Blazing Trails of Satire: The Playground Bully

Sarah Cho, Feature Editor

My morning routine is rather dull: wakeup, brush teeth, wash face, turn on TV to “news” that North Korea is making nuclear threats.  Day in, day out, my schedule rarely changes.  It’s predictable and painfully mundane.  Apparently, the U.S. has been on the “brink of war” with this Far East country for years now.

It seems just yesterday that Kim Jong-Il was making his own rather ill-advised threats and now his younger, slightly stupider, and definitely fatter son, Kim Jong-Un, the “Great Successor” (though great may be an overstatement, mediocre might be a bit more accurate) is now making his own idiotic threats.  But, don’t for a second underestimate this slightly overweight ruler of the oppressed world.  This chubby, European educated, exceedingly modern “Supreme Leader of North Korea” (the North Koreans really love their grossly inflated adjectives) is intent on making his mark in North Korea.  From stealing footage from the very American “Call of Duty” video game for his extremely persuasive, propaganda video (complete with narration and animation of the United States’ White House and Congress being blown to bits) to effectively ridding North Korea of its sole, pesky ally—China—Kim Jong-Un has been intent on improving its relationship with the United Nations.

The video, in particular, was a true stroke of Oscar-worthy genius.  The animation was some genuinely top notch work and the song “We are the World” playing in the background really tied the moving video together.  If it worked for Haiti, it’ll definitely do for the extremely communist, evil, less well-endowed twin brother of South Korea.  I do have to question though if Kim Jong-Un received any copyright lawsuits following the release of this video.  With SOPA, PIPA, and all the other acronym-ed, copyright legislation being pushed, you can never be too careful.

Even still, luckily for bad propaganda film fans everywhere, this is but one of a dozen other clips uploaded to Youtube (funny, I would think the U.S. based website would be blocked in North Korea).  Included in this menagerie of Academy Award-level cinematography is a scene of North Korea invading America.  The scene, though, seems oddly familiar.  I’m wondering if the acclaimed North Korean director of cheesy propaganda videos saw the American 2012 film, “Red Dawn.”  They both reek of that B rated horrifically cheap Hollywood quality North Koreans have grown to know and love.

And Kim Jong-Un, admirably and bravely, refuses to simply stop at invading the devilishly democratic virtual land of Youtube.  The ambitious, feisty young ruler has even taken to Twitter and even Flickr (a bit of a misstep—really, who actually uses Flickr nowadays?) to promote his budding young country.  Maybe with all of this use of social media, North Korea will become the premier, go-to tourist spot this summer.  One can only hope.