Soviet Ilyushin Il-28

North Korea's 1940s Bomber Still Serving 2022
Mark Felton Productions

The Il-28 first flew in 1948. And I thought the B-52 was old.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - North Korean Edition
There I Ruined It
Just because I seldom see anything from North Korea. Things look pretty good for the party faithful over there.

The Berlin File

The Berlin File (베를린) - Official Main Trailer with English Subtitles
CJEntertainmentUSA
This movie was a little hard to follow so it didn't make much sense. We have North Koreans, South Koreans, the CIA, Mossad and some unidentified Arabs in Berlin to make an illicit arms deal. Well, some of them are there to make an arms deal and the rest of them are there to either watch what happens or to stop it. In any case there is some skullduggery going on and every few minutes a violent fight erupts. Some involve hare brained chases, some are just action packed karate battles and some are full-fledged machine gun shoot outs. There were a couple of unexpected bits, like the voice recorder that self-destructs after playing the message. Haven't seen that trick since Mission Impossible. Also, first movie featuring a North Korean agent as the protagonist that I've seen, or at least that I remember.

There was a spectacular stunt where our hero falls through a glass roof, bounces off of several beams, gets caught in some electrical wiring that proceeds to get ripped loose from the lights, which leads to him swinging like a pendulum into the wall, and if that's not enough, more wire comes loose and he swings away and into another wall where he finally comes to rest. For two seconds and then he's off again.

Netflix, subtitled, 2 hours.

Update June 2023 replaced missing video.

Update July 2024 replaced missing video.

The Trump Doctrine

China controls the DPRK and when Trump defeats China on the economic issues, China will save face by giving up DPRK’s nukes in order to get a better trade/economic outcome.
The defeat of North Korea’s nukes doesn't come by confronting North Korean nukes; it comes from China giving them up because their economic survival is dependent on it.
China saves face in defeat by positioning the actual defeat at the feet of Kim Jong—un.
Everything else is chaff and countermeasures. - The Burning Platform

This makes more sense than anything else I have heard about North Korea. As to whether this scheme is actually came from Trump or his advisors, I don't care.

Via Bayou Renaissance Man

Gangsters

A man gets out of a Volvo 144 to head to a parade in Pyongyang in 2012. 
In the 1970s, North Korea ordered 1,000 Volvo 144s from Sweden. 
To this day, the cars have not been paid for. - Tanya L. Procyshyn

Uniberp has a long history of Volvos. In fact he has owned three Volvo 144's, the same model as the ones in this story about criminal North Korea. It's kind of small potatoes now that they're threatening the entire world with nuclear missiles. I guess it just goes to show you shouldn't give a gangster an even break, which kind of makes me wonder whether we should have relaxed our positions with Iran and Cuba. I can sort of understand how Iran got to be fucked up. That part of the world has thousands of years of squabbling to their credit. It might not be possible to untangle that mess. But Cuba, criminently, the revolution was only 60-odd years ago. Then again, maybe the tropics are doomed to be ruled by gangsters. Before the revolution it was the Mafia, now it's communists. In both cases the working class is getting screwed over by the elite.

Which reminds me of a story told in the opening episode of Ozark. It seems a woman has been working in a grocery store for umpteen years and the owner was very happy with her. She was diligent and productive. Then one day he sees her slip a few pesos out of the till and into her pocket. Now the question is, what should the owner do? Should he warn her not to do it again and give her a second chance? The correct answer in the context of this show is to fire her. Because while this might be the first time she has been caught stealing, it is not necessarily the first time she has stolen something.

North Korea Missile Launch

North Korea Missile Trajectory

North Korea's latest missile splashed down in the ocean 600 miles away from where it was launched, which doesn't sound like it is going to threaten anyone except their immediate neighbors. But then I read that it reached an altitude of 2800 miles. Could that be right? Or is it just a misprint? Turns out 2800 miles is correct. If North Korea altered the trajectory of this missile, theoretically it could reach halfway around the world, which puts just about everyone at risk.

I wonder how our satellite minders cope with this. Guess I better go check.

DPRK

James Clapper, President's Trump envoy to North Korea

Iaman sent me the link to this clip. If I understand correctly, he picked out this four minute segment from an hour long press conference. There are some cogent bits in here, nothing we haven't heard before, but having it told by someone who has been there, and has some credibility, reassures me that we do understand the situation. Plus, he uses the word 'sycophants', which I don't think I have ever heard anyone pronounce.

North Korea

North Korea Missile Tests, so far this year

Seems like we've been hearing about North Korean missile tests forever. This website has got records that go back to 1984, which is 33 years ago. So North Korea has been doing this for a while, and they've launched a bunch of missiles. They used to be kind of a joke, their missiles blew up on the launch pad more often than not, and when they did get off the ground, they didn't go very far. In 1998 they launched one that went over Japan, and some people started paying attention.

North Korea, according to most of the rest of world, is seriously screwed up. But then I got to thinking.

We've been watching Ertugrul on Netflix, a soap opera about some 13th Century Turkish nomads (we're up to episode 30). The current story line has them migrating to some land that was granted them by the Emir Al Aziz of Aleppo. The Emir reneged on his promise, based on some rumors started by the evil Templars. So now our tribe is kind of in a jam. The Mongols pushing in from the East have forced them into country so barren that their livestock were starving to death. The Emir granted them a section of good land. It would be great except that it is between Aleppo and the Templars, so there is going be a constant state of conflict, but hey, they've got swords and they know how to use them. But now the Emir has revoked his grant and is threatening to exterminate the whole tribe if they don't pack up and move. Well, we just got here, we're not in the mood for moving, and you granted us this land, you can't be going back on your word, you lousy Indian giver.

In any case, they are prepared to fight the Emir's army, even though they are outnumbered ten to one. It may mean the death of their tribe, but at least they'll go down fighting.

Translate this viewpoint to North Korea and you can see how they could view themselves as the victims in the game of global domination. Okay, you would also need to be ignorant of the actual state of the world, but who are you going to believe? Western Imperialist Running Dog news services, or your faithful leader? And is it any different that what we have here? The news is like 99% garbage, and the 1% that might be of real concern is so fractured with competing spins it is really hard to tell what is true. Fortunately we have our own faithful leader. Which one is more trustworthy? Kim or Donald?

Missile website via Detroit Steve.

Vladivostok

Vladivostok Postcard via Syaffolee

Vladivostok keeps popping up. I've mentioned it in ten posts here.

Vladivostok to Khasan

I was giving Syaffolee a hard about knowing where Vladivostok was, which prompted me to check. It's about 80 miles from North Korea as the crow flies, but about twice that far by car.

Khasan is right where North Korea, Russia and China all meet. It is on the Tumen river which forms the border between North Korea and the other two countries.

North Korea Hacks SONY

My first thought when I saw this photo was that this crew is just about to start a big Broadway style song and dance number.

My first thought when I heard that North Korea was suspected of hacking SONY was, 'yeah, right', those guys can't even tie their own shoes. But then I realized that, just like every group of people everywhere, they do have some smart cookies. They may be impoverished, foolish and the government may be tyrannical, but they have nuclear power, biggish missiles and nuclear weapons.
    Computers can give a person tremendous leverage in tackling certain kinds of problems, so the idea of North Korea hacking SONY is at least plausible.
    The problem with computer security is that few people in the PC side of the business gave it very much thought. Everyone was too busy building more and faster computers with more capacity. It's kind of like big residential developments. Here's your house. Oh, you want a lock? OK, here's a skeleton key, that will keep out the riff-raff, mostly because the riff-raff doesn't know what a house is, much less what a lock is, and the idea of a key is completely unfathomable.
    That worked for awhile, but eventually the riff-raff caught on and started figuring out that those skeleton key locks that came with those early computers were easy to pick. The problem is that there are whole bunch of computers out there with skeleton key locks, and more are pouring off the assembly lines every day, so any security detail is going to be faced with trying to protect a whole Levittown of houses with minimal security from a sophisticated gang of thieves with stealth capabilities.
     You will note that I specified PC (Personal Computers) when I talked about weak security. IBM had a pretty elaborate security system for their mainframes. Of course, an IBM mainframe wasn't something you bought on a whim at Best Buy. It was more like a massive capital outlay, on the order of building a new automobile factory, so they could afford to spend a little more on locks.
    The security protocol on IBM mainframes had like seventeen different levels, from repair technicians to operators to programmers, and no one had access to the whole system. Mostly they were compartmentalized, but there was some overlap. For instance, operators could start or stop programs, but they couldn't modify them. Programmers could change their programs, but couldn't choose which data files to operate on. The whole scheme kind of reminds me of North Korea.

South Korea Versus North Korea At Night

South Korea Versus North Korea At Night

Telling, isn't it? Via View From The Porch.

Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang North Korea

That triangle in the background, apparently floating in the sky, is the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea

Jim Oberg got me started on this one as well. He put together a file about his 2012 visit to North Korea to witness a rocket launch  His introduction includes a picture of this hotel along with this bit of text:

Dominating the Pyongyang skyline & visible from a dozen miles outside the city is a giant futuristic building that NOBODY talks about, even as a joke or a curse. They just don’t SEE it.

Okay, that's weird, but this is North Korea, so understandable. But now my curiousity is piqued, so I go looking for more info. Seems the building has been under construction for a while, and some people have been making fun of it. Some other people are trying to finish it and put it into operation. We shall see how that goes. In that vein I found this description by Simon Parry, quoted in a story on CNN, more encouraging.

Despite the unfinished interior, Parry describes the hotel as “fantastic from the outside -- it's dazzling, coated in expensive glass tiles.”The juxtaposition of the spaceship-like building with its humble surroundings is dramatic, he adds.
"In the morning and evening the effect of the sun's reflection blazing down over the rest of the city is extraordinary," said Parry.

North Korea in the News

Kinda sorta. Is rumor news? Excellent Horse-Like Lady - Hyon Song-wol (a.k.a. "A Girl in the Saddle of a Steed") Rumor has it Kim Jong-un's Ex-Girlfriend 'Shot by Firing Squad'. Comments on the forum seem to be about evenly divided between 'bullshit from a known rumor monger' and 'this is just the tip of the iceberg, you have no idea how effed up North Korea is'. Hyon's band was responsible for a string of patriotic hits in North Korea, including "Footsteps of Soldiers," "I Love Pyongyang," "She is a Discharged Soldier" and "We are Troops of the Party." Her popularity reportedly peaked in 2005 with the song "Excellent Horse-Like Lady." 

The Telegraph repeats the story. Does that make it true?

April Fools

A few days ago we had this:

DAEJEON, Republic of Korea - March 26, 2013. Military leaders at a memorial ceremony for sailors lost in the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan. 46 Sailors died when the ROK warship was destroyed by a North Korea submarine three years ago in the Yellow Sea. U.S. Navy photo by Joshua B. Bruns.

Now we have fatso saying that North Korea has entered "a state of war" with South Korea a day after he threatened the United States because two American B-2 bombers flew a training mission in South Korea.

Why are the soldiers on either side of him holding his arms? If it was just this one photo I wouldn't think too much about it, but I have seen several other photos that are similar.

I really like the high quality boat he is using here. Does this mean he is a man of the people?

For comparison, here is a ship being loaded with rice in South Korea.

Where's the rice going? North Korea. OK, picture is six years old. Still.

For some reason I thought the North and South Korean military were in constant state of high alert, which would exclude any kind of trade or movement of people. That doesn't seem to be the case, witness this scene at a border crossing.

Looks more like the border crossing between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

Many Koreans would like to see their country reunited. These ribbons hanging on the border fence bear this sentiment.

Photos from Military Photos dot net.

North Korea Puts Satellite in Orbit

    The doomsday clock is still ticking. North Korea has launched a satellite into orbit. No mean feat considering it's the middle of winter in North Korea. Remember Frozen Chosin?
    The Washington Post has a story about this story. Some people are really excited about this rocket launch.


    The NBC has very negative view of this event. What a load of hooey. North Korea Tech dot org has some good information.
    Looking for the launch site on Google Maps was an interesting experience. Except for the capital city of Pyongyang, the entire country of North Korea is blank. No cities or roads or any other features are listed. Wikimapia dot org does not discriminate. By comparing the two, I was able to locate the North Korean launch site on Google, you know, just to see if I could.


Tongchang-ri ICBM Launching Facility
Inspired by Tam on View From The Porch.
Update June 2019 replaced missing map.

Yee, Haw! Let's Nuke North Korea!

My far flung corespondents have something to say about his raptureness Kim Il Jong. From Iowa Andy:

Where is the media? They are missing the story of the century.

The rogue nuclear-capable nation of N Korea has once again shown its rabid dog proclivities to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting.

The US is sending a carrier into this morass. What better target for a N Korean short range nuclear missile?

And Kim Jong can then go out in a blaze of Armageddon.

California Bob replies:

You know, I myself was thinking, too, that Kim Jong Il has been getting increasingly reckless lately, and wondered if he wasn't planning on going out in style -- or as Tom Lehrer put it, "suffused with an incandescent glow."

I'd like to know where all the bigmouth war-mongers are. Oh sure, they were all bluster when it came to the mortal threats posed by Grenada, and Panama, and Iraq. But with a real problem like North Korea -- and I consider North Korea one of the tragedies of the modern geo-political spectrum -- it's sort of, "OK, we'll shut up about that, we don't want any trouble...nothing that would actually start to impact Budweiser consumption stateside." Cowards.

And that's why I vote republican. Because the second Roman empire is nearing the end of days, and I want these morons to witness the consequences of their idiocy.

Or not. I don't care.

Michigan Mike follows up:

As a nation, we are now obsessed with our own internal political warfare. All else is of no consequence.

The truth of effective international relations, industrial economics, environmental sustainability, and human improvement will now be argued in the public forum by CNN pundits who think that "He spent a purr-fect afternoon with his safely rescued cat." is a clever pun.

Update October 2016 replaced missing picture.