Kim dies, devastated people mourn with spontaneous cries of “At last”
Final Twitters of Kim Jong Il, leader of North Korea:
1. Woke up. Still feeling cross about missile falling into the sea.
2. I send tweet to my chief engineer: "The sky is so big. How did you miss it?"
3. Chief engineer replies: "Dear Leader, your idea about using kimchee as cut price rocket fuel caused the problem."
4. Feel annoyed. Have him executed for being right.
(For more exclusive tweets of the rich and famous, click here.)
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TO MARK the great man’s death, here are some collected pix and comments about the leader of North Korea.
Kim Waits For a High Five
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Kim orders food supplies to orphanages and hospitals to be cut
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“Are you SURE this Fanta stuff is weapons-grade plutonium?”
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Kim decides to get married again
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A REGULAR COMEDY SHOW has been discovered in North Korea.
Yes, even in the least funny part of Asia, serious attempts are being made to generate laughs.
This is not a joke. The finding is a major boost to this column’s campaign to prove that the conventional wisdom that says Asians are not funny is untrue.
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Ready for some big-time laughs?
Here we go!
The North Korean show is called “It’s So Funny”, and the Reuters news agency, who discovered the existence of the show, quoted some of the dialogue.
Male soldier: “I feel better and look more handsome because I have been taking medicine made from beans. If we soldiers see beans, we become happy. Ha ha ha.”
Female soldier: “If we farm in the way The General tells us, we will become happy. Ha ha ha.”
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Are you laughing yet?
No? Smart readers will have spotted something missing.
Yes, that’s right, there’s no actual humor involved. That’s true. But give them time. It’s not easy. They’ve only been working on it for a couple of decades.
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Now I know what you are thinking. You may have suspicions that the curious lack of humor in this humorous dialogue reveals the true purpose of the skit: to deliver the bad news: there is nothing to eat except beans.
This may be correct.
A reporter from Reuters asked Kim Yong, a defector who escaped from North Korea, to make a comment about the show.
He said he heard the bean jokes before. He said: “They are still talking about beans. The country hasn't changed at all since I defected 20 years ago." (I am not making this up.)
In other words, beans have clearly dominated the menu for at leasttwo decades.
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To paraphrase Monty Python’s “Spam sketch”, the scene at the North Korean army canteen must be something like this.
General: “What’s on the menu?”
Waitress: “You can have egg and beans; beans and egg; bacon, egg and beans; or beans, bacon, beans, egg and beans.”
General: “Have you got anything without beans?”
Waitress: “Why don’t you have bacon, egg and beans?”
General: “But that’s got beans in it.”
Waitress: “Yes, but it’s got less beans than beans, bacon, beans, egg and beans.”
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But having said that, I can confirm that there IS genuine humor in North Korea.
It’s just unintentional, that’s all. For example, there used to be a magazine called North Korea Weekly which was published once a month.
And then there are the news releases. Whenever Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il does anything in public, we’re told that the forces of the universe respond. A typical line is: “A magical display of rainbows appeared spontaneously over the stage where he performed the ceremony.”
What this really means is that there was a ghastly rainstorm which totally spoiled the ceremony but the guy writing it up knew that he would be executed on the spot unless he found a way to make it sound like a good thing.
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But on the other hand, the North Korean comedy troupe deserves some praise. I think there should be a reward for comedians who manage to steer clear of clichés.
The “It’s So Funny” team from North Korea have been joking about beans for 20 years and it’s extremely likely that they haven’t made a single reference to flatulence.
You must admit, that’s pretty impressive.
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OTHER THOUGHTS:
NEWS: A sportsman called Kim Jong Su was caught using drugs. That’s bad enough—but the really scary news is that he was a North Korean. Can you imagine what they’ll do to him?
“If you humiliate the country like Kim Jong Su did, you will be secretly dragged somewhere and suffer,” an unnamed source from inside the country told the Daily DK online newspaper.
This reminded me of my primary teacher, who was always dragging students away to suffer. She practiced an educational technique called death-threat-centred-learning. In the event, our class did every test badly, although I suspect we were top performers in bedwetting.
The only good news for Kim Jong Su is that he may not be humiliated in his own country: North Korean citizens get no sports coverage unless one of their countrymen wins something. When that happens, the people rejoice, and so do the country’s rocks, trees and lakes.
When Dear Leader Kim Jong Il did an international tour, nature expressed its pleasure with a series of miraculous signs. A 20-metre high water spout erupted spontaneously from a lake, surmounted by a magical display of rainbows, the Korea Central News Agency reported. It’s a pity there isn’t an Olympic prize for Synchronized Silliness.
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But maybe those guys are good at science. Kim Jong Il is known to have an army of 300 suspiciously perfect cheerleaders. When the squad toured South Korea, even the most staid newspapers carried photographs with headlines such as “Wow, They Sure Are Pretty.” Did he grow them from test tubes or what? North Korea is known for its innovative, creative methods of asexual reproduction, such as kidnapping citizens from neighbouring countries.
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You can now get British beer in the hermit kingdom. Kim Jong Il bought an entire 175-year-old brewery from the UK and had it rebuilt in his homeland. There’s even talk of filling Kim Jong-Ils’ country with British-style pubs. So one day, North Koreans could be standing around in old buildings, drinking warm, flat beer and eating bad food.
So, no change there.
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“Now we are below Hawaii. A stroll of another thousand miles or so leads us to the evil empire America.”
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During the visit to the vegetable garden, Kim is thrown into a reverie about his last visit to the doctor…
(Illustration from many sources, top one photoshopped by Dave Corassa.)
