i saw the trailer for the new feel-good āanti-racistā US war movie about the carpet bombing of North Korea and started writing up something for this blog, partially inspired by the absolute shit storm i got for sharing that post i made with pictures of everyday life outside pyongyang
and then i gave up, because whatās the point? westerners canāt even handle a single picture of a north korean not looking miserable without screaming propaganda
meanwhile, there are no stories about the horrors of life in the āhermit kingdomā that are deemed too outlandish to be believable. i canāt remember who said it, but itās like the entire country has taken up permanent residence in the western imaginary as some silly little cartoon villain, where the leaders of the country does evil things for no discernible reason. theyāre just silly and evil like that, and the citizens, of course, are silly, too. silly and brainwashed.
i watched a video recently of a tourists visiting an auto dealership in pyongyang, and the entire time he was just gawking at the employees and costumers, shoving his phone in their face, and confidently explaining to his youtube audience that everyone heās interacting with are actually actors.
what level of dehumanization do you have to reach for that thought to even cross your mind? to think that the people you see before you are actors? that entire cities and shops are erected with to sole purpose that you, a western, will see them and be impressed?
what frustrates me the most is the casual cruelty that seeps into any mention of north korea, no matter how small. if north koreans are not being evil, theyāre being silly.
a north korean newspaper reports that a group of archeologists in pyongyang have discovered an old rock carving with the words āunicorn lairā (mistranslated), and the western press reports that north koreans now believe in unicorns.
a tourist at a hotel in hamhung is told by the receptionist to be careful at the beach: the waves can get high. that day the tourists goes to the beach, and there are no waves. she retells the story to her instagram followers, explaining that the poor woman at the hotel could never have seen real waves before because north koreans are probably never allowed to travel.
she adds a little teary-eyed emoji.
one of the cities i included in the post was sariwon, a densely populated city to the south of pyongyang. below are some pictures from its āfolk customs streetā, which was built to showcase old korean traditions and customs
hereās all wikipedia has to say about it
Built to display an ideal picture of ancient Korea, it includes
buildings in the āhistorical styleā and a collection of ancient Korean
cannons.
Although it is considered an inaccurate romanticized recreation of an
ancient Korean street, it is frequently used as a destination for
foreigners on official government tours. Many older style Korean
buildings exist in the city.
itās just north koreans being silly again. thereās no mention of what might motivate them to build a street like that
ā why the preservation of old customs, culture and architecture might somehow be important for the city
could it perhaps have something to do with how the U.S. air force dropped
635,000 tons
of bombs, including
32,557 tons of napalm, over the korean peninsula during the war? the carpet bombings, which are now the topic of an upcoming hollywood movie about overcoming racism through warcrimes, destroyed an estimate of 85% of all buildings in north korea. some cities were entirely wiped off the map.
in sariwon they missed a few buildings, but not many
ā
after an intense firebombing campaign the U.S. military estimated the destruction of sariwon to be at 95%.
none of this is mentioned on the wikipedia page for sariwon.
we destroyed entire cities. memory-holed the entire thing,
called it the forgotten war. and now, 70 years later, weāre convincing ourselves that the people living in the ruins are actors.
and somehow the north koreans are the brainwashed ones
One thing I miss about porn Tumblr is seeing extremely specific fetish porn caps completely out of context.
Shit like this. The sheer density of implied narrative. Thereās so much happening in these three lines of text. The best ones implied a whole complex world that you knew the author was been sexually obsessed with for years. I feel like an archaeologist.
Love that this is like a fantasy drug in a world where poppers exist
haha nooooo donāt recreate puritanism under the guise of progressivism because you donāt have critical thinking skills like for realllll stopppp haha
the raven cycle is hilarious because blue and gansey are living in a coming of age romcom and adam and ronan are living in a supernatural horror film and then when they all hang out it immediately turns into an 80s treasure hunting brotherhood flick. and then they go their separate ways and adam and ronan immediately start battling the horrors again while blue and gansey eat yogurt
ALT
