Land Of No Smiles

Looks like Jack Layton's dream for Toronto. 4 million people and 20 cars.

Jack may be surprised to find me Not voting for him.

What's not to like?

No vehicles - no pollution
Nothing to buy - no subprime mortgages or mcmansions
No food - no obesity
No electricity - no global warming

In short everything the chicken littles of the climate change industry should adore.

Now I wonder why the goracle hasn't relocated there?

It is truly an NDP dreamland. Just think, with nobody on the streets there's no carbon footprint. Plus a leader who can control time. Even Obama can't do that. These must be the happiest people on the planet.

That's a terrible "photo essay". One can draw no conclusions about anything about that, other than he's a lousy photographer (and yes, I understand the limitations...)

Stark images of state inflicted torment with a sense of foreboding - you can feel the fear and suppressed desperation through the camera's lens in those photos.

I couldn't help but think that this is the repressed cowed fate the climate fascists and green communists wish for all humanity. To have all us "problems" cowering in dark, cold minimalist misery, in constant fear that some regulator does not take offense to our subordinate attempts to simply exist in some level of dignity and comfort.

The photographer must have been in Oompa-Loompa-Land.

A chocolate factory in DRNK? OMG I've never laughed so hard.

Completely empty streets in the middle of the day, workers sitting in the dark until a customer comes in and on and on and you cannot draw any conclusions from that Skip?

Well then, might I suggest you google the term "north korea at night". Then after you do not manage to draw any conclusions from those images to take a gander at Pyongyang via google maps and then compare that with google map sat photos of Seoul.

Draw no conclusions? Well at least not the ones you want I guess.

In a cap and trade carbon world we would be writing huge cheques payable to Kim (and Mugabe et al).

NKOrea: "the world’s last gulag."

Really? The end result of socialism: gulags.

Castro's Cuba:
"Prison conditions
According to an article in the Miami Herald in September 2003 Cuba's jails may Prison cell in Cuba hold over 100000 inmates. The same article puts the last ...
www.cubaverdad.net/cuba_prison_system.htm"
...-

Mao Stlong's China:
"ZENIT - China's Gulags
China's Gulags. Interview With Harry Wu of the Laogai Research Foundation. ROME, OCT. 5, 2006 (Zenit.org).- There still are concentration camps like the ...
www.zenit.org/article-17837?l=english"

I suggest we take a page out of the WWII handbook and drop 40 million single shot Liberator pistols in N. Korea.

The Land of No Smiles becomes the Land of No Secret Police in one weekend.

The Phantom
"I suggest we take a page out of the WWII handbook and drop 40 million single shot Liberator pistols in N. Korea.

The Land of No Smiles becomes the Land of No Secret Police in one weekend."

Shades of Solzenitzen....one problem...this is a practical impossibility because everyone there fears everybody....informing/denouncing is rewarded and this climate of fear is highly efficient....tested and utilized constantly.

Skip - "One can draw no conclusions..."

All I can say to that is there are none so blind as those who wont see.

Phantom - I like your idea!

My uncle went behind the Iron Curtain and made the same observation. The most startling thing he noticed is that the people behind the curtain did not smile. It was in sharp contrast to the people in Western Europe where smiles were the norm.

A chocolate factory makes perfect sense for the Peoples' Democracy. It would allow for regular trade and shipping with one of the worlds largest suppliers of cocoa, Niger. Coincidentally, Nigers' only other major export is yellow cake. If only Saddam had had a chocolate factory in place in Iraq before he sent off his high level trade delegation to Niger in 1999 then Joe Wilson would have had an easier time muddying the waters.

Posted by: Skip at 9:16 AM

yes skippy, and the Chinese soldiers who winch at the treatment the NK escapees receive upon being returned is also bullsh!t

fact, all the horrer stories out of NK are lies!!!!!

Kinda like East Germany during the '70s-'80s.

The border patrol were real friendly when they took the safety off their machine pistols and loaded in the first round.

Barb wire gates closed around the train and then a squad of shepherd dogs to complete the ensemble.
The message was complete, welcome to the Worker's paradise.

Same nonsense, different century!

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group "True North"

That's a terrible "photo essay". One can draw no conclusions about anything about that, other than he's a lousy photographer (and yes, I understand the limitations...)
Posted by: Skip at April 26, 2009 9:16 AM

Skip, you must be joking. Please, take a second look. A couple points:

1. First, you acknowledge you "understand the limitations" yet are compelled to critique the photographer's skills anyways. Tell you what, you go to North Korea with a clandestine agenda to take photos with a hidden pocket cam, on fear of being arrested, or shot. Let's see how well you can shoot photos under those circumstances, and then you can armchair critique somebody who's actually done it.

2. Second, that you cannot draw any conclusions from the photo is not an indictment of the photographer's skill. It is, however, an indictment of your ability to deduce the most basic conclusions from a photograph. They even came with handy little descriptions, but those apparently didn't help you either.

:/

Sean Penn needs to go there to show us how great North Korea is. He can't let these photographs tell the whole story.

God, where to begin with you bunch...

"All I can say to that is there are none so blind as those who wont see."

All I can say to that is there are none so blind who only see what they want to see.

Colin, wot a load of horsepucky that was.

"Second, that you cannot draw any conclusions from the photo is not an indictment of the photographer's skill. " Are you kidding me? Do you not know anything about photography?

Apparently you lot haven't being paying attention the last few years in the MSM image game. I've got an "Iraeli rocketed ambulance" for you, cheap.

Most of those pictures can be duplicated in any large metropolitan city - Toronto, Hamilton especially - pick your time, place, subject. If you look for crap, you'll find crap. The girl with the flowers is a standard "verite" setpiece, and one of the oldest cliche shots in photojournalism.

My opinion stands. As a "photoessay" it sucks, captions not withstanding.

Oh, and GYMmy, what does your comment have to do with the pictures?

Skip,

Do you have a adult name?

Your criticisms are meaningless and petulant. Go away, you add nothing to this comment section but anguish that there are people like you.

Of course they don't smile in NK. Nothing to smile about there.

Pretty soon people won't be smiling much anymore in America, either, thanks to Bam-Bam-O.

Patrick, Sean Penn is so delusional that he'd just imagine unreal stuff to like about NK. Of course, that's how Leftists are, naturally. Just watch them imagine unreal stuff to like about Obama.

So this is what equal outcome looks like. Sorry, not interested.

I think Skip should just GO to NK and find out for himself what it is like and why these people are not smiling and why roads are empty of cars. The photo of the Dear Leader and father billboards on brick or stone remind me a lot of the idolization Hussein garnered for himself in much more outlandish style. The kicker is the people actually looking at, or not, as the case may be and what they are 'driving'. Bicycles and carts. They might as well be serfs in the Dark Ages of Lords. Even THEY had a better time of it that these people seem to be enduring.
The television station hawking Kim's illustrious charms and accomplishments bring "1984" to mind.
For Skip, and others like him ,I believe they will not understand fully until they, themselves are in a concentration camp or a 're-indoctrination camp' such that Rick Santelli recently had to endure because he caused the Tea Party phenom to develop. Even then, as Solzynetizn observed, inmates in the Gulag mourned Stalin's passing. Such is the power of 'indoctrination'. Skip may not have long to wait for the real North Korea experience to be felt since Obama has a schedule one of those Eurpoean speeding trains would envy.

Now that took some guts taking these Photographs.
Have you ever noticed that the only folks who have no humor are the biggest control freaks?
This is what they would love us to be.
The HRC's go after comics after all.
Trust me if Canada continues on the course of following the UN we will be no better off.

So then, Skip, you're suggesting the photos are a fraud, a fake? You didn't respond to any of the original responses to your original post, mine included. After throwing out a few boilerplate ad hominems, you simplymoved the bar of the argument.

A couple of points:

1. Nothing in your OP suggested skullduggery on the part of the photographer.

2. I wasn't making a point on the artistic merits of the photos, I was making a point that it would take one with blinders to not be able to draw a POLITICAL conclusion from them. You know, kind of what the entire topic is all about.

*sigh*

Go away, Skip. This forum is for the adults.

I'm not sure why some of you come to SDA - you clearly don't get the point of Kate's blog.

Momar? and you're asking me if I have an adult name? - do you have an adult brain? your ad hominems contribute even less. Colin, please don't try to put words in my mouth, it makes you look like a troll. I choose to draw less from the photos then you do. Snowbunnie, hon, thanks for the lecture, but human misery happens to be where I'm paid to spend my days, but thanks anyway.

As much as it appears to be difficult amongst the newcomers to SDA, I am, after all, entitled to my opinion. To quote someone or another around here, "You don't speak for me". Get it yet, Colin, Momar?

I see this thread is getting off on a tangent, worrying about poor Skippy. The fact of the matter is that the photographer has given us a powerful photo-documentary that not everyone can understand. However, that is okay because, in spite of photographic evidence to the contrary, a few people believe that the moon landings were a hoax too.

I humbly suggest that Skip try to tell a story using the photographic medium as his critiquing and review writing leaves a lot to be desired.

Skip, just tell us - what's your point? Are you saying that the photographer deliberately propagandized? If so,that's somewhat ironic, given the subject matter. Are you saying that NK is not that bad a place to live? Are you saying that you're an a-hole that just likes to stir things up? Just tell us what you mean, for crying out loud. You say that you're entitled to your opinion, just what is your opinion?

Skip,

Please post a link to your portfolio. I'd like to see the quality of your work with a camera so I can judge whether you're qualified to critique another photographer's images.

I'm curious as why my opinion of this photographer's work has some of your knickers in a knot. Nine pictures taken without context does not a photo essay make. Like global warming, if you assume a perspective its easy to reinforce it. You're all convinced that life in NK is horrible and so you see in the images what you want and what you expect to see. You're even told what to see by the title. To me, the essay seems to me to more about the subterfuge, then the "reality" presented. That is my opinion - no one is forcing you to like it. Some of you are just plain childish.

Sean, suck it in. You flatter yourself unduly if you assume you're qualified to judge my work - have an opinion, yes, judge no ( I'm familiar with your work). For your info, I don't have a portfolio online - no need or desire to. I shoot for my own amusement and that of my friends on digital through 8x10 under natural and studio light. I print to 4x5 neg/pos digital and wet print from 8x10. Enough already.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_unseen_north_korea/html/1.stm

Another series of pictures taken in North Korea.

What I find distateful are two things: One: The attack on the integrity and/or ability of the photographer. Two: The personal attacks on people here who tried to point out to Skip the obvious: The photos tell a compelling story on their own. NO explanation needed. No criticism. No attack lessens the impact of those photos. That is just plain and simple fact. That the photographer was able to take them at all is of considerable significance.
And to be blunt we conservatives who hang out on blogs, Kate's included ,do not like nor do we long tolerate spurious comments that address nothing of substance and aim only to disrupt, anger or annoy. It would be much the same if a Neanderthal man on first observing a 'moving picture' did not appreciate the enormity of it trying to destroy the projector and screen with his bop stick.

Please refrain from the flamewars, folks.

Unlike the vast majority of commentators here, I've actually been to South Korea. I can tell you that, even in a chilly January, as my wife, two girls, and I strolled along the Itaewon shopping district, the streets were crowded with Korean shoppers - families, couples, thickets of laughing school girls. There were smiles everywhere, shops were busy, and the streets were choked with traffic (even though Seoul has a modern subway that puts Toronto to shame). The night markets were packed, with vendors calling us over to show us their wares. At every restaurant, we were treated with kind and gracious service, with staff patiently and gently showing us the proper way to prepare and season certain foods.

So, Skip, you think what you want. All I can say is, with the exception of the blank faced commuters (which I suspect could be duplicated on any public transit system during rush hour in the Northeast, in my experience), there is no way those photos could have been taken in Seoul. Even in our mid-level hotel, we had CNN and AFN available in English. There are no "foreigner only" shops. There are no giant posters of the President. If there's a major street in Seoul that's traffic free at mid-day, I never saw it. And, since I'm willing to wager a lot that you've never set foot in that part of the world, I'm going to stake a lot more weight on my opinion than yours.

KevinB, I lived in South Korea for a time. As you described, it packed with lively, well-fed people. I saw once, and only once, a nearly bare street during the Chu-Sok (thanksgiving) holiday when it is costumary for people to flock to their home towns; everyone except the refugees from North Korea who cannot (as of yet) go back.

Skip, I don't know what proof you want but the photographs say alot, if not everything.

I've never visited etiher North or South Korea, but I did visit East Germany back in the 1970's - and these pictures remind me of that, a grim, scary place where people were too afraid of the government and their fellow citizens too smile at anything.
Skip - if you think the pictures aren't representative of what North Korea is really like, where do you get your information? Have you ever visitied a totalitarian state (and I don't mean a beach vacation in Cuba)?