprised at all if this mask was intended by the North Koreans to look a little like Kim Il-sung just to stick it to South Korea’s conservatives who have been critical of the Kim regime’s participation in the Winter Olympics:
North Korean cheerleaders wear identical masks showing a man’s face during an ice hockey match involving the joint team of the two Koreas on Feb. 10, 2018. (Yonhap)
The unification ministry on Sunday denied a local news report that the image of North Korea’s late founding leader Kim Il-sung appeared on the mask worn by North Korean cheerleaders during an ice hockey match involving the unified team of the two Koreas.
The female cheerleaders, dressed in red, put the masks on while rooting for the women’s ice hockey team comprising athletes from the South and the North as the team played its first match Saturday against Switzerland during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The mask bore the image of a man, and a local media outlet reported that it was an image of the North’s revered founder when he was young. That report sparked criticism that the North was using the Olympic event for propaganda purposes.
But the South’s unification ministry said the report was based on an incorrect assumption.
“After checking with a North Korean official at the scene, it has been confirmed that there was no such meaning whatsoever, as assumed in the report,” the ministry said in a release, adding that the North Korean official also confirmed it was impossible to use an image of the North’s founding leader in such a way.
Officials said it was just an image of a good-looking man and the mask was worn when the cheerleaders sang a North Korean song, “Whistle,” whose lyrics are about a man’s unrequited love for a female neighbor. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the left in South Korea is claiming this is all fake news drummed up by South Korea’s conservatives. Here is a picture of the young Kim Il-sung, I will let readers be the judge if it was a young Kim Il-sung mask or not. Here is a picture of a young Kim Il-sung (center) with his wife Kim Jong-suk (right), and his son Kim Jong-il (left):
It will be interesting to see if through CCTV or witnesses that the US military investigators will be able to track down who left the propaganda on the US bases:
U.S. Forces Korea is warning servicemembers on the peninsula to stay alert to potential insider threats after North Korean propaganda appeared on American bases.
The 8th Army reported that propaganda leaflets were discovered at Seoul’s Yongsan Garrison Thursday, shortly after a North Korean soldier defected across the heavily fortified border just north of the South Korean capital.
In an alert posted later that day on USFK’s Facebook page, officials said a significant number of North Korean propaganda leaflets and CDs had been placed at strategic locations on multiple U.S. military installations in South Korea. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if the propaganda was left by a sympathetic South Korean leftist with base access instead of a North Korean spy.
Using high-decibel speakers, SK starts to broadcast into NK re the defector who crossed the MDL. FM radio station "Voice of Freedom" broadcasting that he survived the mass shooting, is being treated at Ajou & was found to be suffering from malnutrition.https://t.co/RxTy4ontKr
What a waste of time if these CNN journalists thought their “man-on-the-street” interviews in Pyongyang were going to reveal anything different than the Kim regime’s propaganda talking points:
Ri Won Gil, an editor, told CNN Trump “knows nothing” about life in North Korea.
US President Donald Trump had already flown to China by the time ordinary North Koreans heard he’d addressed South Korea’s National Assembly.
In a damning speech on Wednesday, Trump called the isolated communist country “a hell that no person deserves.” The rebuttal from North Koreans was equally harsh.
One woman CNN spoke to on the streets of Pyongyang called Trump’s assertion “foolish,” “absurd” and another word CNN cannot print. “The reality here is very different. We’re leading a happy life,” Ri Yong Hui, a house wife in Pyongyang, told CNN.
North Korean state media reported that Trump had spoken on Thursday, but did not include concrete details of his speech, in which the President slammed Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.
The North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun characterized Trump’s words as “garbage spewing like gunpowder out of Trump’s snout like garbage that reeks of gun powder to ignite war.”
Coverage on state television and in newspapers focused on a small number of protesters outside the National Assembly, despite the fact that they were outnumbered by those rallying in support of the US President.
CNN’s government minders allowed us to reveal the actual contents of what Trump said to citizens on the streets of Pyongyang, agreeing to take us down to a busy street corner and interview citizens.
We approached several people. Most were unwilling to speak to us, but not Ri.
“Trump has no right to talk about human rights,” Ri said, as the government minders translated for her. “He’s a simple war maniac.” [CNN]
You can read the rest at the link, but everyone interviewed said the same thing. It is pretty clear the only people talking to the journalists were those cleared by the Kim regime to speak to CNN to push the government’s anti-Trump talking points. If these CNN journalists thought anyone in Pyongyang was going to tell a bunch of foreigners surrounded by government minders and say anything negative about North Korea they are absolute fools. If they are not fools that means they knew full well they would receive government propaganda and they went ahead and published it any way likely because it was anti-Trump.
I would not be surprised if these North Korean propaganda leaflets being found in the Seoul area are not being distributed by the North Koreans, but instead South Korean leftist sympathizers:
This photo shows a propaganda leaflet, allegedly from North Korea, that was found on a street near South Korea’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Oct. 16, 2017. (Yonhap)
– A number of what appear to be North Korean propaganda leaflets have been spotted inside South Korea’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae and in nearby areas, the office confirmed Monday, prompting suspicions over how they found their way into the highly secured area.
The small propaganda bills were seen scattered on streets near the presidential office, while some were even found in the yard of Chunchugwan, the Cheong Wa Dae press center that sits on the eastern side of the presidential office, according to Cheong Wa Dae security officials.
North Korean leaflets are not hard to find in South Korea while the communist state is said to periodically send leaflets using balloons and unmanned aerial vehicles, but it marked a rare incident for such bills to be found near the presidential office. [Yonhap]
Here is the latest in the war of words between the Kim regime and President Trump:
The latest threat from Kim Jong-un’s rogue state was delivered through state media Rodong Sinmum.
In an extraordinary attack, North Korea branded the US President “the boss of hooligans and gangsters.”
And Kim’s mouthpiece warned Mr Trump is “driving the destiny of the U.S. doomed to ruin into bottomless abyss of total destruction.”
It said: “Recently the US and the South Korean puppet forces staged a combined drill for infiltrating into enemy camp for preemptive attack at strategic objects in the north and introduced a field artillery brigade to South Korea from the US mainland to fire artillery shells.
“Meanwhile, a formation of B-1B nuclear strategic bombers flew over international waters of the East Sea of Korea in a show of force”.
“What matters is the US saber-rattling coincides with the reckless remarks made by Trump, the boss of hooligans and gangsters, at the UN arena that he would totally destroy the DPRK.” [UK Express]
North Korea has decided to pile on in regards to the US Navy’s recent high-profile collisions:
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain is seen after a collision, in Singapore waters August 21, 2017. North Korea mocked the deadly incident in its latest threats. Ahmad Masood/Reuters
North Korea has used the recent fatal incidents involving two U.S. warships in its latest anti-American diatribe.
An article published in several state-controlled North Korean publications on Thursday derided the collisions involving the USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald, which resulted in a combined death toll of 17 U.S. Navy sailors, and described them as a foreshadowing of America’s own destruction.
“When the American empire is sinking into the bottom of sea with the Aegis ship, strategic rockets soared into the space in the East, shaking the world with great thunder and spouting grenadine fire,” the article read, attempting to draw a link between Pyongyang’s missile tests and the accidents. (………….)
The article goes on to lecture the U.S. on philosophy, quoting an Ancient Greek aphorism about wisdom being derived from the acknowledgment of one’s ignorance.
“‘Know thyself,’” the article read, before adding: “The U.S. should realize that if it disregards this warning of history and behaves recklessly, threatening peace in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia, the U.S. mainland will be wrecked tomorrow just like the Aegis destroyer wrecked today.” [Newsweek]
