I've lived in South Korea for two years and this is the most I've ever heard people talk about Kim Jong Il or North Korea. Even the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 didn't generate this much talk. This is also the first time I've ever heard anyone tell a joke about North Korea. People are telling jokes in the street right now.
Jung Man Yong, a farmer at a collective farm in North Korea, catches a large fish in the river. Exalted, Jung comes back home and asks his wife to fry the fish.
“We can have fried-fish for dinner!” said Jung.
“But we don’t have oil.”
“Then, let’s have steamed fish.”
“We don’t have an iron pot either!”
“OK, then let's just grill it.”
“There is no firewood.”
Angrily Jung goes back to the river and lets the fish go free.
The fish circles around and jumps out of the water, yelling “Long live the General Kim Jong Il!”
Second story
At the museum, there is a painting in which Adam and Eve are holding an apple.
A Briton says, “They are Britons. The gentleman is sharing a delicious apple with a lady.”
A Frenchman says, “They must be French. They are walking around in the nude.”
A North Korean says, “They are North Korean. They have no clothes and little food but think of themselves as living in paradise.”
Third story
Kim Jong Il inspected a collective farm and found some cute little pigs. He decided to take a picture with those pigs. That evening, a North Korean newspaper editor was put in the awkward situation of writing a caption for that picture to go in the paper.
“Well… ‘Comrade Kim Jong Il among pigs..’”
“No, ‘The pigs are with Comrade Kim Jong Il.’”
“That doesn't work either.”
Finally, the paper was published the next day with the caption, ‘Comrade Kim Jong Il is third from the left.’
Fourth story
A Briton, a Frenchman, and a North Korean are having a conversation.
The Briton: “I feel happiest when relaxing before the fireplace on a winter night.”
Frenchman: “You guys are too old fashioned. I feel happiest when I go on vacation with a beautiful blonde and then beak up with her up on my way home.”
North Korean: “One night, somebody knocked my door. When I opened the door, he said ‘Kang Sung Mi, You are under arrest!’ I felt happiest because Kang was actually my neighbor.”
Fifth story
Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin are having a summit in Moscow.
During a break, both are so bored and decided to test whose bodyguard is more loyal.
Putin calls his bodyguard Ivan first and tells him to open the window and throw himself off from the twentieth floor.
Ivan cries “Your Excellency, why are you doing this to me? I have a wife and a kid.”
Putin apologizes and lets Ivan go.
Then Kim Jong Il calls his bodyguard Lee Myung-Man.
“Lee, jump off from the window.”
Without saying a word, Lee tries to leap from the window.
Surprised, Putin grabs Lee to stop him from jumping and says “Are you crazy? You will die if you jump from here!”
Lee struggles to jump, saying “Let me jump! I have a wife and a kid.”
Sixth story
In the Pyongyang Subway, two North Koreans are sitting next to each other.
“How do you do, comrade?”
“How do you do?”
“Are you a Party member?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been one?”
“No.”
“Are any of your relatives member of the Party?”
“Not one.”
“Then get your feet off from mine, now.”
Maybe the joke what he heard was about his cause of death. I am South Korean and there are many joking tweets about it. It's not really usual expression in South. But after I read the comment below about the chinese trope, understood why they announced like that...
This is something of a trope. In Imperial China the death of an emperor was often ascribed to "積勞成疾", which literally translates to "illness from accumulated labor".
IE6/7 have left so many mental scars on developers over the years that I think "IE" will evoke those two for developers for many years after it stops being objectively worse.
I wasn't talking about the comparison, just that the post clearly was clearly referring to the bad old versions rather than the new, more compliant IE.
But while we're on the topic, jokes are often meant to be logically absurd but ring sort of true. For a lot of developers, IE has had more of a direct, negative impact on them than all of those dictators combined, so it kind of feels right, even if it shouldn't. You shouldn't take it so seriously. People getting offended by jokes is offensive to me, because it makes for a more humorless world.
That's why I said it's "decent enough" and not "best". Even as a developer who have had problems with IE before, I can say people find that IE9 is real good. It's the opinion from my extended circle and not anyway scientific. They don't know what HTML is for a fact.
Wanted: Hegemony of International Elites looking for despicable candidates for Two Minutes Hate media roles. Slightly senile, doddering old men preferred. Work remote!
That sounds likely to me. Part of the guidelines say "No current events", which probably led to people flagging it. I'd rather not comment on the story's appropriateness, but I'm pretty sure that's why.
With the political climate of change in afrika and middle east, this might be a great reason for the goverment to tear itself apart as various factions try to take over 'in the name of the people'
In North Korea "grooming" refers to randomly placing some spoiled little fat kid in charge of the entire North Korean military ahead of all the four star generals after you have a stroke and realize that you aren't the immortal demigod that you once thought you were.
This isn't meant as a jab at your comment, I just think it is really funny that anyone including his father would think that he is capable of running a country. On the other hand I guess he can't do much worse than dad.
Will be interesting to see if his son and chosen successor is able to retain power and persure a similar governing style. Seems like the perfect opportunity for change in North Korea.
North Korea is very skilled at manipulating world opinion to seem like a rogue state. They know very well that their existence depends on never taking action, no matter what they say.
Think of them like a crazy family member that keeps in trouble unless people pony up cash and you pretty much have their entire strategy in a nutshell.
Well, beyond that you have the fact that in order to maintain the kind of control that the regime maintains, they need isolation. This means that they do things to get isolated, so that the North Koreans get only one side of things.
As US News and World Report once commented, threatening the North Korean government with isolation was like threatening a drowning man with a life preserver.....
Not likely. Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law was generally understood/guessed to be the one holding the reins of power in 2008 when Kim was ill then and will likely take firmer control again, even if its from behind the scenes, using Kim Jong Un as a figurehead for perhaps a decade. This is similar to what happened when Kim took over in 1994 after his father's death.
There isn't sufficient command & control capability or maneuverability for the NK military to take swift control of the country or perhaps even the capital, if the party apparatus (cadre, spies, police, informants) doesn't stand in its way.
I purposely chose "power play" over "coup d'etat" to allow for less sweeping changes. There will certainly be a push by the military for a greater share of power.
Looking at the released list of funeral mourners, this has already begun. A few surprises in the order, though it could be a ruse. Everything in NK is a ruse, tough to ever know anything for certain, even with 'educated' speculation. But its fun to try (if you are outside of NK). :-)
If this continues it may become a club 27 analogue. Though 27 is perhaps a much less random number than 69 in that regard since all three of those dictators had different causes of demise.
The surface will probably be quiet for a bit, while the internal political machine of the DPRK roils. There are certainly a lot of possibilities (both good or bad) that can happen depending on who actually takes over control. Even if the regime collapsed non-violently, the ensuing chaotic human crisis would still be immense. My belief is that it will continue largely unchanged for the short to mid term.
Hardly, HN only covers world events with real global significance. I enjoy reading HN users takes on this kind of news as I find it interesting to discuss this kind of news but comments on mainstream news sites are terrible and I don't really have the time to invest in other sites with quality comments who cover this stuff in far higher volume.
Agreed, the tone and community here provide interesting discussion and insights on the really big turning points such as these. Comparably on reddit there is a lot of chaff to work through to get to the interesting kernels.
I've highlighted the sort of discussion I'd like to see more of in blue, and the ones that I'd like to see fewer of in red. The unhighlighted comments provide no value to me but I don't mind their existence. Under this scheme, my own comment would be red, because it's meta and off-topic.
Why not, if there is something smart to discuss about them, something gratifying our intellectual curiosity[1]. I vaguely remember even pg referring to Lady Gaga as hacker in clothes space in (I think) Hackers&Painters (anyone have the reference? I can't seem to find it :/).
I'm personally very happy that such articles appear here. I got used to the fact that HN covers only significant geopolitical events, so I can ditch every other news service and be sure that if something of actual importance happens, it'll be covered here as well.
Also, I'd be hard pressed to find such quality of discussions anywhere else.
I flagged it too. I don't know why you're downvoted. I wanted to say sth for myself, but maybe I'll stick to quoting the guidelines:
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
After his death, Kim Il-sung was declared the country's Eternal President.
Could it be possible to take control of North Korea by getting a plant in there, killing Kim II Sung and his family and then using his power to work behind the signs and use the totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship to morph the country into a free capitalistic republic? Sounds like something the special forces could do in a few weeks, it just has to be a surprise so the military doesn't get a chance to respond.
Not doing anything seems cruel and unusual punishment. We may be born there in your next lives, wouldn't you want someone to do something about it?
