Posts Tagged ‘North Korea’
Darkness, fallen…
On the heels of North Korea’s unsuccessful “satellite launch,” a look at “the land of the morning calm” (AKA The Hermit Kingdom) from the altitude their rocket failed to achieve…
The bright dot halfway up the Western coast is the capital, Pyongyang… one of the (very) few spots in North Korea with access to appreciable amounts of electricity.
Other photos from above here and here.
As we spend a day in fear of trembling, we might send locquatious birthday greetings to lawyer and civil libertarian Clarence Darrow; he was born on this date in 1857. Darrow’s most famous court appearances were probably his defenses of Leopold and Loeb (the “thrill killers” who murdered Bobby Franks in 1924) and of John T. Scopes (where Darrow argued Scopes’ right to teach evolution against William Jennings Bryant in what came to be known as “the Monkey Trial”); he was an early leader of the ACLU.
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free. (source)
Lights! Camera!…
In all of the rumination on the death of Kim Jong Il, on his legacy, and on what his passing means for the future, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to the Dear Leader’s role as an avatar of the arts (he once wrote six operas in two years, the official North Korean News Agency reported), nor more particularly as a champion of the cinema.
Jong Il had a collection of over 20,000 foreign films (his favorites were apparently the Rambo series and Friday the 13th), and wrote several books on cinema– both critical works and “how-to.” Then, in 1978, his frustration with the lack of world-class directors in his domain led him to arrange for the kidnapping of South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his actress ex-wife, Choi Eun-hee. They tried to escape but eventually relented, remarried at the encouragement of Jong Il, and made a string of movies for him including the Godzilla “homage” Pulgasari.
The following year, 1986, Shin and his wife escaped while attending a film festival in Vienna. Shin migrated to the U.S. where he directed (as “Simon Sheen’) 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up, then served as an executive producer on 3 Ninjas Kick Back and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. He returned to South Korea in 1994.
Meantime, the Dear Leader turned his attention to sport (on his 62nd birthday, he played his first round of golf, completing a par 72 course in 34 strokes, with a record 5 holes-in-one), to developing North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability, and to using that threat to leverage food aid for his starving people.
For more illustrations of the ways in which absolute power corrupts absolutely, see this Daily Mirror list of “Bizarre Details of the Dear Leader’s Life.”
As we sob uncontrollably, we might recall that it was on this date in 1888 that Vincent Van Gogh, after a heated argument with Paul Gaugin, cut off his own left ear.
Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear, Easel and Japanese Print, January 1889 (source)
The Dear Leader’s Gaze…
Looking at dinner
Looking at son and Dear-Leader-Apparent Kim Jong-un
More stolen glances at Makemisteaks‘ insightful “Kim Jong-il Looking at Things.” (TotH to Rebecca MacKinnon)
As we reach for our lens cloths, we might recall that it was on this date in 2002 that North Korea rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency’s call to allow inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North. Ten years earlier North Korea had abrogated its participation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but then agreed the following year to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors. The following month, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush lumped North Korea with Iran and Iraq as the “Axis of Evil.”
Looking at atomic test site (source)
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