Who does North Korea think it's kidding?

Who does North Korea think it’s kidding?
Honestly, who do they think they are kidding?

To their credit, the DPRK’s rulers are not media tarts – they don’t say much – but what they do say is such transparent rubbish that I wonder for whose benefit they are saying it?

Some of the classics we’ve had recently include:

• We’re going to launch a satellite,

• We’ve built a smartphone,

• We’re building a ski resort,

• We’re training cyber-warriors,

• We’re building an electromagnetic pulse weapon, and

• We’re going to attack the United States.

Someone who’s spent what little money the Nigerian prince left them on the last six flab blasting machines wouldn’t fall for these stories. These blokes can’t mix concrete that will stay together let alone succeed at any of these other things.  My son has more chance of knocking a hole in the moon with the ray gun he’s putting together out of old printer circuit boards and Blu-Tak than North Korea has of building a pulse weapon; at least my son has access to 21^st century technology.

Certainly, no-one outside North Korea believes any of it. I think world leaders are only holding back from laughing in public because they fear the one thing North Korea isn’t lying about is that they have the bomb and that the one thing they don’t have is a sense of humour. There must be, however, some good jokes over a few beers at the International Intelligence Officers Association annual dinner and dance:

“Did you hear the latest from the Kims?”

“Hang on, hang on. I’ve still got a mouthful of beer. [swallows] Right, go on!”

I can’t think that the locals would be buying too much of it either. The few who have televisions also have eyes and can see the world around them. And that’s if they even bother to turn on the set in the first place … if it works … when it’s their day to have electricity … and use of one of the commune’s three pairs of spectacles. There’s not much on. The free-to-air TV market in the DPRK has recently been opened up to competition and the savvy viewer can choose between Great Military Parades of the Past, Lifestyles of the Rich and Kim, Morning Juche-ercise (where you get fit goose-stepping and flipping cards over to create crowd pictures) and Big Brother – where one contestant is voted off each week by the one person in North Korea who has a vote (and you can bet, if he votes you off, you won’t be making a surprise comeback later in the series).

So I’m at a bit of a loss to figure out who they are producing all this fiction for.

There is one possibility – that there just aren’t all that many people in North Korea and they’re trying to keep up the pretense that there is a real country somewhere in there.

What do we actually get to see of North Korea? 

 Almost invariably, we get a picture of Kim Jong Un, dressed in an old Catholic priest’s outfit that he picked up from the thrift shop at the Vatican last time he was there, and the same three or four generals wearing the standard Communist general REALLY big hat and uniforms adorned with sheriff badges they got from some showbags that North Korean diplomats were spotted frantically buying up at the Moree annual show and cattle muster in 2011. Looking at them, the “generals” are probably geezers on loan from the Great Leader Retirement Home and the little blue books they are always carrying are  to remind them of the name of the bloke in the black suit, their own names and when next  to take their pills.

Sure, there are some extras on the set, dressed as technicians or scientists or soldiers or something but the only time you see large numbers of people are when they’re all doing the same thing at the same time; which reeks of CGI to me.

It may be that there are only about 100 people in the whole country. They get moved around depending on where someone needs to be seen. When the Kims shut down the Kaesong Joint Industrial Complex, it’s not because they’re offended, it’s because they need the population to be available to appear as ferocious guards near the DMZ, to be technicians at mission control or labourers on a construction site.

When you’re trying to bluff on a handful of nothing, sixes high, you want to have a damn good poker face. As the dictator bluffing, you need to make sure you look credible. Kim Jong Un hasn’t learned this yet, nor had the Iranians last time they announced they’d built a high-tech military asset – in that case a stealth fighter that one Australian analyst commented might rock back and forth if you put 20 cents in the slot. There’s a business opportunity here: these guys need a good production company. Any takers?