By GI Korea on April 23rd, 2011 at 1:03 pm

Picture of the Day: Kim Jong-il’s Steel Mill Tour

» by GI Korea in: Picture of the Day

- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (C) inspects Kimchaek Steel Mill in North Hamkyong Province. The (North) Korean Central News Agency released the photo but did not elaborate on when the visit was made. (Yonhap)

Tags: Kim Jong-il, North Korea

- 205 views

Songtan1
9:42 am on April 23rd, 2011 1
Steel Mill…Looks like an empty warehouse to me. HA!
Chris In Dallas
10:20 am on April 23rd, 2011 2
HEY!! Why doesn't the dwarf in the jacket have his pledge pin on???
kushibo
10:36 am on April 23rd, 2011 3
According to the KCNA report, no mention of Kim Jong-un.
Steve Austin
12:47 pm on April 23rd, 2011 4
That photo looks phonier than a $3 bill.
a listener
7:10 am on April 24th, 2011 5
When do we get to see pics of Caligula inspecting his palace?
Glans
7:45 am on April 24th, 2011 6
kushibo 3, Kim Jong-un has not released his long-form birth certificate.
kushibo
9:02 am on April 24th, 2011 7
He sure hasn't. And outside North Korea, people are pretty sure his father wasn't born in Chosŏn/Chōsen either. He reportedly was born in Vyatskoye, a village near Khabarovsk that was a base for Chinese and Korean guerrillas during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

It's pretty certain KJU was born in North Korea, though. To whom is slightly debatable. KJI doesn't always marry his baby mamas. He's so gangsta!
ChickenHead
10:10 am on April 24th, 2011 8
Glans,

Thanks for pointing out an important difference between open government and corrupt government… oh… wait… nevermind.
kangaji
10:31 am on April 24th, 2011 9
I wear my sunglasses at night…
setnaffa
11:11 am on April 24th, 2011 10
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFZvCJYDme0
kushibo
11:13 am on April 24th, 2011 11
The future's blight.

Fixed it for you.
Teadrinker
8:05 pm on April 24th, 2011 12
#4,

Yeah, if you look at their feet they appear to be hovering above the floor. The tall guy on the right looks like he's climbing stairs.
kushibo
8:16 pm on April 24th, 2011 13
Teadrinker wrote:

Yeah, if you look at their feet they appear to be hovering above the floor. The tall guy on the right looks like he’s climbing stairs.

Insisting that photos of Kim Jong-il walking unaided through some propaganda picture aren't really photos of Kim Jong-il walking unaided through some propaganda picture is so 2009.
Teadrinker
11:56 pm on April 24th, 2011 14
#13,

Look at the floor. The dust looks like it was added to create contrast. Really, do you think they'd leave the floor of a factory dirty like that if they knew Kim Jong-il was coming? They would have wasted a week of what little they produce in order to have the place looking spic-and-span by fear of offending him and being sent to the concentration camps.
Songtan1
12:34 am on April 25th, 2011 15
The whole picture is photo-shopped…IMO…
setnaffa
2:15 am on April 25th, 2011 16
Are y'all really suggesting a communist would lie?
kushibo
3:16 am on April 25th, 2011 17
Okay, folks… for what purpose would they be creating a fake picture?

Back in 2008 and 2009, cries of fakery had a purpose, since many believed they were trying to show Kim Jong-il as alive and well even though practically everyone was sure he was on his deathbed.

As it turns out, he was on the mend, and he's not "dead within a year," as almost everyone thought, which lends credibility to the photos back then being real.

So why now? For what purpose faking these photos?
setnaffa
5:50 am on April 25th, 2011 18
Is Kushibo suggesting we can trust the Norks?

I mean, maybe KJI is really sicker than they want to admit; and they wanted a photo that didn't show that?
kushibo
6:13 am on April 25th, 2011 19
No, Kushibo is not saying we can trust the Norks. Kushibo is not suggesting but saying that that a lot of what the North Korean mouthpieces say is true. Their lies are more often sins of omission than sins of commission:

The other problem is that they take what the KCNA says with too much of a grain of salt, when it is surprisingly accurate in what it says. The KCNA's sins are those of omission — they distort by leaving horrible things out — but what they keep in is rather credible. Not completely, but to a large degree.

A case in point is what the KCNA said about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, which was pretty much spot on, accuracy-wise. It was disbelieved in the beginning, however, by those who couldn't imagine the two reporters deliberately and knowingly walking into North Korea, and was brushed off simply as false propaganda.

But what the North Korean media did not talk about was whether the two were captured inside China after fleeing North Korea. They simply described them as having been apprehended because of their attempt to enter North Korea.

At any rate, no one has come up with a valid reason why this picture would need falsifying in the first place. We've pretty much abandoned the idea that Kim Jong-il will almost certainly be dead by 2009 or 2010 (a view I never really held, even in 2008).

That said, this visit by Carter could cause him to kick the bucket in a few months (the Carter curse, which I can't link to or else this message will go in the spam trap).
kushibo
6:21 am on April 25th, 2011 20
Carter is a stone-cold killer. He offed Kim Ilsung, and earlier his mojo may have been responsible for offing Park Chunghee. This is why the Dear Leader fled to China the last time Carter was in town.
Chris
3:44 pm on April 25th, 2011 21
No one believes this picture is real. Besides, KJI is a pathetic loser. We all laugh at him.
kushibo
4:02 pm on April 25th, 2011 22
At right is the guy that much of the news media once thought was Kim Jong-un.

Chris, I think the picture is probably real, simply because there is no rational reason to fake it.

And while KJI may be a pathetic loser, he's a pathetic loser who occasionally shoots at us and kills an awful lot of people. While some may laugh at him, it doesn't change that many scream in pain and terror because of him.