Slashdot Mirror
North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il Dead at 70
As reported by numerous sources, Kim Jong Il has died at the age of 70 (69 by some tallies), after 17 years as the brutal head of North Korea. While the cause of death is uncertain, Bloomberg News says "Kim probably had a stroke in August 2008 and may have also contracted pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports."
Let us take this opportunity to thank the Dear Leader, who sacrificed his life for the socialist paradise.
Kim Jong Il is now Kim Jong Dead.
Do you know how fucking important this guy was?
"Kim probably had a stroke in August 2008 and may have also contracted pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports."
The newspaper continued... "We aren't sure which blow dart hit him but it was probably both"
This is actually not a welcome event, the heir apparent is only 29 years old and hasn't really integrated himself into the communist party and army power structures. Compare that to his father who was 52 when Kim Il Sung died and had been filling various senior posts for at least a few decades by that point. A power struggle within the army/party could be bad as it could destabilize the country and/or convince the struggling powers to do something rash with the military in an attempt to curry favor. Guess we will have to wait and see.
Monstar L
North Korean State television Says Kim Jong Il died peacefully in his sleep while bowling a 300. (Via @NickGreene on Twitter)
Scott Swezey
World has now one asshole less.
I'm so Ronery.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
South Korean currently living in London. Enjoying a beer and and grinning from ear to ear!
Maybe if they didn't have nuclear weapons I wouldn't care so much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdug6yHJB40
There are not enough dictators left in Asia to keep the yellow man down. It's terrifying. Why hasn't the CIA made more they have the technology!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
God could not help out Tebow this afternoon, had bigger things on his plate.
It is really that hard to figure out his BDAY?! 69! DAMN!
"That's right...I said it."
They're still censoring it, and everything else, because it's disrespectful to his glorious and immortal majesty.
Also because of the people who will be calling for a revolution to overthrow the new one.
Along with Bin Laden, Gaddafi, and Steve Jobs all inside a year.
The world is still not running out of assholes.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
2011 was a good year to dictators... what else can be said?
North Korea has announced that it has entered a period of formal mourning following the death of Kim Jong Il lasting from the 17th, the day of his passing, until the 29th.
The news was released in a brief communiqué in the name of the ‘State Funeral Committee’.
Chosun Central News Agency announced the news, stating, “The body of National Defense Commission Chairman Kim will lie in state at Kumsusan Memorial Palace during the period of mourning from the 17th to the 29th. Visitors will be received between the 20th and 27th. The ceremony for his parting will be performed on the 28th in Pyongyang.”
“Central memorial meetings to honor Chairman Kim will open on the 29th,” it went on. “At that time in Pyongyang and sites in every province there will be an artillery salute and 3 minutes silence, and all official vehicles and vessels will sound their horns.”
Second update: NK Borders Ordered Closed Before Death Announcement http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01700&num=8549
North Korean border guard units received orders at 1AM on the night of the 18th to close the border with China with immediate effect.
An inside military source told Daily NK this morning, “At 1AM on the night of the 18th a ‘Special Guard’ order was handed down to the unit. All officers who had finished work were recalled to the base and have been on emergency duty ever since.”
“At the time even commanding officers did not know about the contents of the order, and as per the order to completely close the border, normal patrols in groups of two were stepped up to groups of four. We only learned that the General had died from special broadcasts,” the source added.
Thus, it is clear that the North Korean authorities took steps to avert civilian unrest and potential mass defection attempts by shutting down the border and reinforcing patrols prior to announcing Kim’s death.
Third update: NK Shuts Down on News of Death http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=8552
Following the official announcement of Kim Jong Il's death today, North Korea has imposed rigid social controls, including the complete closure of markets.
An inside source told Daily NK this lunchtime, "The jangmadang is closed and people are not allowed to go outside. Local Party secretaries are issuing special commands through local Union of Democratic Women unit chairwomen, and the chairwomen have been gathered at district offices for emergency meetings."
According to the source, National Security Agency and People’s Safety Ministry agents have been deployed in streets and alleyways to control civilian movements. There have not been any signs of public unrest to date.
Kim Jong Il's sudden death has apparently caught people off-guard, the source revealed, commenting, "Nobody had the slightest idea about the General’s death even right before they saw the broadcast. You can hear the sound of wailing outside."
That news agency gets the majority of their info by cell phone conversation with North Koreans who live along the Chinese/Russian border, which is how we're able to get updates from the inside.
They would have a field day with this.
It seems to me that unless you are going to prop up such regimes indefinitely then you have to countenance the possibility of messy change at some point and absent any specific risks at a given point in time the sooner they better as dangerous technologies (such as nuclear) are almost certainly going to be more commonplace the longer you leave it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I mean really, who cares about a malevolent dictator kicking the bucket ?
http://exiledonline.com/an-exiled-exclusive-the-martin-amis-pre-eulogy-to-christopher-hitchens-the-man-whose-pharynx-was-horrorized/
and for Kim http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpF5-mBmI0c
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Mohammar Khadaffi
Steve Jobs
Kim Jong Il
wait, I can't list them all...
!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2011_deaths
Rather talk about Vaclav Havel if we're talking about recent passing of leaders.
If I'm not allowed to say that we should forbid free speech, was there any free speech to begin with?
hitchens death was on slashdot already, though that wasn't really news for nerds either.
who cares? besides kim forced more people out of religions than hitchens!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Surprisingly, it turns out that we nerds occupy forms in the real world, and thus significant news about this world are news for nerds.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean everything everyone says should be met with rapturous applause, just that everyone has the opportunity to say what they want. If a guy wants to be a complete asshole, like that 140 bytes knobhead, then freedom of speech doesn't protect people from calling his ridiculous, tired, childish bullshit out for exactly what it is.
...the glorious Great Leader Kim Jong-Il sacrificed his life to the betterment of the great Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Actually, this kinda sucks in a selfish kind of way because I was hoping to eventually save up $3-4K to buy a touring package in North Korea during the Summer Games just so I can be one of the token few that's toured a Stalinist regime; now the country's gonna democratize & there'll be none left...
You should have stopped with "I really don't know much..."
I hope for unification and rebirth for the Koreas as we haven't seen since the Germanies.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Too bad Jobs couldn't help them out with their engineering. Apple products actually work.
Have gnu, will travel.
So is it now time for Kim Jong III to take the throne?
Ill hear No Ill spoken of sans-serif fonts, thank you.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You can hear the sound of wailing outside.
You know, that's pretty fucking depressing. Not Kim's death, that's a reason to celebrate; but much like when Stalin died, it's really fucked to see the people actually, honestly mourning... Makes you wonder about a few things, doesn't it?
weinersmith
Damn you and your pro-Apple propaganda! How did you know I hate cats?!
Under State Communism, the elite declare that they own as much as possible so the population are turned into desperate slaves. There are a dwindling few in the middle who insist that life is dandy under State Communism because they were intelligent, unscrupulous and obeisant enough to get ahead, and that "at least it's not like Western Capitalism" where people are left to wither. Man exploits man.
Under Western Capitalism, the elite declare that they own as much as possible so the population are turned into desperate slaves. There are a dwindling few in the middle who insist that life is dandy under Western Capitalism because they were intelligent, unscrupulous and obeisant enough to get ahead, and that "at least it's not like State Communism" where people are forced to work. Man exploits man.
At least when we see news reports about how great our country is/isn't we can go around and check to see how much the media is lying. We have to be very unchoosy in where we visit in order to get a full picture, and few of us are willing to do that - it takes time and is sometimes quite dangerous - but at least we can obtain some approximation. None of us know much about NK at all beyond obvious Western propaganda and occasional isolated reports. Yet we are much quicker to assume and to condemn than to campaign for more information. Isn't it so easy to say, "Guy X in Arabia/Asia is evil because I have a tweet saying so - let me retweet that and feel part of the neoliberation movement" ? Isn't it easy to assume that what occupies that power vacuum will be better - Mission has been Accomplished so many times over the past decade, hasn't it?
The saddest thing is that probably each and every citizen -- be them old, young, children, ill, healthy -- will have (as in obliged) to pay his or her visit to the funeral in order to say a last good bye, in a country with a terrible winter and where artificial heating is a luxury only available to the great members of the party. Perhaps even a little sadder is knowing that absolutely nothing will change, for his son has been trained since his early years to take on daddy's position and keep up with the realm of terror, not to mention that the old military leaders who were by KJI's side the whole time still remain.
The positive thing about his death to the citizens of North Korea is to show them that despite of what their government have been saying, their leaders are not deities nor special in any way, and are prone to die just like any other human. I wonder how his death is being explained to citizens -- perhaps they are being taught that the dearest leader ascended to the skies after fulfilling his role as a guide to humanity.
The heir apparent (Kim Jong-un) has a computing degree (though I suspect the odds of him failing any classes at a university named after his grandfather were pretty slim).
Other than that, it's simply a massively important piece of international news that will have substantial and complex consequences throughout Asia, the ripples of which will spread around the world.
I was just having a look at the *official" North Korean website and did a whois on it. Interestingly the domain was registered in Spain:
Registrant: ,43830
korea-dpr.com #29996
Alejandro Cao de benos de Les Perez (vientian@hotmail.com)
Calle President Companys 4-8
Torredembarra -Tarragona
ES
"don't like China because it is communist,"
Well there's a well thought out argument. FWIW china hasn't been communist for over a decade now - its actually the closest thing to a capitalist dictatorship the world has right now.
"and because they are working hard to steal American jobs, American tech, and they are working hard to dominate American interests."
Oh right, so the chinese forced american companies to outsource all their menufacture to china did they? It had nothing to do with greedy CEOs wanting to save a quick buck and screw whatever US jobs it cost or what knock-on effect it may have on the economy just so they could "raise shareholder value" - and coincidentaly collect a fat bonus for doing it did it? And same CEOs having outsourced blue collar work are not happily outsourcing white collar work to india. I suppose thats the indians fault is it?
You need to look closer to home for the reason china is in the ascendent. I would say the USA has economically shot itself in the foot but its actually closer to having blown its entire leg off.
How you like me now, Hans Blix?!?!
I have posted replies at several points on here, but I agree that this is no more slashdot worthy than Christopher Hitchens death (which was also posted on slashdot, so I'm not quite sure what your point is).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWN6Qj98Iw
Do any of them catch fire and sink into swamps?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe I'm misunderstanding "120" and "millions"
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_die_from_starvation_each_year_in_America
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Well, to be fair Stalin was a brutal bastard who killed millions of his own people and enslaved more, but he did win the war, and he did transform Russia from a 3rd world country to an influential and powerful empire with huge military. So in a way it was possible to justify it all by saying all those people were sacrificed in the name of glory for the mother Russia. Even though same changes probably would had happened without Stalin, and with less gruesome deaths.
Now what "glorious" did the Kim Jong Il do, I don't know. Unlike his dad he didn't fight a war. His economic policies sucked. The power and influence of his country sucks. There just was no glory in any of it.
--Coder
Might one suppose that Kim Jong-Il might actually have been dead for a few weeks, instead of less than a day, and this is just the public announcement? It might explain Burma/Myanmar's sudden change of heart: they were fleeing the sinking ship.
(Not that I seriously believe this, but making up conspiracy theories is fun).
I'm really regretting posting earlier instead of moderating this discussion. A ridiculous bit of hyperbole with a preemptive ad hominem? No wonder you posted AC. Unfortunately, several idiots actually moderated you up, making me reconsider living on this planet anymore.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The man had a cult of personality, and this is what cults of personality do. The same happened for Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-Sung. It'll probably happen for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez too, when they die.
Yes, there is hunger in the US, but I have yet to hear of anyone here strving to death like they are in North Korea.
Free Martian Whores!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9Xy2InXXIkk
o_O
More likely to physically demonstrate the continuity of a powerful government to the people, especially to those who may have been secretly waiting for the transition period to launch a revolt.
What makes you think it's honest, or that it's mourning for Kim Jong-Il?
In the absurdist documentary The Red Chapel, the director speculates that when their North Korean guide starts crying at the monument to Kim Il-Sung, she is actually crying for her relatives who died under his policies.
Even though same changes probably would had happened without Stalin, and with less gruesome deaths.
I'm very emphatically opposed to ideology that Stalin represented, but I'm not so sure that Soviet Union could win WW2 without his brutal policies. It's not even about his command during the war, which was basically very bad in the first year, then gradually improving as he learned his mistakes (unlike Hitler, who could never accept that he could be less than perfect in military planning). It's more about the whole rapid industrialization that he put the country through, at the expense of many lives - collectivization was done largely to supply the cities (that were driving industrialization) with food by robbing the peasants, and is largely responsible for Holodomor. The end result, however, was that by 1941, USSR could churn out rifles, tanks and aircraft at such speed that, even with a significant chunk of its productive territory occupied, it could out-produce Germany and thereby win the war. Without industrialization, Russia would remain an agrarian country, and would likely be easy victim during the war.
and his country for bringing us countless MMO's such as MapleStory and Lineage, and soap opera such as Dae Jang Geum.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
The US is going to come and kill our babies too (among other propaganda, no doubt).
But how can I donate to NK without buying shitty apple stuff?
Attribution bias is a core value in religious and political alignment. On the right: belief in The man or The Man (specifically The man claiming to represent The Man). On the left: the Buddist concept of the great oneness. On the far left: git and the great maintainer. Get your own bag.
The dictator is more able to get the kinds of things done we credit to a single man, but not much else. A Stanford leadership podcast says that in the management literature you find that a leader gets 50% of the credit or blame, but contributes only 15% to the final outcome.
Much of the point of the invisible hand metaphor is that a lot gets done in markets where you can't easily point to any one person to assign all the credit/blame. I also recently learned that Adam Smith tossed off the phrase "invisible hand" in passing, and that his acolytes elevated it to the level of faith-based market economics.
For many people, knowing who to blame is more important that getting things done (or the right things done), even if The man blamed is exempt from consequence, but the blamee pays with his blood and kin.
When the Germans voted Hitler into power, they weren't looking forward into the Palantir at the mass rape of the mothers, sisters, and wives by the Russian hordes bent on retribution. No, they voted him in because of their frustration and the sense that he could get things done. A little more heed to outcome rather than credit/blame, we'd have fewer of these people around. They start small. Soon you find yourself in uniform with a man behind you instructed to shoot you if you take one step back. You hate the regime you're fighting for, but that hatred is never more than 10 seconds away from an anonymous, unmarked grave. The only question is whether it will be a solitary grave in the ditch on some dirt road, or if you'll have plenty of company among the bone fields of Stalingrad.
You couldn't use USB or Firewire drives on your Mac? Never heard of that one before.
I could, as long as I wasn't using music CD's or commercial DVD's.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
That's a question i have been asking myself as well.
It depends on who would have been in charge and how well managed the county would have been without Stalin. Without his purges, the military would have been much more competent- he killed off the best commanders. The military commanders under Stalin suffered massive casualties while learning on the job during first two years after German invasion. Regarding collectivization- that REDUCED the food output- soviet union had food shortages until its very dissolution. Czars managed to feed the cities without collectivization and Holodomor. Using slave labour in gulags (for mining and logging) in Siberia also killed off so many inmates that I doubt it was really that profitable- better living conditions would have been only marginally more expensive and would have probably given better productivity through higher morale and lesser mortality.
So in hindsight Soviet Union could have been much better managed between the wars. But hindsight is easy. Real question is if other people of the period who could have been in charge instead of Staling would have managed it better, and would they have been insightful or aggressive enough to build up enough military to win against Germany.
--Coder
Ah, good point. There's no way of knowing how prevalent true mourning for his death is. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if it was highly so, given all the propaganda and brainwashing, and some of the other stories people have told here about defectors' views of him.
weinersmith
Some are predisposed to believe the US is bad and I can't disabuse them from that belief. We took Iraq from Saddam Hussein and gave it back to their people, costing us near a trillion dollars and over 4,000 American lives we didn't have to spend. We could have kept it as a vassal, and milked its oil dry, but we didn't. We set the people free and went home. We probably shouldn't have. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, but he wasn't the only one in Iraq. The Iraqi people don't want to be free, and they found a new tyrant even before we left. Genocide looks like their fate in the near term, and it's hard to escape blame for that now that we've put our boys in it. The individual people were better off as a slave state to the US, no matter how much they hated it, but they're going to like what they get now even less now that we're gone - even though just recently that was their greatest wish. Be careful what you wish for.
Maybe it's best to not get involved in the middle east. They have issues that we, with our 250 year old country just don't understand. What do we know about a war that's gone on 5,000 years? Our whole country is as old as they would think is settling of a nice house, just the the foundation of a good church that might come to something some day. We don't even know what a good grudge is.
And Afghanistan: I have to say this: for 5,000 years gleaning the fields of the fallen is Afghanistan's business model. They've been invaded by everybody, and it seems they've adapted to that quite well - so much so that they need to be invaded now and then because their economy is based on the dross of invading armies. They have no resources except that they're a desert on the road from somewhere to somewhere else. That's not a good country to attack.
We need to express our care for their poor and help them as best we can, and get the heck outta there.
Help stamp out iliturcy.