Asia Times: Great vituperator: North Korea's insult lexicon


	May 26, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Great vituperator: North Korea's insult lexicon
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Amid the black clouds that currently darken sunshine over the Korean peninsula, there is a small silver lining. After a year of extraordinary self-restraint by its past standards, North Korea has gone back to bad-mouthing everybody. With the Japanese, Pyongyang's permanent public enemy No 1, the abuse never stopped. With the United States, the gloves came off as soon as President George W Bush and his cohorts started hinting they wouldn't play ball and lobbing their own jibes. And now South Korea too is back in the firing line - just like old times, as though last summer's summit had never happened.

So where's the silver lining? For sure, one must hope the peace process will resume some time soon. But meantime, for an old stager like me, there's something oddly reassuring in North Korea reverting to type. I'd actually found myself nostalgic for all that fire-breathing rhetoric. And I really missed the insults. Like mass games, vituperation is an art form that Pyongyang has developed to new heights: "in our own peculiar style", to use a favorite phrase. And now, it's back. So, let's sample some.

One recent victim was South Korea's newish Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo. These days, ministers in Seoul are pretty circumspect in what they say about their Northern brethren. What Han apparently said sounded mild enough: he told Associated Press that maybe the North could learn about human rights from the South. But that was enough to drive Rodong Sinmun, the Northern party daily, into paroxysms of phony rage. On May 10, it published a commentary entitled: "Pointless grumble by someone who had foreign forces' injection". (At least that's how the BBC translated it. Maybe it sounds better in Korean.)

After loftily saying that "We have no intention to verify Han Seung-soo's gibberish, which is like a dog barking at the moon, because it is too childish", Rodong Sinmun went on to do precisely that. The gist of the argument needn't detain us: "South Korea has the world's poorest human rights record", whereas North Korea's "system guaranteeing human rights enjoys absolute support from the popular masses". Er, quite so, comrade. Reversing black and white, to use another favored Pyongyang cliche.

My late grandfather, who was a priest, used to tell of finding a fellow-clergyman's sermon notes left behind in a pulpit. At one point there was a note in the margin: "Weak argument. RAISE VOICE." North Korea's preachers evidently studied in the same seminary. "Han Seung-soo's rash remark is an intolerable mockery and challenge to us", thunders Rodong Sinmun. And: "International reactionaries are trying to pick a fight with us using the human rights issue because they are jealous of our socialist system." So true! We out here are just hungry for socialism a la North Korea. Jealous? I could die. And they're not done yet. On and on it goes. Han "runs about frantically, making rash remarks ... talked nonsense ... malicious remarks ... evil consequences ... lives as a parasite under foreign forces' arm ... seeks to betray the nation". In sum, "Han Seung-soo's rash remark is truly a pointless grumble by someone who speaks ill of others although he failed to wipe his own nose." Snotty or what?

It's the imagery that I like. Some of it, like the dog barking at the moon, is based on traditional Korean sokdam (proverbs, or folk sayings). Elsewhere, sources like the official newsagency KCNA that are in English (of "our own peculiar style") seize every chance to trot out favorite idioms from language school. "Minding their Ps and Qs" was flavor of the month a while back, as in: "The US reactionary bastards had better mind their Ps and Qs". Scary, huh? That B-word is also a regular. Yonhap, the Southern news agency, being sensitive souls, render the Korean word nom as "rascal"; but cunning linguists I've consulted say that just ain't rude enough. In shooting your mouth off, just as in the real thing, accurate calibration is crucial. Seriously. Since normality in Pyongyang means shrieking at the top of your voice, every tiny nuance counts. Otherwise, how will we know when they're truly madly deeply angry, such that threats to crush sworn enemies a thousand-fold (another regular) might be for real this time?

But mostly, fortunately, it's just the way they talk: all hyped up and no place to go. As in when Kim Jong-il visits the frontline, as he did yet again on May 8. As usual, the lucky visitees were "filled with tears of boundless gratitude to the respected and beloved Supreme Commander", and also with "loyal determination to become human bombs to defend the nerve center of the revolution to the death". If you still haven't got the message, North Korean radio (KCBS) emphasized the "iron-like conviction and determination of People's Army soldiers to use guns to thoroughly complete the juche self-reliant revolutionary tasks". Radio adds a whole extra dimension, as the announcer works him or herself up in a tremulous lather of indignation, against background music that is at once martial and marshmallow.

Han Seung-soo got off lightly. When Pyongyang really doesn't like you, the gloves come off. The last South Korean president, Kim Young-sam, was called every name under the sun. The climax was when North Korea bizarrely accused him of having a gay affair with his chauffeur. Kim Jong-il, on the other hand, is "pouring endless love in caring for the fighters' lifestyle as a flesh relative". Quite normal.

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