Skip to footer

North Korea video: Welcome to theater of the bizzare

North Korea posted a strange video about an attack on New York City, accompanied by the tune 'We are the World.' Why you shouldn't worry.

A propaganda video released by North Korea showing New York City being bombed is pure fantasy – and just another weird window on the Hermit Kingdom's propaganda machine.

First, North Korea doesn't have a space shuttle (or the capability to launch one), as the video portrays in a boy's dream.

Second, North Korean doesn't yet have the capability to reach the US with one of their Unha rockets, let alone New York City.

As The Christian Science Monitor reported recently: "Concerns about their missile tests are overblown, according to RAND analyst Markus Schiller in a lengthy 2012 report on North Korea’s missile programs.

“Every launch further depletes the limited North Korean arsenals, and North Korea gains no real experience from these events. Since the purpose of the launches seems to be political, the United States and other nations should downplay or even ignore them,” he writes.

But this is classic North Korean propaganda, a sort of geopolitical WWE. All bluff and bluster. This latest video, like many before it, ignores copyrights and rips off from others.

Exhibit A of both weird and stolen: The theme music to this attack is "We are the World" by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson. Really.

Exhibit B: The scenes of the New York attack are literally pulled directly from the video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3." according to the blogger Kotaku. Apparently, Activision agrees. They complained and YouTube took down the North Korean video.

Remember, this video is a North Korean boy's dream sequence, and it may be an apt metaphor for North Korea's ambition to be taken seriously around the world. That isn't to say that the leadership's nuclear ambitions aren't real and don't present a threat, especially to its neighbors.

"North Korea is likely to carry out multiple nuclear tests at two places or more simultaneously" to maximize scientific gains from the event, said South Korea’s outgoing President Lee Myung-bak in an interview with the Choson Ilbo newspaper today, according to Agence France-Presse. And the UN voted last month to increase the sanctions on North Korea.

But don't confuse North Korea's silly propaganda with reality.

If you peruse the North Korea YouTube channel, you will find Disney characters and an homage to North Korea's fantasy world. You will find North Korean soldiers in a kazoo orchestra, a brand new (and completely empty) bowling alley, and 40 minutes of synchronized swimming, according to Business Insider.

You can't make this stuff up. Oh, wait, yes you can if you're in North Korea.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to North Korea video: Welcome to theater of the bizzare
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2013/0205/North-Korea-video-Welcome-to-theater-of-the-bizzare
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe