Kim Jong-un stars in film of missile launch on North Korean TV | Hacker News Reader

Kim Jong-un stars in film of missile launch on North Korean TV

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The actual film looks like a satire of a bad student film. It's so incredibly over the top and corny. I struggle to process it not being intentionally bad.

It's heart breaking to remember an entire nation of people suffer under the yoke of this joke of a human being.

I actually thought it was meant to be funny and humanized Kim Jong Un a bit.

You may be right that it was not intended that way, though.

It's hard to humanize a guy who had his own brother assassinated with a chemical weapon and had his uncle executed with an anti-aircraft gun.

Based on what I’ve seen in Joseon era dramas, this kind of behavior is pretty close to the norm for kings in Korea.

1. Having read several issues of the Pyongyang Times, I can assure you, it was not intentionally funny at all, but done in all seriousness.

2. More (unintentionally) funny pictures of Kim Jong Un looking at things: http://kimjongunlookingatthings.com

I wouldn't be surprised if it was all intentionally done like this to get viral on social media. It seems to have worked, it's even on Hacker News!

Maybe...but that's not really how you show strength...but on the other hand maybe he wants to start at Only Fans (with his big rocket/s)...then it would be a genius marketing campaign.

I doubt it very much. I don't think you appreciate the fervent seriousness with which North Koreans (have to) revere their Kims. There is no room for levity there, and certainly not in the public sphere.

I mean, read their official report, and tell me how often you laughed (intentionally!):

http://www.pyongyangtimes.com.kp/?bbs=40771

http://www.pyongyangtimes.com.kp

Do you know if the video was also circulated inside NK? If it was, I guess it would be a strike against the social media theory.

Yes, you can see the logo of DPRK state TV on the top left corner.

He probably used this template: https://youtu.be/f37K0hIv3zk

He would probably westernize their society if his family wouldn't murder him at the first hint of it.

What are the film schools like in NK....?

They have very long to go before their version of Leni Riefenstahl

Now I want to see Kim Jong-un do Gangnam Style.

Edit: Seems I’m not the only one: https://youtu.be/Gp_orBM2VkQ

I hate to make light of a very serious situation, but I'm quite amused at North Korean propaganda films. Some show the NK military performing martial arts demonstrations (as though martial arts have a place on the modern battlefield, one can only wish), others show Kim Jong-un riding a horse, one claims Americans ate all the birds in our country and now only live on melted snow. I don't even know if these are legitimate propaganda films, but I find them fascinating and amusing.

You get melted snow? Mine is always still frozen …

Ours is always still evaporated, at best

I guarantee martial arts are being deployed in Ukrainian urban situations right now.

Considering we have a recent MoH recipient who beat to death a man with a rock, hand-to-hand combative programs are very relevant.

What is MoH?

My guess is Medal of Honor.

A interesting question to ponder is how and why you would mandate training for a various task across a large organization while balancing constraints of maintaining readiness, accomplishing other mandated training, equipment availability, and minimizing training injuries.

An Army War College study made waves a few years because it found:

> that many Army officers, after repeated exposure to the overwhelming demands and the associated need to put their honor on the line to verify compliance, have become ethically numb. As a result, an officer’s signature and word have become tools to maneuver through the Army bureaucracy rather than being symbols of integrity and honesty. [1]

In that light, if I were rolling out a combatives program I’d focus on the physical training and mental toughness benefits rather than the increased lethality in hand-to-hand combat.

[1]: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/466/

I think this was linked to on HN a couple of days ago:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-dict...

> In Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, for example, the lies have gotten progressively more ridiculous. Once a lie becomes widely accepted, the value of that individual loyalty test declines. Once everyone knows that Kim Jong Un learned to drive when he was just 3 years old, a new, more extreme lie must emerge for the test to serve its purpose. The cycle repeats itself, and a cult of personality is born.

As for the propaganda films with martial arts fighting: I get what you mean, but it sounds a bit less silly when you realize that the US military has been effectively underwriting hollywood films for decades...and the absurd things they portray US military members doing (like, say, almost single-handedly re-activating a WW2 battleship and using its deck guns to blow up alien space ships.)

Short-wave radio has all this and mucho, mucho mas. The collapse of the USSR was a big setback culturally there.

Full version [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PGMXz_X8K8

The opening immediately brings the Idiocrasy's rehabilitation :)

With Russia becoming bigger problem Kim has lost that position, and looks like he is trying to get at least some of the former attention. And there is no notebooks, and nobody writes each and every word of the dear leader into the notebooks - add to that the leather jacket, and it looks like NK is undergoing reforms/modernization moving itself into their version of 21st century. The rocket launch video from the drone is almost like SpaceX video from the on-board camera :)

Interesting that they clearly show where it is happening. And in general NK isn't that big to hide these large missiles and their trucks.

Btw, am i the only one who hears them screaming "Banzai!" (https://youtu.be/0PGMXz_X8K8?t=120) - to me it looks a bit out of place for a national propaganda in a Korean state.

> "Banzai!" - to me it looks a bit out of place for a national propaganda in a Korean state.

Nope, you weren't the only one, and it of course reminded me of these famous series of sketches from the Italian television back in the '90s. [1]

[1] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10153366722576634 (sorry for the FB link but apparently there's nothing about that show on YT anymore)

FWIW, they're shouting '발사' (balsa), i.e. launch/fire, not 'banzai'.

To me, it sounded like 発射 (hassha) in Japanese. I guess that's how you'd write 발사 in Hanja.

Yes, it’s those characters (in Kanji/Japanese), in Hanja/Korean it would have been 發射, the glyph for the first character is different even though it’s the same ideograph in Unicode (due to Han unification).

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/發 shows each of the three variants for CJK.

Reminds me of using balsa wood to make the fins on model rockets as a kid.

Banzai in Korean is “Manse”

I guess they watch too many indian TV shows. Every indian TV has similar slow motions, zoom in, and 4-5 angle shots.

Why are they screaming in the Control-"room"? And why they have to check their watches when they could have a screaming soldier instead? But the most pressing question, why is that start button so unimpressive, no red, just nothing, deeply disappointed, zero climax.

“Launch!”

Is that to motivate the rocket?

Absolutely magnificent! /s

All that I expected from a theatre state. Incredible acting, marvellous narrative setting and best of all are the over the top dramatics and hype creation! /s

A stunning 10/10 for comedic effort! /s

And the special effects are 10 times better then Iranian ones....it's really something.

https://world-defense.com/threads/qaher-f313-iran-unveils-ho...

Just propaganda -- nice sunglasses though!

… and the Oscar goes to: Propaganda Style

great jinx remix of this for the art connoisseurs

https://nitter.net/crackconnoisser/status/150731453127768064...

And he has nuclear bombs! Feel a bit funny but it is not really funny at all.

What's up with all that pointing? Is that supposed to mean anything?

Ironic use of tropes from Hollywood movies that are banned in N. Korea.

This is better than anything Hollywood's put out in 10 years.

This has a strong 80s TV series vibe.

Interesting that the North-Koreans are trying to beat the Westerners at their own meme-based propaganda game.

I've started noticing a similar trend in regards to the war in Ukraine. When you've got all the establishment (political&intellectual&cultural) and the press on one side and one side only (Ukraine's and Zelensky's) then the other side (in this case Putin and the Russians) becomes the "counter-cultural" force, the"bad guys" that the "under-current" present on the "good guys"'s side might try to emulate out of spite at some point.

Again, interesting stuff, because I have the feeling that the West is kind of "losing" this aspect of the propaganda war, I mean, they're losing the fight when all they present to the world is a united front of "goodness". They're leaving the "counter-cultural" side of the "war" to their enemies (in this case the Russians), not a good sign.

I'd say the US was much more careful about this sort of stuff back in the '60s going all the way to the '80s, I'd say in this day and age movies like "Apocalypse Now" or "Rambo I" (a Vietnam veteran "combating" against the US Army on US soil!) would never get made because they would "break" that unified front of "goodness". It was also through movies like "Apocalypse Now" and "Rambo" that the US won the Cold War (I grew up as a kid on the East side of the Wall, if it matters).

On the contrary, I'd say the Ukrainians are absolutely masterful at this, and their enemies (the Russians) have utterly lost the plot.

It all depends on your information bubble it seems.

You're assuming the west (or the US specifically) is not actually helping Ukraine out in this way. They've been on this since weeks before the invasion even happened. By putting it all out there, they really messed with Putin's plans.

I've always assumed they've been helping Ukraine out with propaganda. This whole invasion is like a wonderful insight into the Russian military for the US which would be invaluable. Or maybe they already knew that anyways.

I've been very impressed with Ukraine, seriously. Even if others' are helping, so what - they're not the ones who invaded a neighbouring country.

> By putting it all out there, they really messed with Putin's plans.

How? The invasion still happened.

It only showed the US knew it was gonna happen and was powerless to stop it. Nor did the US (or other countries) send weapons and supplies in advance. But at least they got to say I told you so..

It was a terrible strategy.

> It was also through movies like "Apocalypse Now" and "Rambo" that the US won the Cold War

What?? Can you explain that?

We were attracted by Western “culture”, that’s what brought the Wall down. We had a sort of “culture” on our side, too, but it was all positive and as such it seemed fake, especially to the younger people/generations.

From a distance the Western culture didn’t seem fake, it looked like the real thing (again, also because it was able to “present” to the world all its contradictions).

Of course that this is all a very complicated discussion (to this day I think the punk culture in the West was “masterminded”/instrumentalized at keeping the generation most affected by the Great Stagnatation at bay), but most probably a web forum is not the best place to hold it.

Apocalypse Now, Rambo, and Punk culture were genuine. We did not have the kind of censorship that you did, it’s that simple. We were free to criticize our government and replace them every 4 years. You weren’t.

If you think those things were engineered in some easy and not self-emergent, then that’s a conspiracy theory without much merit in my mind. But I love to entertain these things and if there’s a way to reach you outside this web forum, let me know.

There was a meme image of Kim saying "I'm no longer the craziest dictator". I say let the man star in as many movies as he wants.

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