North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dead

[leafer]

He spent a million a year on booze? Woder how much he spent on his permanent and maybe why he was ill in the head.

[Gembrid]

genbrien

funny? boy

[Speed]

Can we for once have a no-politics cut right after western-propaganda-influenced BS starts, and not only after other-propaganda-influenced BS retaliates?

 

Well, it does look like North Korea is saving energy for something by keeping almost all its lights turned off at night for its 24 million residents. Could they be be building up energy reserves for an upcoming war?

 

 

Edit: Oh wait... it's like that all the time. I guess one could look at the bright side (or rather, "dark" side): almost all North Koreans (except those living near the border with South Korea) enjoy dark night skies mostly unspoiled by light pollution. Almost all North Koreans can enjoy glorious naked-eye views of the Milky Way galaxy from their backya- umm place of residence. And they have very low carbon emissions. :thumbup:

Edited December 20, 2011 by Speed

[Snoopy]

Well, it does look like North Korea is saving energy for something by keeping almost all its lights turned off at night for its 24 million residents. Could they be be building up energy reserves for an upcoming war?

 

 

Edit: Oh wait... it's like that all the time.

 

It's been like that for years. I was stationed at Osan in 97-98 and one briefing we got was the North was conducting a big exercise and they were using fires in cans to illuminate the runways.

[Speed]

It's been like that for years. I was stationed at Osan in 97-98 and one briefing we got was the North was conducting a big exercise and they were using fires in cans to illuminate the runways.

 

It actually used to be worse... older pictures only showed (very weak compared to city size) night time illumination in Pyongyang. Now it looks like they have a few lights in Wonsan and a handful of other spots. On a kinda related note, I'd hate to be an amateur astronomer living in Japan.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Speed

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

The down side of Kim popping his clogs is that one of my favorite funny websites will soon run out of material. I'm of course talking about the famous Kim Jong Il looking at things website

http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/archive

 

I cant explain why it's funny, it just is. Notice how much thinner everyone else looks compared to him.

 

One of my favorites

http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/post/6980005138/looking-at-socks

I imagine him saying "...and these aren't the only socks we have. North Korea has DOZENS of pairs of socks!"

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

Worked on a radar for South Korea a few years ago. They installed it and sent back some recordings for us to check out - 24 hours of it.

 

When we played it back (speeded up), you could see where the border trace was as there was absolutely no activity above a certain line. A ton of stuff South of that line - both civilian and military.

But North - absolutely zip apart from a single slow moving aircraft around 2pm that flew parallel to the border one time and then landed. I guess they don't have the fuel to do more than one flight a day. Their military pilots must be just awful, they probably only have a handful of hours a year flight time.

[combatace]

World is not even at all corners and that does not mean that people living in glass houses should throw stones at other's houses. Let it be as it is because every country has its own patriots, so even though true the few posts above are just hurting their feelings.

 

Forgiveness is the virtue of strong not the weak.

 

Note: I'm not from DPRK.

[agrasyuk]

this one is my all time favorite :megalol:

 

[EtherealN]

World is not even at all corners and that does not mean that people living in glass houses should throw stones at other's houses. Let it be as it is because every country has its own patriots, so even though true the few posts above are just hurting their feelings.

 

Forgiveness is the virtue of strong not the weak.

 

Note: I'm not from DPRK.

 

Well, as a noncontroversial fact, if you were north korean you most likely wouldn't be posting here. :P

(DPRK internet uplinks are only for use by officials at specific departments, civilian use - in those cases someone has access to a computer - is mainly on a separate DPRK-only network except for some research purposes.)

 

I've actually been thinking about heading over to the DPRK embassy here and apply for a tourist VISA. Not an easy thing to get, but after reading way too many books on the topic of that country during the last year I'm getting really curious to see Pyongyang for myself. For those interested I especially recommend "North of the DMZ" by russian scholar Andrei Lankov, who studied at Kim Il-Sung university in the 80's and has worked on topics relating to the DPRK ever since; a good look at the life of the people in North Korea. He spends a lot of time explaining that whatever we westerners might feel about the country (and indeed, even in soviet days russians that were exposed to it were often shocked and intrigued) the people still find a way to lead "normal" lives. In days where most publications focus almost exclusively on the Kim clan itself and the nuclear weapons programme, or illustrations of the Arduous March (as the 90's famine is known in the DPRK), it was very interesting to read a dissertation on things as simple as how people get married, how they get their jobs (being a driver is one of the most prestigeous jobs in the country, for example), how a sort of simplified grassroots capitalism has arisen - engineered by housewives spending their days in various hard-currency enterprises while their husbands work the factories - and so on and so forth.

 

In the end, my take-away from that specific book was that no matter what someone may feel about a given system, people are still people. And there's something really encouraging about that. :)

 

As far as hurting people's feelings, I would actually point out that "attacking" the character of Kim Jong-Il (and especially Kim Il-sung) is more likely to hurt the feelings of north koreans that have left for the south or china than pointing out the poverty of the country, which nowadays is actually acknowledged internally to a certain degree. And Kim Jong-Il was not unaware of nor unaffected by the plight of the people, as interviews with his former chef has illustrated.

 

So yeah, we should be sensitive since this is an international community, but in this specific case I think you are selecting the wrong thing to be worried about. :)

[combatace]

Right but where I live 46% people are poor with only 10% of nutrition/day of the least set limit by WHO yet we have fourth largest defense force in the world.

 

So, though there is no dictator here nor we have communist government, we are super rich and super poor. Imbalance in the world prevails so we just need to accept it.

 

Like you said people are people and its not that people don't like each other its just the governments that don't like each other and I feel it better to stay away from such notions.