Thanks to Internet, today we understand the
rest of the world better than ever before.
Unfortu-nately, not all of us have access to open online spaces, and nowhere can we
see the difference better than in North Korea.
Here’s a regime so controlling of the information that their people see that they've earned
the nickname the "Hermit Kingdom".
We’ll take a look at some of the
things we’ve heard North Koreans are lead to believe.
Kim Jong Il Has Written Over 1,500 Books One of the forms propoganda takes in North
Korea is that its leaders, Kim Jong Un and before him his father Kim Jong Il, are miraculously
impressive.
Because of that, there’s some overlap between the claims of the two Kims.
For example, they were both supposedly genius composers at a very young age.
Il however, seemed to also be interested in proving his literary credentials.
He claimed to have written over 1,500 books in his lifetime, which would really only have
been possible if R.L Stine was ghostwriting for him.
They Created “Hangover Free” Alcohol North Korea doesn’t have a great reputation,
but if this next claim was true, their international profile would go way up.
That claim was that they had created a new type of booze that wouldn’t end up giving
you a hangover!
Considering the fact that both Kim Jong Il and his son, Kim Jong Un both are rumored
to be the largest individual buyers of Hennessey in the world, you’d think that this project
would be a key element in their continued reign.
Kim Jong Il was Born Under a Double Rainbow Like his death, Kim Jong Il’s birth is taught
to have coincided with numerous “miraculous” events.
The “official” biography of Il states that he was born on a sacred mountain Baekdu
under a set of double rainbows.
Beyond just double rainbows, which is child’s play for a baby who could supposedly control
the weather with his mind, it’s said that after Il was born a new star appeared in the
sky as well.
That doesn’t sound familiar.
The truth is that Il was actually born at a Soviet base where his father was stationed
and that he was thus born in the USSR, a huge ally of North Korea back in its heyday.
Their Leader Had Nothing to Do with the Death of Kim Jong Nam
Kim Jong Un wasn’t the first choice to take over the family business.
He was third in line after his two brothers.
That all changed as the boys grew older and the elder brothers both ended up falling out
of favor with their father.
However, after the death of Il, there were rumblings that Un might not be able to consolidate
enough power to maintain control of North Korea.
In response to that, Un reportedly killed everyone who he thought was plotting against
him.
After his as-cendancy, his brother, Kim Jong Nam, was traveling the world and was also
criticizing his brother’s country while calling for reforms.
That made him a popular choice to replace Un in some secret circles.
Luckily for Un, however, Nam was poisoned by two women at an airport in Malaysia.
They rubbed a gel on his face that turned out to be an incredibly powerful and deadly
nerve agent called VX, a compound banned internationally but still stockpiled by North Korea.
The Un regime, however, blamed the assassination on others, and publicly holds that line.
They Don’t Have Short People Short is a relative term.
But in a modern day iteration of eugenics, Kim Jong Il reportedly at-tempted to raise
the height of his people by rounding up all the men under a certain height and shipping
them to an isolated island.
However, Il was clearly insecure about his own height as well, as he was always pictured
with men shorter than him on purpose and wore lifts in his shoes.
North Korea “Invented” the Hamburger in 2000
Hamburgers have been around since at least the 18th century and are specifically named
Ham-burgers because they were first created in Hamburg, Germany.
But this didn’t stop the Kim family from trying to take credit for inventing them and
claiming they didn’t exist up until the year 2000.
In the 90’s, North Korea suffered a terrible famine in which it’s estimated that millions
perished from starvation.
Afterwards, Kim Jong Il tried to win back the favor of his people by creating the “Double
Bread with Meat.”
It seems that Il wanted to give his people something new to look forward to.
He essentially said just that, in a quote stating: “I’ve made up my mind to feed
quality bread and french fries to university students, professors and researchers even
if we are in (economic) hardship”.
The question becomes, then, where is this beef coming from?
Their Scientists "Cured" AIDS and Cancer It's pretty clear by now that Kim Jong Un
has an inferiority complex, and because of that his re-gime has to lie about their scientific
achievements to their people and the world.
In the Summer of 2016, North Korean scientists claimed to have not only cured cancer, but
also AIDS and Ebola.
There’s some very tragicomic about this level of overreach, and something must not
be right in North Korean high school biology classes if any of their people are buying
this.
He Could Drive a Car at the Age of Three!
To ensure that the cult of personality was passed from Father-to-Son-to-Son-Again, it
has to in-grained in the people that the new ruler of their country had/has similar traits
to the leader before them (that somehow died despite being a god?).
To prop up Un as the current leader, state-run media has reported stories that he could drive
a car at only three years old, that he’s an amazing composer of music no one has heard,
that he’s a master martial artist, and that he was winning yacht races before he turned
10 against full grown men.
These stories are taught in history classes across North Korea, as well as the idea that
Un is literally a god.
Kim Jong Il was REALLY Good at Golf Perhaps the most famous claim about the leaders
of North Korea is that King Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un, was the best golfer of all-time
on his FIRST try.
It's been reported that on his first trip to a golf course in 1994, Kim Jong Il scored
a 34 on an 18-hole golf course.
That's an average of less that two strokes per hole, which may sound crazy but once you
hear that the Dear Leader had hit 11 holes-in-one, it actually starts to make sense.
Beyond the fact that this would've been a world-record, the fact that it was his first
and last time playing also makes this entire thing sort of sad.
While some rumors out of North Korea have been questioned, this has been repeated on
documentaries by the North Korean handlers with a complete straight face, so that should
really show you how effective their control of information has been.
FOUR!
Or really...
ONE!
Their Leaders Don't Need to Use the Toilet As you've learned by now, the North Korean
leadership really finds value in the cult of personali-ty that surrounds their leader(s).
They teach their people that their leaders are essentially gods, in the same vein as
the Emperor of Japan before and during World War II.
Part of creating a godlike figure is to remove some of the, let's say grosser, aspects of
being a human.
With that in mind, the State Media in North Korea has stated multiple times that neither
Kim Jong Il or Kim Il-Sung had to use the bathroom, ever.
Because of their godlike abilities, they perfectly absorbed everything they ate and drank and
thus didn't need to use the bathroom.
That storyline has since ceased, though, as it's been reported that Kim Jong Un actually
has a mobile toilet follow him wherever he goes.
That's right, one of the cars in his convoy was retrofitted to include a toilet...
That poor driver.
We know there are a lot of rumors swirling around North Korea, so feel free to set us
straight in the comments below.
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chance to win an iPhone X. Thanks for watching, and catch you next time!