Asiapress International goes international
Posted by ampontan on Monday, November 29, 2010
ASIAPRESS INTERNATIONAL is a Japan-based organization that is funding a team of citizen video journalists making clandestine films of life in North Korea. They also publish Rimjing-gang, a compilation of articles written by North Koreans, in Korean, Japanese, and now English.
The editor is Ishimaru Jiro, who trains the reporters and pays them $500 a month, as well as expenses for bribing police and border guards.
Word of his operation is finally filtering out of Northeast Asia, as this interview and article in Britain’s Telegraph demonstrates. It contains a compilation video with English subtitles. One scene shows a 23-year-old woman who lives outdoors foraging for grass, and who says she eats “nothing”. Another scene shows a woman giving a piece of her mind to a policeman in public.
Is the situation in North Korea getting close to a tipping point? Consider the following, found on the Internet:
(He) was showing signs of complete denial of reality. While the country was going through extremely difficult times with long bread queues in front of empty food shops, he was often shown on state TV entering stores filled with food supplies, visiting large food and arts festivals, while praising the “high living standard” achieved under his rule.
It was a reference to Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania in 1989, who was executed in a revolution on Christmas Day that year.
Afterwords:
It’s always worth reading what George Jonas has to write. This time it’s about North Korea.
North Korea is a Chicago-style protection racket with a flag and an anthem. Why did it shell a South Korean fishing village this week? Because that’s what North Korea does. It shells, professionally, for a living. From time to time it launches, or threatens to launch, projectiles at its neighbours, then invoices the world for stopping.
How do I know? Open sources. I’ve written about Korea, travelled in Korea, interviewed Korean officials, had Korean houseguests, married a Korean — well, a Canadian who was born in Korea — and have Korean in-laws, but that’s not how I know. My conclusion of why Pyongyang gave orders to shell the hilly tumescence of Yeonpyeong island on Tuesday isn’t derived from research but from math. I put two and two together.
Putting two and two together has been beyond the mathematical abilities of several American and minimally two South Korean administrations.
And Victor Davis Hanson adds his perspective: “The Korean mess reminds us again of who was and who was not in the ill-famed “axis of evil” as articulated in January 2002.”
Oh, yes, axis of evil. WikiLeaks reveals that the U.S. knew this year that North Korea has supplied 19 BM-25 missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, to Iran. The missiles have a range that puts some Western European capitals in striking distance, such as Berlin. (To attempt to provide what it considers balance to its article, the New York Times also mentions Moscow–a very unlikely target.)
They were shipped through Beijing.
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Andrew in Ezo said
TV Asahi, on their evening new program “Hodo Station” (previously “News Station”) has been airing the videos compiled by Asiapress for years. Good to know it’s finally becoming recognized worldwide.
toadold said
I don’t know how typical this news source is but,
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/
Judging from some of the opinion pieces and news articles, there are a bunch of people in S. Korea who are unhappy with the way their government and their military responded to the attacks. Didn’t follow the written doctrine, equipment not maintained, statements vauge and inappropriate, and etc.
There are so many things going wrong in the world these days that I can’t keep track and put together a big picture.
Pat Donnelly said
In war as we know, truth is always the firstr casualty.
Germans raped nuns in Belgium in WWI!!!
Iraqi conscripts tossed babies in Kuwait!!!
What are we to know as true? Any people who know of such widespread starvation would revolt….
Sorry, not buying it! If true, the war starts and the NK troops desert en masse!
—-
PD: Aren’t you forgetting such phenomena as Jim Jones and Jonestown?
- A.
Pat Donnelly said
Osama Bin Laden, aka Tim Osman, CIA agent, took down the three towers in WTC!!!!
Not!
Ecoutez said
Pat,
People are trying to desert en masse right now. Only they can’t, because NK is guarded like a supermax facility. Those who do trickle out, though, usually confirm our worst suspicions.
“Any people who know of such widespread starvation would revolt….”
There was widespread starvation in Germany in the late 1920′s. Was “revolt” the outcome?
Apologies for Godwinizing, but it had to be said.
Hungry people are compliant people, of necessity. The fact that they are hungry is why they won’t revolt.
toadold said
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20101129.aspx
I’ve also read that too many of the K-9 selfpropelled 155mm guns were down for maitnenace? The Asiapress story on N. Korea is being advertised on Strategy Page also.
I swear to God that you could select a couple of thousand people off the streets in any city in Japan, Korea, the US, Australia or etc., and get more competence than the current crop of ossified twats.
yankdownunder said
If there was a revolt against the leaders in North Korea, North Korea would not be free and unite with South Korea. China would intervene and install new leaders chosen by China.
Harry said
Ampontan,
What’s your take on WikiLeaks diplomatic cables regarding North Korea?
———-
H: Which do you mean? The ones I mentioned that have the Chinese talking about reunification led by South Korea?
If so, I’m not sure. One English-language blogger about South Korea and one about North Korea both think that the Chinese are being deceptive and telling the diplomats one thing and doing another.
If we go by the principle that actions speak louder than words, and that the Chinese allowed NK to ship missile parts to Teheran through the Beijing Airport, then they probably are being deceptive.
One way to find out how serious they are is to stop doing business with Chinese companies, particularly financial institutions, doing business in North Korea.
- A.
Usman said
George Jonas, of all people. But of course.
The evisceration of Japan, savage destruction by fire of 62 population centers, and of course, those damned nukes Japan can never bring up without the Western ‘TALKABOUTHTENUKESINCONTEXTTHEJAPSEARNEDIT’ crowd jumping down its throat, and complete cultural subjugation of Japan are what makes today’s Japan this sort of new buddy of self-perceived progressive conservatives.
‘The Japs aren’t what they were,’ they muse. ‘Infact, they are ou simultaneous bitch and aircraft carrier. Perhaps it’s time to move past BRUTAL COLONIAL JAPAN AND LOVELY COLONIAL AMERICA & CO. and consider our bitch’s national interests our own.’
And so, that is precisely what you and the nouveau intelligentsia of Western expats do. Japan is neutered, occupied but in name, and pathetic. Safe enough now in your collective mind to trust and prostrate permanently enough to ensure you never you see its head raised again, you see it overdue to treat Japan as loyal Western vassal. In your continuing battle against the Arab and Muslim heathens and infidels – your Crusaders’ terminology, hadly theirs – you are even a bit frantic in insisting that they also be summarily destroyed and neutered. ‘No reasoning with them,’ you muse, recalling Granddaddy’s pride in having discovered the same magical precept about the evil Japs.
Contrasted against the continuing subhumanalike grudge your more senior and right-of-right and even left-of-left compatriots hold with bated breath until the day of their miserable death at the hand of obesity, you are for all such contrast’s intents and purposes shiny and new.
For all other intents and purposes, however, you are a vat of regurgitation. Japan is finished because you finished it. China and North Korea are enabled because you enabled them. Innocent Guantanamo torturees go on to actually become the real thing because you fed them the Coca Cola. ‘Put two and two together,’ Jonas says. Good advice. Apply above.
——————
Usman: Thanks for the note:
Watch the pronouns, dude. None of what you wrote even remotely applies to me or anything I’ve written at this site.
Then again, “innocent Guantanamo torturees” is a good laugh line.
- A.