Now beaming live from Pyongyang: NORKSCASTS! Netizens with a hankering for some good old fashioned propaganda and Soviet-style marching music may be interested to know the daily English language programme from North Korea’s state-run radio station Voice of Korea is now available online. The one-hour broadcast is being made available by London-based World Radio Network ( …
Mao pushed Kim Snr into it as part of his machinations for more military hardware from Russia.
I thought everyone knew that??
It worked as well; the US publicly contemplated using Nukes, so Mao then had the leverage needed to get technicians and supplies from Russia to start China's nuclear programme.
I could just imagine a Nork Communism Theme Park...
There would be oversized effigies of all the "Kims" running around..
There could also be a "House of Horrors" that contains wax dummies of former South Korean leaders, former and present western & U.S. leaders and western television personalities, while modern rock music plays in the background
In the "City of the Future" section there would be integrated circuits, pocket calculators, oversized old school mobile phones, 17" CRT monitors, Karaoke machines and fuel injected cars.. The highlight would be a wind up flashlight!
Then there would be the refreshments stands, comprising of rice, fish and soda water, meanwhile the stands' decor would mimic KFC & McD's!
'Eastern' capitalism seems to have done well in Japan (and other places) and now China, in terms of letting technology flourish. I'm not sure if it's a form of imported 'western' capitalism or just letting people do what they want to do.
Can you give examples of where technology development (not copying) has done at least fairly well away from capitalist systems?
"Can you give examples of where technology development (not copying) has done at least fairly well away from capitalist systems?"
Erm... pretty much the entire space programme? Bearing in mind that most of America's space program was built on Nazi technology which they appropriated from the likes of von Braun after the war. Also that in spite of the Americans benefiting from von Braun's genius, the Soviets were still the first to launch a satellite and the first to put a man in space - and if von Braun and his people had gone to them instead of America, they would have been the first on the moon as well.
The yanks (and us ) got a fair amount of V1+V2 tech and the von Braun team who made it to the western sectors (the SS escots was under orders to shoot them if it looked like they were going to be capured)
The rest and the mid level/bottom level techs and sciencists were rounded up by the soviets and sent east to work on the soviet missile program.
They were imprisoned until 1953/1955 when the russians finally let them go.
So both sides were just as bad as each other at looting nazi tech
"Erm... pretty much the entire space programme? Bearing in mind that most of America's space program was built on Nazi technology which they appropriated from the likes of von Braun after the war. "
Further to your point, I'd argue that even the American space programme was not part of a Capitalist system. It was not tied to capitalist culture or competitive forces. Instead it was developed in essentially a fascist manner: Funded by the government at limitless cost, in secrecy, for propaganda and military reasons.
built on Nazi technology, by Nazi technologists...
There, fixed it for you.
Both Wernher von Braun and his brother worked for/ran NASA along with over 50 others who'd worked under and were often members of NSDAP and/or the Shutzstaffel. The Americans just conveniently forgot that little fact when it suited them in all sorts of fields.
@Steven Roper
We got the scientists, Russia got the machine tools and production equipment. And we were hampered by a Military who imported, then basically ignored Von Braun till the exploding missiles got too embarrassing propaganda wise.
They went with us because they didn't want to wind up doing their design work in a gulag. We paid better, and your house didn't get bars on the windows.
To some degree, it is. After my trip there, when people asked me about it, I opened with "Imagine a billionaire asked you to create Crazy Eastern Communist Dictatorship World. Start at the point people step onto the flight in. Do all that kitsch stuff you'd expect; pictures of the leaders, worshipping statues, impeccably dressed tour guides with selective hearing, poverty-stricken peasants in the far distance when on the bus between cities, obvious shows to the tourists, pseudo-religious visit to birthplace of the Great Leader. Go nuts."
If you believe that California is communist you would probably keel over and die if shown real socialism...
Its a running gag in the UK that in America you can vote for the party on the right or the party really far on the right.
Obama is seen as a wet pinko liberal but here he is off to the right of David Cameron
Capitalim isn't the best sytem, its just (to paraphrase Churchill) that all the others are worse...
California COMMUNIST? BWAHAHAHAHHAHA! That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time! Ta for the belly-laugh from this Californian :-)
"Even in the US of A it's acknowledged that Obama is generally to the right of Ronald Reagan"
By whom? I've certainly never heard that theory. Wine & beer makers run the gamut of US political opinion, and we discuss politics over tastings fairly regularly.
They could organized a worldwide contest to inaugure the park.
First prize: one week in North Korea.
Second prize: one month in North Korea.
Third prize: ten years in North Korea.
For the whole family, grandparents and children included.
They can do it for the park, they already do the same when they send somebody to a concentration camp.
for all the faithful disciples of a historically discredited nightmare based on wishful thinking and a complete ignore of how humans actually behave. Note; ignore, not ignorance. These broadcasts and TV would give these disciples somewhere to call home, since the Kremlin and Beijing dropped being the workers paradise. Then the disciples can drop the greenie front and become what they always were, manipulative bullies after unearned and unvoted power.
To answer your question ... Apparently.
You see, the NORKs are being a bit[1] of a tit on the world stage. ElReg, being ElReg, took the obvious pun & ran with it. Have you really been reading & posting here in this esteemed Red Topped organ for four years?
[1] Why yes, I have been accused of having the gift of understatement. Why do you ask?
Sort of, but the military-first policy and breathtakingly cackhanded economic policies makes North Korea truly unique. There are other brutal tin pot dictatorships that have a sense of WTF when looking at North Korea because it's a true extreme and pretty much completely dysfunctional.
Forcing people to live with their DVD players' USB ports turned off is hardly "draconian," not even mildly so. "Harsh," or "domineering," perhaps, but not close to "pretty draconian." Get caught turning it back on again... I don't know, would the person committing such an offense be shot ? That's what draconian is.
Perhaps this carriage of Nork Radio International on WRN helps to explain why SiriusXM satellite radio (North America) recently dropped WRN from the channel line-up. ...Probably amongst other pressures on the bandwidth.
As an old-fart shortwave listener, it's been a hoot to drive around town listening to assorted 'foreign' broadcasts. We're down to having the BBC as the only 'foreign' channel on SiriusXM now.
There was something about tuning in international stations on a shortwave that just isn't the same in this modern internet era.
The Voice of Korea was always something of a personal favourite. The bombastic national anthem (with a bit that sounds an awful lot like "It's A Long Way From Tipperary") followed by the latest news about the gangster Americans and their puppet clique in the south, mixed in with updates on how the trade delegation from Belize was getting on or birthday wishes for the Great Leader from Equatorial Guinea. Good times.
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