[Image via North Korea Propaganda posters, which is an awesome site.]

Vice 2007, for its photo issue.
Oh good grief, who let those guys get in? Unclear. Somehow they managed to get on the roster to cover the 2007 Airirang Mass Games following several months of back-and-forth, but while North Korean officials left many of their colleagues at a consulate somewhere in "northern China" the Vice guys ingratiated themselves by getting drunk and joining a nationalist singalong with some North Korean "girls" from the Secret Police.
Key findings: They are among the only 15 spectators at the games, which feature 100,000 competitors. They find it impossible to determine whether anyone truly believes, or is simply lying about believing, all the shit they shovel about how North Korea is a glorious country whose model of self-reliance is the envy of all the world.

At the end of the museum tour, you must put on a tie before entering the final room, where you are permitted to view a wax sculpture the Chinese made of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung. You have to bow to the statue and speak in a whisper. After us, these Korean women came out of the statue room bawling their eyes out. They’d met their Great Leader. We were like, “Come on, it’s a wax statue.” But to them, it’s almost like they’ve really met him. They save up money their whole life to come to the museum done up in all their finery, tiptoe up to this statue, and cry their eyes out. And it’s really kind of a shitty statue too. One of the guys we were with said it looked like an old 1950s ad for hemorrhoid cream or something. He was right. It was sub-Madame Tussaud’s quality. (Oh, and they had a wind machine blowing its hair, like it was basking in a gentle breeze. We are not kidding.)

Parade 2007, for its "Who Is The World's Worst Dictator?" Issue
How did they get in? Contributing editor David Wallechinsky is the vice president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, so he could apply under a slightly less hard-hitting guise than Parade.
Key findings: Basketball is popular in North Korea, according to Wallechinsky's minder, because Kim Jong-il says “playing basketball will make us taller,” he notes, adding that "reports say that 7-year-old North Korean boys are 8 inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts."


Pyongyang, a 2005 graphic novel by French Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle
How'd that guy (heh) get in? On a work visa from a French Canadian animation company that, mindblowingly, outsources animation work to Pyongyang. (We are not sure how that fits in with the whole "self-reliance" part, but okay.)
Key findings: North Koreans who've visited Paris speak only of the beggars and traffic. A friend to whom he lends George Orwell's 1984 returns it two weeks later complaining that he doesn't "enjoy science fiction."




The New York Review Of Books, 2003, for a story called "A Trip To North Korea"
Huh. But NRB subscribers are not stupid at all! So how did they get in? The author is a novelist with family ties to the North who manages to slip in as a supposed delegate of some pro-North Korea group in the U.S.
Key findings: The author seems to go in with as open a mind as she can keep and then sort of starts to lose it. There are four lousy planes on the tarmac when she arrives in Pyongyang. She stays in what should be the country's most luxurious appointments and there's no hot water and very little electricity. She comes across a procession of dancers practicing for a parade in Kim Il Sung Square and is told they've been practicing for two straight days — in temperatures below zero. And in a country where nearly all books are banned, Gone With The Wind is a national favorite and Scarlett O'Hara, according to a publisher, is "the new bourgeois heroine," about which the author says "it occurred to me that it is not only a story about a civil war between North and South, but also about Scarlett, who chooses her homeland over everything. And, of course, the North wins."

Related: From Hell With Love [Time Asia]
Journey Into Kimland
The North Korea Of The Privileged
The Hidden Gulag

*Oh, his slang is outdated, you say? Yeah, check out Pyongyang, asshole!

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Slavery now
Current mood: thoughtful

Hello Friends, i'm writing this little blog to find out what people consider slavery and freedom. I've had these ideas in my mind since i was a child and they are starting to make my life really hard now. Well lets see.... My idea of slavery is not having a choice of what you want your life to be like, not being allowed to make decisions to better your life, being forced to live a certain quality of life, and my list goes on. I guess the easiest way for me to explain is by showing you how we live as americans. Why in america is everyone given a social security/tracking number at birth, is this really something necessary or government convenience. Why are all americans taught white history , when this is one of the most diverse places in the world? Why are their private schools even in elementary , is this to make certain members of society more elite ? Why are we forced to pay for education(college) that is vital for our survival in our nation? Is this a way to keep certain social classes contained and to lead them into becoming products of their environment. I know that their are such things as scholarships and loans, but what does that really mean when we could just look out for our well being. With banks closing so rapidly, what are you going to do with your hard earned money my friends and where will your money go. Are you going to continue you to pay taxes for living in a country founded on stealing,raping,lying. Paying taxes is something that peasants did because kings forced them to.Do we really want to stay ignorant, broke, deceiving, scared of one another. If all power went out tomorrow what would you do, would you be able to start a fire, would you be able to grow your own food, would you have drinking water, knowledge of how to catch and clean a fish, or even shelter. If our president declared marshal law what would you do? My friends we are all slaves in this country, i hope that you are ready for survival of the most efficient. Please teach yourself a trade or a skill, something that you can actually use if shit really hits the fan. You have to think what is graphic design going to do for you when your starving?

Some key pieces from the lawsuit:

Then it has this story called "I Peed On My Gran's Head," which, while amazing, isn't perhaps as hard-hitting as they might have wanted:

I went back to my hometown and stayed at my grandmother's house for a couple of days. One night I went to a local bar with some old friends and got really drunk. Somehow I staggered back to my gran's house and went to bed.

In the morning, all bleary-eyed, I got up and started eating breakfast. As I was doing this I noticed my grandma dragging her wet mattress out to the balcony to dry. She was silently fuming and refused to talk to me. Finally, after an hour of me asking her what was wrong, she started crying and asked me, "Are you proud of yourself?"

I had no idea what she was talking about. She proceeded to tell me that I had gotten up in the middle of the night, stumbled into her bedroom, unzipped, and started pissing on her bed while she was sleeping in it. With my pee raining down on her, she shouted at me to stop, but I screamed back at her, telling her to fuck off, and then toddled off to bed.

Musical Bonus: Golden Hours by Meatus Murder

Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria [NYT]

Other characteristics of the Vice intern: rolling up to the office around 11, wearing Nikes, wearing the Gross Jar shirt, thinking the LES is the "greatest place on earth" and spending way too much time at Max Fish. Oh, and failing to pay rent. Loser. Too bad the Gawker Roommate Service isn't up and running. Yet. Or ever, come to think of it. You all would kill each other. Then again, material!

Earlier: Gawker's Like/Hate Relationship With Vice

Reports the Chicago music blog Transmission:

The first advert, which detailed a hipster's homoerotic fantasies involving Jay-Z, largely passed without comment. But when a follow-up featured a passing dis of hip-hop clothing line Triple5Soul; the mag's editors — fearing a loss in revenue from a staple sponsor — pulled the band's card post-haste.

UPDATE: Vice emails: "The 'banned' ad in question actually did run in Vice."

Kuff 'Em If They Can't Take a Joke [Transmission via Philebrity]

Earlier: Team Party Crash: 'Vice' Magazine Girls Issue at 205