On the Spot with Kim Jong-il

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/on_the_spot_with_kim_jong-il.html

by bloch • 16 years ago

51 30 16 years ago

Team America ruined any chance of me taking this guy seriously.

jcromartie2• 16 years ago

I'm fascinated by North Korea. I think these pictures say a lot. The details are interesting... close-up shots, framed without showing much context. Practically everybody has a pad of paper. Intriguing stuff.

og1• 16 years ago

Yeah, it is very interesting. There is definitely a formula to these pictures. Very tidy environment, inspecting a line of product, a dozen people watching in the background, and the same damn coat in every shot.

What I really wonder is Kim Jong-il "in" on the staged-ness of these shots? Or does he just operate with a different perception of the world because things are always presented to him in such a tidy manner?

jcromartie2• 16 years ago

I'm sure if you zoomed out you would see a whole lot of nothing. No more than a handful more cows or pigs or shoes or cookies that are in the shots we see here. NK is just a big vacant husk of a nation.

He has to be aware of that, at least.

sili• 16 years ago

Some of those photos look photoshopped. In #10, his glasses are broken, whereas in others (14, 19) he looks very out of place. In many, his hat stand out particularly.

joshu• 16 years ago

I recall there were several techniques for photoshop detection. Let's bust them out?

bradbeattie• 16 years ago

Nothing too odd: http://i.imgur.com/INgMn.jpg

smallblacksun• 16 years ago

Why photoshop when you can stage?

mapleoin• 16 years ago

I posted this a few days ago but didn't get any attention:

A Year in Pyongyang: The fascinating account of a British guy who spent a year in North Korea working as a literary reviser for their totalitarian government http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1178719

I've started reading the book since then and it really paints a full and seemingly realistic picture of N Korea.

IsaacL• 16 years ago

Great link (though it should come with a procrastination warning...) I've just spent over an hour browsing through it. It's definitely a different perspective.

jbm• 16 years ago

I read that book a long time ago.

I always found it interesting how he was constantly in fear of getting ripped off by the government, and moreover, how the North Korean people he worked with never really talked to him about how they felt.

I found the story about the girl who was impregnated by an African student and forced to have an abortion to be incredibly fascinating.

gojomo• 16 years ago

Lest we be too proud of our ability to detect the forced, artificial nature of these photographs, this link from the 'Big Picture' comment thread should be considered:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/02/obama_being_forced_to_l...

(Our photo op rituals aren't that much better. US photographers show a lot more creativity in composition, though.)

dpapathanasiou• 16 years ago

That's an extremely superficial comparison.

huhtenberg• 16 years ago

Gotta love how the only photo where he is smiling is where he is holding a bottle of vodka :)

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi...

jackfoxy• 16 years ago

Explains why he wears shades even indoors?

Christopher Hitchens wrote an interesting piece on NK recently http://www.slate.com/id/2243112/pagenum/all/

nfnaaron• 16 years ago

I was wondering if he wears shades so you can never know for sure if it's him or a stand-in.

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

It's soju, and he smiles in multiple photographs. Kim Jong Il also likes shoes, plastic buckets, and large control panels.

I find these pictures sad. There's a lot of people working like slaves in NK for whom these pictures document the most important day in their lives. Awash in propaganda, many of them probably sincerely believe they're engaged in a noble mission of freedom. Sometimes I wonder if Kim himself believes he's the only think holding it together.

The regime in North Korea seems to have a desperate need to convince others of its legitimacy, unlike, say, that in Myanmar where the junta holds the country in a equally tight grip but seems to shun all outside scrutiny. Whereas any educated person can recognize Kim Jong Il, even Google has only a few photographs of Myanmar's leader.

(in case you were wondering: http://1763coventry.com/burmeses/index.php/TOC_-_Leaders_%26...)

steveplace• 16 years ago

If you're looking for some more insight into this country, watch this video set over the weekend:

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-...

A real eye opener.

adriand• 16 years ago

"I see you have some cows here."

"Ah yes. Flour. Very good."

"Excellent work on this bucket. But why orange? Ha ha ha!"

"What is this, a fishery for ants?"

jsm386• 16 years ago

I've always been fascinated by the pictures people manage to get out of North Korea. This Flickr account is home to an incredible collection of photos inside of Pyongyang http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/collections/7215760... and out in the country http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/collections/7215760...

harshpotatoes• 16 years ago

In some ways North Korea is one of the few countries that feels really foreign to me nowadays, but I think that might be because there is so little verifiable information about it.

Regardless, looking at these photos I only think: Kim is looking really old.

jrockway• 16 years ago

If I was a stand-in for some politician that was about my height and weight, I would definitely wear sunglasses. Even at night.

a-priori• 16 years ago

When I saw the pictures of Kim Jong-il surrounded by a store filled with fresh fruit while his citizens starve, I was reminded of the final years of the rule of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. In Ceauşescu's case, to some extent it appears his lieutenants went to great lengths to present him with a sanitized view of the state of his country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceauşescu#Tensions

I'm curious if this is also the case in North Korea.

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_i...

An excellent (and short) analysis of North Korea from Banyan, the Economist's excellent new Asia columnist.

rgrieselhuber• 16 years ago

I'm struck by how old they all are. I bet the younger generation is just waiting for them to all die off.

On the Spot with Kim Jong-il

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