Kim Jong-un 'looking a wee bit peaky' speculation here

[Sue]

Tbf though, I reckon that's pretty much what I'll look like post lockdown but with worse hair.

 

[Tankus]

Is he dead yet,???

 

[cyril_smear]

Is he dead yet,???

probably but they won't tell us.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In the early period of the PRC stuff from the DPRK was considered the best quality of all the various socialist trading partners I recall reading, not sure if that was down to the joint reconstruction effort after the war.

There are some really heartbreaking stories of ethnic Koreans who chose to return to Korea from Japan in the 60s and 70s and chose DPRK over the south because at the time, the north looked like the better bet. Now stuck there and permanently suspected of disloyalty due to their family histories, many of them sent to labour camps due simply to their having lived abroad.

 

[circleline]

'The tubby 36 year old' - from The Scum, did make me smirk a bit...

 

[Saul Goodman]

Kimmy has been released from hospital. He can be seen here shaking hands with the doctor who saved his life.

And a nice round of applause for the hospital.

 

[wayward bob]

can we quit the casual "fat-bloke"ism or is that a stretch too far?

/snowflake

 

[JimW]

Article on the misreadings of how succession worked when poorly boy came to power:

My first visit to North Korea was in 1981. I flew from Beijing and hoped to go out through the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian railway. Consular officials said I should obtain a visa at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang. When I got there, a friendly (read KGB) counselor offered me cognac and inquired what I might be doing in Pyongyang. Then he asked what I thought of Kim Jong-il, who had just been officially designated as successor to Kim Il-sung at the 6th Party Congress in 1980. “Well, he doesn’t have his father’s charisma,” I said; “He’s diminutive, pear-shaped, homely. Looks like his mother.” The counselor replied: “Oh, you Americans, always thinking about personality. Don’t you know they have a bureaucratic bloc behind him, they all rise or fall with him — these people really know how to do this. You should come back in 2020 and see his son take power.”

It was the best prediction I’ve ever heard about this communist state-cum-dynasty, even if Kim Jong-il’s heart attack at 69 hastened the succession to Kim Jong-un by a few years. North Korea has known only millennia of monarchy and then a century of dictatorship — Japanese from 1910-1945 (in the late stages of colonial rule Koreans had to worship the Japanese emperor), and then for the past 66 years the hegemony of the Kim family.

North Korea’s Dynastic Succession

North Korea’s Dynastic Succession Bruce Cumings with an introduction by Ruediger Frank Historians rightfully insist on learning from history. Indeed, history tends to repeat itself - just

apjjf.org

 

[JimW]

can we quit the casual "fat-bloke"ism or is that a stretch too far?

/snowflake

Good point, will edit above.

 

[cyril_smear]

can we quit the casual "fat-bloke"ism or is that a stretch too far?

/snowflake

Where's the ism? He is very fat and probably under lots of stress which can't be a great combination on the auld ticker.

 

[wayward bob]

Where's the ism?

mostly in my brain (obesity=asking for it/justification to laugh). but it bothers me enough to mention that it bothers me. what other people do with that is out of my control

 

[Idris2002]

Fucking state of it. Everyone taking notes!

But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here. . .

When Kim Il Sung died back in 1994 (wasn't it?) I asked a South Korean woman I knew if the regime was going to fall soon. "Ha ha no" was her reply.

 

[tim]

A feel good N

I quoted an article to answer beesonthewhatnow about the note takers. I deliberately didn't include the pictures. The picture in the OP is the most recent photo of Kim, from April 10th.

Try and keep up before you post eh?

You could have give an introduction explaining what you were posting, rather than just cutting and pasting a long six-year-old spiel that starts with the phrase: "There's a newly released batch of photographs of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un..."

Try and make your contributions lucid before you post, eh!

 

[Saul Goodman]

that grief on display is, er, rather performative

Said without a hint of irony

 

[Saul Goodman]

The grief was real. DPRK is a strange place, its citizens adore their leader.

Crying is much easier when it's a choice between crying and disappearing,

 

[not-bono-ever]

the populace of pyongyang are pretty much all party members with checked lineage, you expect this performance tbf

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

stretch

stretchmark too far.

I will get my coat. Step out from this thread.

Although, calling him a fat bastard is unjust to all the lovely fat bastards out there, who dont murder and rape and torture their citizens.

 

[petee]

/vent

every day i cycle through a set of antifascist twitters, it helps to keep me sane. unfortunately, some of those accounts have a heavy admixture of third worldists/self styled ethnic champions. one of these, which has ho chi minh as an avatar, pointed out that the DPRK news service had said nothing, therefore it was racist to think that something might be up.

exactly how it's racist to think that something might be up when someone part of whose job it is to appear in the press every day, has gone invisible, is unclear to me. exactly why someone would imagine that the silence of a state news outlet should be taken as authoritative is equally opaque.

sorry, i couldn't help it.

vent/

 

[JimW]

Last thing I translated had a scene that takes place just after the death of Mao when a small community erects a memorial shrine too and all gather to mourn, notes that as well as the genuine stuff (widespread) it's a chance for some to let out a grief for their life under the consequences of the deceased's regime.

 

[cyril_smear]

The grief was real. DPRK is a strange place, its citizens adore their leader. I think we sometimes forget that it is populated by real people with real life hopes and dreams, yet are brainwashed from birth into a system that is utterly alien to the one we were brought up with.

Not to say the Kims aren’t cunts, cos they are.

When King John ''I told you was'' Il died the pictures of people weeping and thumping the ground at a railway station didn't seem very real.

 

[cyril_smear]

stretchmark too far.

I will get my coat. Step out from this thread.

Although, calling him a fat bastard is unjust to all the lovely fat bastards out there, who dont murder and rape and torture their citizens.

He is/was fat and he is/was a cunt.

 

[Poot]

So. A despotic, murderous, entitled prick and the best we can come up with is body shaming?

Come on Urban, you have more imagination than this.

 

[not-bono-ever]

So. A despotic, murderous, entitled prick and the best we can come up with is body shaming?

Come on Urban, you have more imagination than this.

he was a nonce

 

[cyril_smear]

he was a nonce

tsch tsch tsch

 

[Orang Utan]

Said without a hint of irony

what?

 

[wayward bob]

Although, calling him a fat bastard is unjust to all the lovely fat bastards out there, who dont murder and rape and torture their citizens.

am entirely open to anyone calling him on that shit

 

[petee]

the intelligence service best positioned to know don't make much of it

Amid mounting speculation, South Korea says Kim Jong Un is 'alive and well'

South Korea continued to pour water on mounting speculation about the health of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, telling CNN he is "alive and well."

www.cnn.com

 

[Callum91]

There's going to be quite the vacuum left by his demise. Apart from his sister there doesn't seem to be any clear line of succession. Perhaps it might be a good time for all his generals to finally say ''fuck it'' and push hard for a treaty with the South? Or...Trump goes in all guns blazing, intent on putting a McDonalds on every street corner.

 

[cyril_smear]

One North Korean defector says he could have hurt himself during a missile test!! He also could not have done though... it just wild speculation at this point.

 

[equationgirl]

Is he dead yet?

No chain of succession due to 'sucessful' purges by previous incumbents.