Men funkar det mot nageltrång?

KCNA: Chongsong Bullojong

Pyongyang, August 4 (KCNA) — Chongsong Bullojong is a medicine manufactured by the Korea Pugang Pharmaceutic Company of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Won Hak Rim, 60, who lives in Pyongyang, had chronic gastritis cured after taking the medicine.
He said: I had long suffered from gastritis. Several days after I started taking the medicine, I felt hungry and had a cycle of diarrhea and constipation stopped. That wonder was that I regained strength in my feeble legs. People tell me that I have become younger. Now I dare say that Chongsong Bullojong is efficacious for digestive diseases and those of the aged.
It, strong in digestive ferment, is potent for preventing gastroenteritis, stomach ulcer, hepatitis, enteritis, colitis and other digestive diseases.
It is good for detoxicating nicotinism, alcoholism and drug poisoning, preventing aging and various contagious diseases, treating arteriosclerosis, hypertension and heart disorders and recovering from weak constitution and malnutrition. It also promotes the growth of children.
Chongsong Bullojong is made with nutritive elements extracted from pollen and needles of pines growing in Mts. Kumgang and Myohyang.
It contains 40 sorts of microelements and more than 90 kinds of natural elements including essential amino acid, vitamins C, B1, B2, E, PP and K, protein, lignin, chlorophyll, essential oil, oligosaccharide and polysaccharide.

Kuckelimuck.

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Bath man

En journalist vid den norska tidningen Dagbladet har varit i Nordkorea.

Litt seinere slår vi av en prat med en kontaktsøkende og vennlig nordkoreansk guide.

– So, do you get a lot of American tourists here? spør reisefølget mitt.

Han tygger lenge på svaret.

– Bath man.

– Excuse me?

– Bath man. President. United states. Bush. Bath man. Ordene kommer med lange mellomrom.

– President Bush is a bad man?

Han nikker. Vi nikker. Noe er vi tross alt enige om.

Så sött.

[via Jan Haugland]

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USA-imperialism?

Stalinisterna kan säkert svara. En artikel om Nordkorea:

“You need products to trade for food but there is none. So they are unable to give rice, or wage for three a four months. Accountants of the factory usually bring cash from banks to give wage to workers but because the banks are short on cash, they have to bring it from the Central. Due to high inflation, monthly wage in North Korea won is slightly more than $1.”

For the reason of high inflation Mr. Jung pointed out, ‘there is a rumor that to extract dollar from the individual pockets, the government is printing more and more money. Because the price of North Korean Won dropped so much, now people believe dollar is the only way to live, so more and more people are becoming dollar dealers.

Mer här, från AFP. Och kanske Mongoliet kan hjälpa till.

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Google Spy

Den här bilden från Google Maps är säkert populär i Nordkorea. Enligt Commentary är det från kärnreaktorn i Yongbyon. Intressant nog är satellitbilderna från det området i Nordkorea mer detaljerade än från stället där jag bor.

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The Art of Propaganda

Jag gillar ju propagandaposters av olika slag, Boing Boing tipsar om den här sidan med posters från Sovjet, Kuba, Polen och Tjeckoslovakien.

Från Nordkorea här.

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Charmerande

Washington Post hade igår en intressant artikel om Nordkoreas “charmoffensiv”:

“A State of Mind,” screened at the store during the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, will open in theaters in 12 American cities in August. The film will begin a showing in Washington in the fall.

As part of a major counteroffensive by secretive North Korea against its portrayal abroad as a fiendish nuclear state, officials in the capital, Pyongyang, offered rare cooperation to the film’s director, Daniel Gordon. They let his cameras track the two girls from day to day for a 93-minute work that treats its subjects with a striking balance of Western and North Korean perspectives.

The normally bombastic North, which has long threatened to turn Seoul, the South Korean capital, into a “sea of fire” and to “crush the American dogs,” is launching what may be its most difficult global mission yet — a charm offensive.

Gordon said that the North Koreans feel misunderstood and that their permission to make the film was, in part, a way for them to show their “human side, to get beyond the goose-stepping soldiers.” They “never tried to control or censor” the film crew during the six-month shoot in 2003, he said, although there were ground rules. Ubiquitous portraits of Kim Jong Il and his father, national founder Kim Il Sung, for example, could not be shown partly obscured. “But those would have been the same ground rules if we were shooting in the Vatican,” Gordon said, suggesting that deep respect would have to be shown there as well.

Något säger mig att det finns en viss skillnad mellan Nordkorea och Vatikanen….

Artikeln länkar till DPRKorea Infobank. Det kanske är tillfälligt, men den är hopplöst slö och det dräller av felmeddelanden.

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Bråttom

Liberty in North Korea, och här.

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Jag slapp bli sur

Liksom Norge fick Sverige knugen på nationaldagen en hälsning från Nordkorea:

Pyongyang, June 6 (KCNA) — Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, sent a message of greetings to Carl Gustaf, king of Sweden, Monday on the occasion of its national day. The message expressed belief that the bilateral friendly and cooperative ties would continue to grow stronger in the future, too.

Jag hälsar, i kungens namn, tillbaka: sluta mörda ert folk!

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Dundermedicin

I Nordkorea kan de sina saker:

The Sosong Koryo Medicine Management Office in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has recently developed a new kind of quit-smoking nutritious pill. It is also potent for treating various diseases. The pill is mainly made from rare medicinal herbs growing in steep mountains and deep valleys of the country. It will contribute to the no-smoking campaign reflecting the world trend to build a new tobacco-free century.
From one or two days after taking the pill, it relieves people from smoking. It also removes such symptoms of diseases caused by smoking as hazy feeling, cough, phlegm, asthma, heart discomfort, general prostration and indigestion, and improves the apatite and overall organic functions.
The pill is good for the treatment of bronchitis of passive smokers like women and children.
In an interview with KCNA on the occasion of the World No-Tobacco Day (May 31), Ri Yon Ok, director of the office, told: The pill helps people quit smoking while raising their immunity without any side-effects. Its test application to those who wanted to quit smoking proves efficacious one hundred percent. The demand for the pill is on a sharp increase.
It was awarded the DPRK’s patent in February this year.

Kuckelimuck.

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Hur tänkte ni nu?

Ni minns nyheten från BBC som jag skrev om för ett par veckor sedan, undernäringen i Nordkorea beror på marknadsreformer.

Market reforms introduced in North Korea in recent years mean most people only get about half the food they need through the state and have to buy the rest themselves.

Idag säger vi välkommen till New York Times:

“At end of June, I cut 2.5 million people off from their food rations,” said Mr. Ragan, an American, referring to a group equal to 10 percent of North Korea’s population. Unless new food comes quickly from the outside, the number of North Koreans receiving foreign food aid will plunge to 1.5 million in August, from 6.5 million people this spring.

The World Food Program, the largest foreign food supplier to North Korea, has received only 6 percent of the 230,000 tons it needs this year, Anthony Banbury, Asia director for the United Nations agency, told a news conference in Seoul last Friday, according to Reuters.

Referring to government rations, he said, “What the government is able to provide the people now, these 250 grams a day, is a starvation ration.”

About 70 percent of North Korea’s population lives in cities, where the collapse of a state food distribution system and partial free market reforms have forced them to buy food at market prices. [Min anm.]

Så nu har åtminstone två artiklar på två veckor hänvisat till marknadsreformer som förklaring till undernäring i Nordkorea. Artiklarnas gemensamma nämnare? Richard Ragan på FN-organet World Food Program. Och hos WPF kan man hitta ett pressmeddelande, daterat 27 maj:

[E]conomic reforms have led to steep increases in market prices of basic food items and reduced the purchasing power of the poorer segments of society.

Som jag skrev förra gången, det är kommandoekonomin Nordkorea som havererat. Det är inte samma sak som marknadsreformer. Synd att artikeln innehåller sådana dumheter, för i övrigt var den intressant.

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