NK General Cracks Bush Joke; SK General Defends Bush
by Richardson ~ May 8th, 2007. Filed under: America, Engagement, Korean Politics.At Tuesday’s inter-Korea talks, the first in a year, a North Korean general cracked a joke about U.S. President George Bush. Perhaps more surprising (or perhaps not, given the atmosphere at such meetings) was that his South Korean counterpart defended Bush, if indirectly by defending the U.S.:
“I read a political joke, called ‘Saving the President,’ on a U.S. Internet site a while ago,” Lt. Gen. Kim Yong Chol told his South Korean counterpart as they opened three days of meetings at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Koreas, according to pool reports.
“U.S. President Bush, distressed by the Iraq issue, Iran, the Afghanistan issue and the Korean peninsula nuclear issue, went on a morning jog,” Kim began, telling the joke of Bush narrowly avoiding being hit by a car while running by high school students who grab his arm to save him.
As told by Kim, the grateful Bush asks one student if he can do anything in return, and the student asks to go to a U.S. military academy and be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Asked why, the student says his parents would kill him if they knew he saved Bush.
Kim’s South Korean counterpart, Maj. Gen. Jeong Seung-jo, told Kim that he believes the existence of such a joke about Bush means the United States is an advanced democracy, saying such jokes are banned in many countries.
The other item to note in this report is where Lt. Gen. Kim Yong Chol got his Bush joke: “I read a political joke, called ‘Saving the President,’ on a U.S. Internet site a while ago…” He may be telling the truth that he as such internet access and reads English that well, or that his minders prepared the joke for him.
May 8th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I wish I could have been there to hear it. The joke wasn’t awful, gotta admit, I cracked a smile. But the remark afterward would have been awesome to hear. I do not doubt that NK’s military read US internet sites and blogs to get a feel for the political climate in the States. It is well known that insurgents in Iraq (among other places) do the same.
May 8th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
The part that I find surprising – again, if true – is that a general would have time to find jokes on American sites. News, DoD sites, etc. I can see. Maybe the general did a Google search on Bush jokes.
May 8th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
“he believes the existence of such a joke about Bush means the United States is an advanced democracy, saying such jokes are banned in many countries.”
Buy that man a beer!!
Not only is a defense, it is a dead-on bull’s eye comment - the kinda thing you only think of hours or days later when it is too late to use it.
That is the most spot-on retort I can remember hearing about and it is just as good as the one I can remember — when Condi Rice is supposed to have asked her South Korean counterparts in early 2003 if they could remember the names of the two girls killed by the US armored vehicle.
The story was that the Koreans were discussing what the US could have done to lessen the orgy of hate that was just winding down when Rice went to Korea, and Rice popped that question…
…and the Koreans said “Of course” and named the two. Then, so the legend goes, Rice then asked if they could tell her the names of the South Korean Navy sailors who were gunned down by North Korea in the West Sea Clash not long before the two middle school girls were killed.
(The story goes they could not name one sailor)…
Having your balls stomped like that or like this Korean general above just did must really hurt the person on the receiving end…
May 8th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
They may be able to get sites that list Bush jokes, but I’d bet that the “dearleader” site is blocked, if only for the great graphics.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:45 am
We risk over-interpreting and over-analysing a brief exchange of words that reach us by distant relay from an imprecise source. We might have had firmer ground under our speculating feet if we could play and re-play the two-minute video from the meeting, but alas, we can’t. But speculare humanum est, and here is two pre-devaluation roubles worth:
1. The joke was bad. In bad taste, and even setting that aside it was still bad and predictable and falling into the “too artificial construction” joke trap. 2. One must assume the telling of the joke wasn’t on a second’s inspired whim, but carefully planned and prepaired, perhaps to “monitor the reaction” (or are the two generals in question old chums?). 3. The retort scores well on my charts, particularly since various other natural feeble reactions too easily could have been categorised by the NK side as inevitable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flunkeyism .
4. Other responses could have included “I hope you are aware that accessing US sites on the Internet is strictly illegal in your country, my dear General”. 5. Condi Rice’s point is good and well placed. 6. DPRK politicians are frequent users of the nk-news site, since it has a searchable kcna memory, in contrast to kcna itself.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Well at least we know some of Mao’s I mean Kim’s henchmen know what the internet is.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Maybe the north Korean word for internet is widely interpretted to mean FAX.
May 9th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Some elites do have internet, though intranet is much more common (universities, etc.).
May 10th, 2007 at 4:32 am
Interesting story, although I don’t necessarily agree that his first objective was to defend president Bush, it seems to me he is mostly referring to the fact that a similar joke in NK about the “dear leader” would get you shot (or worse).
May 10th, 2007 at 11:46 am
It’s also worth remembering that ROK military folks are a different breed than the Uri party or Unification Ministry types who suck up to North Korea reflexively.
May 11th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Interesting remark, slim; could you elaborate a bit? Is the Ministry of Unification too “kind to NK” biased?
May 11th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Interesting remark, slim; could you elaborate a bit? Is the Ministry of Unification too “kind to NK” biased?
In a word, YES! In two words, HELL, YES!
Look up almost anything uttered by Jeong Se-hyun, Chung Chung-dong or Lee Jeong-sok (I haven’t paid attention to the current Unification Minister) and you can be forgiven for thinking that they are NORTH Korea’s envoys in Seoul.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:47 am
It seems an odd things is - the (anti) Unification Ministry produces or collects a fair amount of the information concerning what goes inside Kim Jong Il’s Demented Disney World - but in order to be at the top of the Ministry food-chain, you have to compete for how far up Kim’s ass you are willing to stick your head….
Thankfully the shift to preventing Unification of the late 1990s hasn’t resulted in the total washout of collections of material negative about Pyongyang’s rule. They decided to stop at just making sure none of those views made it into government policy…
May 11th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Dunno Korean too well myself, but here’s a video link of that exchange.
http://news.naver.com/tv/read.php?mode=LOP&office_id=058&article_id=0000001144
About the exchange: it’s interesting, but wouldn’t know how much to read into it.