Something Happened? All N. Korean Diplomatic Missions Ordered to be on Stand-by

Yomiuri Shimbun ^ | 10/18/08

[TigerLikesRooster]

/begin my translation

Something Happened? All N. Korean Diplomatic Missions Ordered to be on Stand-by

N. Korea's diplomatic missions all over the world were ordered on Oct. 17 to stay at their mission, refraining from going out, and expect important announcement from their government.

Sources explained they expect that official announcement could be made in a few days. They speculate that it is related to inter-Korean relationship or Kim Jong-il's health.

/end my translation

[kabar]

Kim Jong-il endorses Barack Obama. Changes name of capital city to Obamaville.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Nothing out of the ordinary on Pyongyang Radio at the top of the hour, 10 p.m. Saturday local time. Normal news, normal martial military music, reference to the KWP leader Great General/Leader Kim Jong il. Usual crap. Picked up in Tokyo as I speak.

[Thane_Banquo]

The Dear Leader wishes he was Harry Caray.

[Thane_Banquo]

The center is gone, and each branch of gov moving on its own.

But even about Illinois politics...

[Thane_Banquo]

Fox is breaking away from their coverage of OJ. Something serious must be going on.

Probably a little white girl stubbed her toe or something.

[Thane_Banquo]

The center is gone, and each branch of gov moving on its own.

But even enough about Illinois politics...

[bert]

....Is Kim Jong ill?....

He is just sleeping...... with the fishes

(culturally mixed metaphor)

[AmericanInTokyo]

Come on people, I like jokes like the rest of you, but can we have a serious running thread here please!?

I will be happy to start the alternative Kim Jong il joke thread for all the hopelessly old, tired jokes we have already heard a million times.

Why do the DPRK threads always get hijacked like this? We are trying to provide from Asia to FR some real time academic analysis here of unfolding developments. If you cannot add anything of substance, additional news links, or ask intelligent questions, please just lurk for awhile, OK? Thanks.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Re post 43, the North Koreans have now taken down the earlier encoded message (it seemed) they had on their KCNA news website top page. It lasted for several hours. I have a screen saver of it.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Hmm.. is it good or bad?

[AmericanInTokyo]

Their website has only the KCNA logo, and the usual links to Korean and English articles--including most recent ones, but everything else has been WIPED CLEAN on that cover page. Furthermore that sole cryptic message centered in the middle of the top page, which nobody could get out of the existing fonts and format that it was in (a mixture of Chinese fonts and odd symbols), was just sitting up there for several hours, now completely taken down. I am concluding that it was some kind of external message telegraphing something to North Korean diplomatic missions abroad, stating something, but what the something was is hard to discern. At least I posted the text of it verbatim here, although it is encoded and on the face of it looks like nonsense.

Tiger, this dovetails into the 821 KPA Female unit visit of the Chia Pet which they went over and over and over again on radio and TV for several days. As you know, they never repeat it that much, and of course as you pointed out, the foliage issue has now come forth. However, Professor Shigemitsu here in Japan is not sure if he is dead, since borders have not been shut down, but on the other had Shigemitsu had him as already dead with doubles posing for him, so there is a lot of contradictory stuff. UN diplomats, eastern European or African diplomats in Pyongyang, maybe even IAEA team if they are up there again now, if they have sharp eyes, would notice something if it were coming down. No reports (yet!) of somber music, or tanks in the streets, or nothing out of the ordinary yet on the radio.

[happinesswithoutpeace]

/mark

[happinesswithoutpeace]

Could have been some skiddies defacing...

[AmericanInTokyo]

certainly that has not been ruled out. very strange, very strange indeed. have not seen that ever on KCNA like that.

[happinesswithoutpeace]

I’ll mess with that string later. If it was kids defacing it could have been they used some translator ap that went nutso...kinda like how we see babelfish translations here that look funny as hell after being fed through.

[McGruff]

Me so wonely.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Maybe this is the important announcement mentioned in Yomiuri report.

I wonder what the content is.

[VaRepublican]

finally
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/18/asia/AS-Japan-North-Korea.php
still nothing on nationals though.

[VaRepublican]

I would guess you already had this?

[SevenofNine]

Maybe he just roaney LOL!

Hey Tiger if you hear anything about say one of his kids go back to North Korea suddenly tell us something major up