KCNA, LOL

Recent reports in western media have suggested that portraits of Kim Jong Il are being removed across Pyongyang. Speculation is rampant. Reclusive leader going off the deep end? Easing off in the personality cult department? Military coup? Moves toward domestic reform? Hunkering down for an American attack?

The report, however, came from a foreign Diplomat in Pyongyang, and the DPRK Foreign Ministry was quick to denounce the reports as false. Yet at the same time, some ROK analysts noticed that the title “Dear Leader” had been dropped in (Korean-language) DPRK media. What can we make of these conflicting reports?

It’s in times like this that I thank the dear Lord, or at least the Internet, for the one true firmly united news source that provides information of ideological awareness and sentiment: the DPRK-owned English-language news source, the KCNA!

KCNA Warns Hack Writers against Involvement in Anti-DPRK Psychological Warfare

Pyongyang, November 27 (KCNA)—Media in some countries are now busy spreading false rumor that portraits of leader Kim Jong Il are no longer displayed in the DPRK. We categorically refute this misinformation as it is revelation of their utter ignorance of the true reality in the DPRK where the leader and the people are firmly united in thought and sentiment and the servicepersons and people deem it their life and soul to devotedly defend the leader.

The spirit of devotedly defending the leader is being considered in the DPRK as the strongest national sentiment and the biggest treasure to be handed down to posterity. The Korean people are firmly determined to devotedly defend their leaders and hold them in high esteem forever for the sake of the nation’s right to existence and all generations to come. It is only the wicked hostile forces hell-bent on bringing down the political system in the DPRK that deny and falsify this stark fact.

However, even after the DPRK’s clarification of the matter media in the U.S., Germany, Russia and other countries again cited this issue in spreading more misinformation in a bid to make the story sound plausible and true. This has lashed the Korean army and people into great fury as it is a crucial issue related to the authority of the supreme headquarters of the DPRK.

We would like to make it clear once again that the on-going smear campaign is part of the anti-DPRK psychological warfare waged by the U.S. and its allies in an effort to impair the high authority of the supreme headquarters of the DPRK and create the impression that the DPRK is fraught with a serious problem.

Those hack writers are no more than slaves of power and money as they are so politically insensitive that they know nothing about the nature of the peculiar society in the DPRK and the ideological awareness and sentiment of its people. Kim Jong Il represents the destiny of the Korean people and that of socialism. The Korean army and people have never thought of their present and future apart from him. Their trust in their leader and respect for him have become immutable and absolute in practice throughout the course of the victorious and glorious advance of the Korean revolution.

Their faith to entrust their destiny and future entirely to the leader and accomplish the cause of socialism has grown stronger with the passage of times. Herein lie the solidity and invincibility of the socio-political foundation of the DPRK.

The misinterpretation of this noble ideological awareness and sentiment of the Korean army and people is nothing but the most serious misunderstanding of the reality of our society the enemies have ever made. Those hack writers who took the lead in the anti-DPRK trumpeting are well advised to stop at once their mean practice.

That was slightly abridged (for your sake, believe me). If you want to read the whole story, click here.

UPDATE: This post at the Marmot’s hole is a telling tale of how Kim Sr. (Kim Il Sung, not Kim Jong Il) worried about being taken out to the woodshed if and when the regime collapsed.