thirdplace posted:

number of worldwide viral youtube phenomenons: 0. checkmate, says south korea

Best national dish/Country:

Kimchi/North Korea.

Second best national dish/Country:

Grilled Steak/Serbija

North Korea May Take Action to Jolt Economy, Analysts Say

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday that it would convene its Parliament this month, an unusual session that South Korean analysts said might officially introduce a program by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to revitalize the nation’s moribund economy.

Since taking over the leadership after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December, the younger Mr. Kim has repeatedly emphasized the need to improve the living standards of his impoverished people. He said in April, during his first speech, that he would ensure that North Koreans would “never have to tighten their belts again.”

Since July, various news reports in South Korea have quoted anonymous sources in the North as saying that Mr. Kim planned to give factories and collective farms incentives aimed at increasing productivity. The state would let farmers keep 30 percent of their yield, the reports said; until now, it is believed that they could sell only a surplus beyond a government-set quota, which was rarely met. Factories would choose what to produce and how to market their wares, splitting any profits with the state and paying their own workers.

The changes, tested as pilot projects in selected farms and factories, will eventually be extended to the rest of North Korea and replace the country’s dysfunctional state ration system, these reports said.

Such changes, if confirmed, would be the North’s latest — and perhaps boldest — effort to overhaul its economy. A similar effort failed a decade ago.

“The coming parliamentary session will be a bellwether on where Kim Jong-un is taking his country’s economy,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul.

The announcement by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency that the Supreme People’s Assembly would meet Sept. 25 gave no details as to its agenda. It is rare for the rubber-stamp Parliament to meet more than once a year. It last assembled in April, when legislators elected Mr. Kim to succeed his father as chairman of the National Defense Commission, the North’s top state agency, the last of the top military, party and state titles he inherited.

Besides passing legislation and appointing top government officials, the North Korean legislature also announces important domestic and foreign policies. In 2003, it declared that the country would expand its nuclear weapons program.

On Friday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry vowed to expand the country’s nuclear arsenal “beyond imagination.” The threat came as the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that North Korea was making significant progress in building a new nuclear reactor widely seen as a means to enrich uranium and make weapons-grade plutonium. On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry said its nuclear program was no longer for “peaceful purposes only” and the country acquired nuclear weapons to cope with the “persistent hostile policy” of the United States.

North Korea watchers in the South said that Mr. Kim, who South Korean officials believe to be 28, may retire some of the North’s aging leaders, like Prime Minister Choe Yong-rim and Kim Yong-nam, the president of Parliament, both in their 80s, to put his own stamp on the leadership hierarchy and promote younger technocrats to drive his economic revitalization efforts.

The South Korean news reports on Mr. Kim’s economic changes cited North Korean party officials who attended briefings on Mr. Kim’s economic program. They varied in details while agreeing on a rough outline.

“The gist is to expand incentives for factories, individuals and collective farms to boost productivity,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea specialist at Korea University in Seoul.

Within collective farms, groups of four to six workers will be allowed to work as units to encourage competition, according to the Seoul bureau of Radio Free Asia, based in Washington, as well as Web sites in Seoul, which use sources in the North to collect news. Meanwhile, Jang Song-thaek, Mr. Kim’s uncle and key policy adviser, visited China last month and won Beijing’s commitment to help North Korea build two free economic zones on its border.

On Tuesday, a senior government official in Seoul, speaking on the condition of anonymity to a group of reporters, confirmed one element of the reported plans. He said the North was taking the lucrative trading rights from its powerful military and returning them to the cabinet. In April, Mr. Kim vowed to make the cabinet “the economic command.” Analysts say that the North’s former army chief, Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, who lost all his jobs in July, was fired for resisting an effort by Mr. Kim and Mr. Jang to curtail the military’s economic rights.

Analysts in South Korea remained divided over whether Mr. Kim was trying to achieve genuine economic change, of the kind his country’s main ally, China, has pursued, or seeking more productivity only to make up for his dwindling state coffers. The government has found it increasingly hard to earn hard currency in recent years as United Nations sanctions tightened and outside aid dwindled.

In a commentary published on the Web site of Sejong Institute of South Korea, Oh Gyeong-seop, an analyst, credited Mr. Kim with “reform within the system,” rather than a shift toward a market economy. His program, as reported so far, “still adheres to the state ownership of properties and bans individuals from establishing their own business enterprises,” he said.

Mr. Kim said in April that North Korea should stick to “socialist economic principles” while bolstering production. In July, his government even scoffed at reports of economic changes in North Korea, calling them a “hallucination,” like “expecting the sun to rise from the west.” In August, its main party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said North Korea might change “tactics” but would never abandon its “strategy” of building a “powerful socialist country.”

In 2002, North Korea experimented with similar incentives, but it quickly backtracked when the markets and trading activities boomed and the government saw them as a threat to its near-totalitarian control on the population. In 2009, North Korea again cracked down on markets. Such interference set off runaway inflation and occasional outbursts of protest.

Pak Pong-ju, the former North Korean prime minister who was banished for pushing changes too far in 2002, returned to the center of economic policy in 2010. He is supported by Mr. Kim’s aunt and Mr. Jang’s wife, Kim Kyong-hee, whose influence has increased under the young Mr. Kim, according to analysts and officials here.

Meanwhile, word of a new round of economic change has created uncertainty among North Koreans, already fueling inflation. The price of rice has doubled since early June, Daily NK reported last week.

“Here people think that economic measures mean rising prices,” it quoted a North Korean as saying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-may-be-preparing-economic-reforms.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&

i may have posted this before idk

prohairesis posted:

Since July, various news reports in South Korea have quoted anonymous sources in the North as saying that Mr. Kim planned to give factories and collective farms incentives aimed at increasing productivity. The state would let farmers keep 30 percent of their yield, the reports said; until now, it is believed that they could sell only a surplus beyond a government-set quota, which was rarely met. Factories would choose what to produce and how to market their wares, splitting any profits with the state and paying their own workers.

This is a clear restoration of imperial capitalism. It could not mean anything more than a temporary symbolic gesture to the aggression of the west in order to appease their espionage agents and McCulture antinuclear ecology movement. The article is also categorically incorrect, production quotas in People's Korea are always met and exceeded by at least 50%.

getfiscal posted:

oh they are going to industrialize their country by 2026? good for them.

Your post shows insufficient revolutionary zeal. Report to the reducatio ncamps.

EmanuelaOrlandi posted:

mustangs 1-18 where pretty gay but mustang 19 is sort of alright

The Mustang P-51 was an imperial fighter during the War of Imperialist Aggression, if that is to what you prefer our military technology has advanced greatly since that time and all of our aircraft now possess jet engine technology.

As we speak the glorious North Korean space program has prepared its rocket upon the launch pad at Sohae and fueling will commence shortly for our third successful launch of an advanced satellite of whose kind is yet to be revealed, but will include the latest fusion reactor technology.

Edited by mustang19 (Dec. 5, 2012 21:27:38)

Lair of King Tongmyong's Unicorn Reconfirmed in DPRK
Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) -- Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668).
The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392).
Jo Hui Sung, director of the Institute, told KCNA:
"Korea's history books deal with the unicorn, considered to be ridden by King Tongmyong, and its lair.
The Sogyong (Pyongyang) chapter of the old book 'Koryo History' (geographical book), said: Ulmil Pavilion is on the top of Mt. Kumsu, with Yongmyong Temple, one of Pyongyang's eight scenic spots, beneath it. The temple served as a relief palace for King Tongmyong, in which there is the lair of his unicorn.
The old book 'Sinjungdonggukyojisungnam' (Revised Handbook of Korean Geography) complied in the 16th century wrote that there is a lair west of Pubyok Pavilion in Mt. Kumsu.
The discovery of the unicorn lair, associated with legend about King Tongmyong, proves that Pyongyang was a capital city of Ancient Korea as well as Koguryo Kingdom."

Scientific Marxism

babyhueypnewton posted:

who cares what a bunch of uneducated western liberals think about the situation, north korea sure doesn't.

actually north korea will need them as consultants and image specialists as they continue to privatize their economy.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

that whole unicorn thing was hilarious because it went viral and was on the news sites and then like a week later in the shadows a few honest people were like "hey we went and actually read the korean and the translation was completely wrong."

but anyone who could read english knows that they weren't saying they found a unicorn, but they found a historical sight similar to saying "we found the cave where rhea hid zeus from Kronos (side note: I've actually been there, it's in crete, and no one actually thinks Zeus was there. it's nice), no korean mistranslation necessary.

of course all of this was ignored for a WACKY KOREANS propaganda piece. it's one of those propaganda pieces that stands out among the constant propaganda for being so patently dishonest that it really makes a logical person feel like an alien.

Can you stop this racist “hurr north Koreans didn’t find an actual unicorn, that would be stupid!” shtick? They exist:

what are those dogs doing?

EmanuelaOrlandi posted:

reminder that huey p newtons number one interest besides marxism is japan

Seriously though, Japs are rapists.

actually north korea will need them as consultants and image specialists as they continue to privatize their economy.

This, the DPRK should go back to the socialist ideals that have served it so well in the past.

Edited by mustang19 (Dec. 6, 2012 08:04:50)