“Kim Jong-Il crazy bastard! Kim Jong-Un son of a bitch!”
Believe it or not, this was posted on the North Korean propaganda website–during a day!
According to Yonhap News, the poem was posted on the opinions section of the website, in which the contents must be approved by the North Korean authorities beforehad. The author of the poem hid the message cryptographically, so that the first letters of each line would eventually read “김정일 (Kim Jong-Il),” “미친놈 (Crazy Bastard),” “김정은 (Kim Jong-Un),” “개새끼 (son of a bitch).” The poem was taken off within a day, but about three hundred people have read it already. Several officers at the bureau of censorship have been called to Pyongyang, likely face punishments. (The original article is available here: Yonhap News).
This is what is available on the media; no English article has been published thus far. Some background info might make this incident a tad more interesting.
In Korea, there is a website called “DCinside (abbreviated DC),” which is probably equivalent to “4chan” in the U.S. or “2ch” in Japan. People at DCinside are, for some weird reason, politically inclined towards right–perhaps even xenophobic and fascist in some occasions. For example, after the bombing of Yeonpyong Island, a page called “Yeonpyong Island-Provoking North Korea” was created in response–for the purpose of, um, ‘dissing’ North Korea. The poem was written and posted by a DCin (a person who does DC) from this page.
Someone posted a thread on November 23rd, asking, “Can we attack Uriminzokkiri? It should be fun,” and someone else, with the nickname ㅁㄴㅇㄹ (which does not have any meaning whatsoever) replied “I think there is a censorship process. I posted a cryptography and I think it will pass.” Since this issue was publicized in media, the comment of ㅁㄴㅇㄹ has been receiving the spotlight, and many consider him to be the author of the poem.
Since then, the DCin’s of the Yeonpyong page have been devising another ways of making it to the news–such as taking down the whole Uriminzokkiri website, or hacking the front page to put on a porn video with photoshopped head of Kim Jong-Il. Although this may be a small incident, it shows the capability of an individual to undermine the propaganda–especially that of North Korea, of the Hermit Kingdom. Also, dozens of officials have been arrested, and they are likely to face some serious charges, such as forced labour or imprisonment, inviting us to think whether internet has given too much power even to those who may not use it responsibly. Food for thought.
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