Sunday, March 6, 2005
North Korea promotes vacations with wacky Flash movie
Crank up your speakers, comrade! This flash movie from an organization called the Korean Friendship Association promises an awesome getaway to North Korea with many! electric! guitars! The choral-accompanied montage includes shots of fun relay games, Kim Jong Il, and these weird "travel transition" shots -- in which a tiny red plane icon appears to attack a larger passenger plane. Link to movie. New Link to Movie. Update below.
Read more about the rockin' vacation destination nation in the Democratic People's Republic newspaper, which today accuses the South Korean Authorities of possessing a "sycophantic treacherous mentality." Link. Life imitates Team America.
(Thanks, Hans)
Update: North Korea upset with Boing Boing?
We knew Kim Jong Il's regime rationed rice and soybeans from time to time, but -- bandwidth? An hour after this Boing Boing post was published, the webmaster behind the KFA website replaced that movie with a message scolding yours truly for having had the audacity to link to it:
[click image for full size]Should have read the unfriendly copyright notice on the Friendship Association website first:
Access to the requested object was denied.
Due to some inconsiderate people linking directly to our multimedia we were forced to take the content offline since it generated too much traffic.
This kind of careless linking to high-profile sites is typical of the internet where people no longer respect that such links could make free content less available.
We will never charge money to pay for the bandwidth, so if people are going to expect high-quality content they should make their own copy of the large file and share it from their own server.
Questions can be sent to support@korea-dpr.com for technical advice.
Thank you and have a nice day.
(c) Juche 92-93 (2004, 2005) Korean Friendship Association Official Webpages of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea All rights reserved. Copying and redistributed prohibited.New Link to Movie. If Dear Leader objects, I hope that he will not set us up the bomb.
Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson says:
Wouldn't it have been spooky if they had put up a .torrent instead? Then the MPAA really would have had some basis for the file-sharing = communism case.Wil Wheaton says:
As Communists, their commitment to sharing leaves a lot to be desired. They're setting a very bad example. Luckily, there is another fantastic source for DPK propaganda: shortwave radio. The DPK sends out an English-language broadcast via shortwave that will blow your mind.Who exactly is the "Korean Friendship Association," and how closely are they associated with the North Korean government? James Wu's blog quotes a Bjornar Simonsen, identified as KFA International Counselor from KOREA-DPR.COM, as saying:A typical broadcast is filled with Personality Cult ramblings about how great Kim Jung Il is, bookended by some music that's actually pretty cool. Anyone who misses the cold war propaganda of Radio Moscow will not be disappointed.
Listeners in North America can tune in daily at 1500 UTC on 9335 or 11710 kHz, while Europeans can listen on 11335 or 15245 kHz. The European broadcast repeats at 1900 and 2100 UTC on the same frequencies.
"We are not state sponsored, but we are totally state approved. We are a non-profit organization called the Korean Friendship Association who works for understanding of the North Korean culture. Our ministry which we cooperate fully is the Committee For Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries in Pyongyang, DPR Korea."James adds:
[A] WHOIS lookup shows that the NAMESERVER is JOKER.COM in Spain, which just sounds wrong for any Far East state website. While the site presents itself as an official state sponsored entity, it is remarkably light in content except for pretty pictures. (...) An example of an actual DPRK site is KCNA.CO.JP the Korean Central News Agency of DPRK and is known to be a state organ."Specifically, the site is registered to "Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les", in Barcelona. BB reader IZ Reloaded shares more background on the North Korean Friendship Association:
Membership is free, and open to all people regardless of nationality, race, religion or political orientation. There are only two conditions for joining:BB reader Will says:1. You respect the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and its leaders.
2. You respect the other members in the KFA and the goals of the KFA.The membership may be cancelled at any time by each party, by one party informing the other. They also have a cute little flash karaoke where members can sing along to the song 'Let us advance the people's army': Link
I yanked the kickass soundtrack from the North Korean Delegation animation. Quite frankly, I'm sticking this in iTunes and keeping it on repeat on my iPod as I ride the Greyhound to New York City for 8 hours. Meanwhile, remixers, start your engines! Link to MP3.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:46:39 AM
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