North Korean Blovations

As a public service announcement, North Korea's totalitarian leadership wants to remind the world that it still exists, and puts on a show.

Never mind that the country is in the depths of a severe famine that essentially requires the entire population to go work in the fields to make sure that whatever crops are planted get harvested (at the receiving end of a rifle might I add). And the Washington Post eats this stuff up hook, line, and sinker:

Meanwhile, modest economic reforms made in North Korea since 2002 appear to have somewhat eased the country's bitter poverty and once-rampant starvation. That at least seemed true within the relatively affluent capital of Pyongyang, where people look to be well fed, many buildings have been newly refurbished and street vendors are surprisingly outgoing and eager to make sales to foreign visitors.

I see that they didn't bother to check out the prison camps that are really a gulag archipelago. Nor do they question the fresh coat of paint. North Korea's propaganda campaign is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig, yet these reporters can't get enough of this crap that passes for reporting.

In fact, one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between this report and an old school Pravda piece that the Soviet Union would run about how well their 5-year plans were going and running the US into the ground economically.

During a 40-hour, strictly monitored visit by a reporter accompanying a South Korean tour group, there were odd scenes mixed with a feeling of real change.

How can you get real reporting when everyone has a minder and is strictly monitored. Anyone who strays even slightly from the script may never be heard from again. How's that for change and freedom.

UPDATE 10/28:
Newsbusters picks up on the WaPo piece and skewers it pretty thoroughly. As it should be.

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