Rare North Korean video you likely never seen

North Korea (DPRK) actually has a YouTube Channel!

While reading news from mainstream media, including Channel News Asia, I began to search for related terms on some very silly things said by then president-elect Donald Trump, including his comments on "Big Macs for Xi Jin Ping", and "Burgers for Kim Jong Un" to see if he actually did it on his recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jin Ping. No Double Big Mac was offered on that meeting, but I chanced upon an interesting video on YouTube. North Korea (DPRK) actually has a YouTube channel!

Here is one official video of Kim Jong Un's speech with english subtitles. While probably millions of people around the world are concerned about the rising tension in the Korean Peninsula, I don't think even 1% of them know how Kim Jong Un sounds like.

You will never see this on mainstream media:

Rare speech footage of one of the last strictly socialist country on earth.
 

18 minutes long video. Very intense stuff with intense politics, in an intense environment. And imagine everything in their everyday politics being like this, I wouldn't want to live there but from this rare video you can actually see things from their perspectives. Sanctions after sanctions, with many real impending dangers of foreign invasion/toppling of their dictatorship-like socialist regime, they are still standing strong in their cause for a strictly socialist society. (China is really just communist/socialist in name, but largely capitalist) Whether for the good or bad, they are just like the last samurais defending their ideology.

Many elements of their government structure seems really bizzare from western world's point of view especially with stuff like the office of "eternal president" etc, but from how I see it, ancestral worshipping has always been part of east asian culture all along, except for modern day China which has gone through cultural revolution to destroy traditional cultural elements like that.

In the traditional chinese folklore/taoist religion that is still in practice in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, ancestral worshipping is still a thing, meaning after you die, your descendents still worship you on altar on occasions. And as for North Korea, it seems like that they have have embedded traditional cultural elements like these, fused together with socialist elements influenced by former USSR in their constitutions when founding the DPRK, similar to how the United States have some elements of Christianity in their constitutions. And when you think about it this way, more bizzare claims like their leaders do not need to defecate is just supposed to be part of their folklore to create an air of cool myths around their leaders. (Similarly, chinese netizens calling Ivanka Trump a goddess does not mean much, the word "Nv Shen" / "goddess" is used with light meaning to any beautiful female in mandarin-speaking world, not meant as a worship remark.)

 

Food for thought for the developed world:

  • With United States having a history of invading non-democratic governments like in Iraq, Syria and Libya with their own justified reasons to free them from dictators (even though Libya under Muammar Gadaffi was formerly Africa's richest country before the topple), it's only a natural response for the DPRK to militarise themselves for self-defense. Besides, they are technically still at war with the United States and South Korea with only a truce treaty signed, so they are actually the next most likely target to be invaded by US, aside from ISIS.
     
  • So far North Korea / DPRK has never attacked any foreign country in the past 60 years, other than what seems like a "civil war" after Korea was unjustly divided into North Korea occupied by USSR and South Korea occupied by United States after Japan surrendered the Japanese-ruled Korean peninsula at the end of World War 2 to the Allied powers. (United States and USSR being the two leads of Allied powers)
     
  • North Korea/DPRK pursues a "Juche" policy, which roughly translates to being self-reliant so they pursue their own militarisation, but in a situation like this, their only viable options are to either militarise itself like what it's currently doing, or to have China to fully ensure their sovereignity which I assume is likelier to trigger more U.S. tensions seeing how China's recent announcement of a new aircraft carrier is triggering so many debates.

    The question is then 1) whether United States would prefer a stronger militarised China that is likely as strong as the United States military, that is able to ensure DPRK's sovereignity and hence help to denuclearise it, or 2) would the United States prefer the current status quo of a strong China military, but not as strong as United States while China pursues diplomacy and economic growth, with North Korea manning its own military defense?
     
  • United States with its 7506 nuclear nukes and Russia with its 8484 nuclear nukes currently accounts for roughly 93% of all nuclear weapons in the world today. North Korea currently has less than 10 nuclear weapons. United States and Russia, as well as the developed world needs to consider what makes it right for them to ban other smaller nations from nuclear weapon development while currently owning most of the nuclear weapons in the world today, unless they themselves start to destroy some of their nuclear weapons to keep the numbers low.
     
  • The developed world blames the North Korean regime for their people's poverty while at the same time heavily sanctioning DPRK from international trades for any major economic development. At the same time again, their sovereignity is not 100% ensured with an invasion for democracy likely to occur any time just like what happened in Iraq, Libya and Syria. This is something we all need to consider why they are emphasizing on their self-defense instead of labelling Kim Jong Un as a mad man. He likely doesn't want to be the next one to be cooked just like Muammar Gadaffi.
     
  • The internet was not made at the time of the Korean War. With the state of poverty today it is unlikely Internet is a priority for them right now when even electricity is a scarcity. I never know about this, but now having watched their speech, I believe they are only heavily interested in increasing their military defense as well as lifting their living standards to the point they are not actually living their life normally like it should be. The DPRK actually has official websites for international viewing in english language on its consituencies and diplomacy/principles found at http://www.naenara.com.kp/en/ but the same websites are banned from accessing in South Korea and also never listed on Google. (even other websites that shows the stats of their official websites are listed but just not the official DPRK website). They also have a Youtube channel that so far none of the mainstream news media have acknowledged — We need to consider whether it's a two-way propaganda and start thinking in our own terms.
     
  • Bonus point: The North Korean regime tends to refer to old Japan and United States as "imperialists" (expansions by military power), it is likely they will not pursue the same policy to use their military power for expansion abroad. At the same time, under their founding policy, they want a peaceful reunification with South Korea so they are unlikely to want to kill their own kind. They even have a proposal for a unified, Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo under their constitution. I do not have a bias against any country but their constitutions so far still looks quite reasonable to me, but a pity that with all the information DPRK made available on the Internet, almost all mainstream media still fails to acknowledge their presence, while I could easily find information about DPRK government when I wanted to.

 


(Author remarks: This article is solely my personal views.)
[I also read on Donald Trump and Vladmir Putin, not just Kim Jong Un]

 

2,037 unique views
Chen Chun-You Felix Tan, based in Singapore
Chen Chun-You is the founder and creator of Altairo.com. Being a technopreneur himself, he writes some articles for fun during his free time.
<< Back
Forgot your password?
<< Back
Your password reset mail has been sent to you.