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Kim Jong-Un Bans All Weddings, Funerals And Freedom Of Movement In North Korea (independent.co.uk) 204

Posted by BeauHD from the freeze-don't-move dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Weddings and funerals have been banned and Pyongyang is in lockdown as preparations for a once-in-a-generation party congress get underway in North Korea. The ruling Worker's Party of Korea, headed by the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, is due to stage the first gathering of its kind for 36 years on Friday. Free movement in and out of the capital has also been forbidden and there has been an increase in inspections and property searches, according to Daily NK, which claims to have sources in the country. The temporary measures are said to be an attempt to minimize the risk of "mishaps" at the event, according to Cheong Joon-hee, a spokesman at South Korea's Unification Ministry. Meanwhile, North Korea has been conducting missile tests left and right, many of which have failed miserably.
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Kim Jong-Un Bans All Weddings, Funerals And Freedom Of Movement In North Korea More

Kim Jong-Un Bans All Weddings, Funerals And Freedom Of Movement In North Korea

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  • Great opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:33PM (#52032627)

    Let's nuke them while their entire leadership is all in one place.

  • Well if you have nothing to hide... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I guess you shouldn't mind being searched. You know, for Security!

  • Naturally, the headline is misleading. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:40PM (#52032655)

    Not news for nerds, stuff that really doesn't matter outside North Korea. By the way, this is only for a week, during the North Korean Party Congress. Move along, nothing to see other than a bunch of North Korean nut bars.

    Actually, here's an interesting story: The North Koreans have restaurants and other businesses in China and other "friendly" countries, primarily to generate cash for Un's emmenthaler cheese addiction (look it up), and increasingly, the staff of these businesses are defecting.

  • Impressive. (Score:4, Funny)

    by sims 2 ( 994794 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:41PM (#52032661)

    I was not aware you could keep people from dying by outlawing funerals.

    • I believe they provide a service [youtube.com]. (Had to be the first to trot that out today)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      I was not aware you could keep people from dying by outlawing funerals.

      Maybe it's to stop people from finding out who's died, so they can't dig them up and eat them. Seem to remember that N.Korea has a rather interesting cannibalism problem due to the lack of food in general.

    • I was not aware you could keep people from dying by outlawing funerals.

      Does the US really want to piss off a guy with that kind of power?

  • I keep thinking how the US will drone strike wedding receptions on flimsy evidence, even assassinating our own citizens and their children for even *meeting* with an alleged terrorist

    ...and a single drone strike in NK could solve much of the world's conflict.

    Take one of the Chinese ambassadors aside, have a quiet word, get a secret "OK" from the leadership, and *BANG!*. No more fear, uncertainty, and doubt in South Korea or Japan.

    We could even disavow all knowledge. Classify the relevant documents for 50 y

    • > ...and a single drone strike in NK could solve much of the world's conflict.

      That might actually and forever solve all of the worlds conflicts.
      I wonder if starting a war between the US and China really is really such a promising perspective from your mothers basement, Mr. Warrior.
      If you are old enough I suggest you enlist in the army and fight and fall for some made up convincing reason in some desert instead of starting a career in politics cause further world wars.

      • > ...and a single drone strike in NK could solve much of the world's conflict.

        That might actually and forever solve all of the worlds conflicts.
        I wonder if starting a war between the US and China really is really such a promising perspective from your mothers basement, Mr. Warrior.
        If you are old enough I suggest you enlist in the army and fight and fall for some made up convincing reason in some desert instead of starting a career in politics cause further world wars.

        Woot! I got one!

        • As in you successfully trolled someone or successfully got someone angry? If either of those things happened, why are you happy about it?

      • "I wonder if starting a war between the US and China really is really such a promising perspective"

        What makes you think that China still cares about North Korea?

        A unified, prosperous Korea would represent an expanded market for Chinese stuff. Rotting corpses do not buy many iPhones.

    • Sure- a computer guided missile fired from 60,000 feet above Pyongyang comes crashing through Un's bedroom window, but no one will suspect it was us because we classified documents.

      It reminds me of ten years ago when Alexander Litvinenko died of polonium-210 poisoning after having tea with some KGB agents in London. Hmmm, who could have been behind that one?
    • It was a faulty gas main. Honest... ;)
    • It sets a bad precedent.
      And the risk of retaliation is great.

      • Uh... really? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @11:44PM (#52033325) Homepage Journal

        It sets a bad precedent. And the risk of retaliation is great.

        Um... retaliation from whom?

        And wasn't the precedent set when we tracked down and killed Saddam Hussein? (And his "most wanted [wikipedia.org]" cronies, conveniently passed out to our soldiers as a deck of playing cards?)

        Or how about Manuel Noriega [wikipedia.org], who was the head of a foreign nation, and we sent in a seal team to capture him, kidnap him, and bring him to the US to stand trial?

        Or how about (with help from the UK) overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran [wikipedia.org] in order to install the Shah, who was a brutal dictator who tortured people for the next 38 years?

        Or overthrowing the democratically-elected leader of Guatemala [wikipedia.org]?

        And that's only in the last 50-ish years, and ones that I can remember on the spot.

        Bad precedent?

        The US does whatever the hell it wants, and doesn't care overly much about world opinion.

        • Um... retaliation from whom?

          From North Korea.

          • From North Korea.

            The evidence suggests that they can't even get a missile to their neighbors, and we're not trading with them so they can't hide a nuke in a shipment of plastic toys. How do you propose that they would retaliate?

            • They've gotten missiles to their neighbors before [wikipedia.org], and don't seem to have any trouble. In one case, they launched two missiles, one that landed on the north side of Japan and one that landed of the south side of Japan, presumably as a demonstration of their capabilities. The recent tests that have been failures have either been submarine based launches, or other experiments. It would not be surprising if they had ICBM + true submarine launch capabilities by the end of the decade.

              As for right now, they have enough artillery to pulverize Seoul, so that's millions of people dead almost immediately.

            • Bomb Soul into the ground?

    • China have a big vested interest in North Korea not collapsing. If that happens, then they'll be facing 10s to 100s of thousands of refugees flooding into their already unstable border regions.

    • ...and a single drone strike in NK could solve much of the world's conflict.

      In what possible way? How would killing the NK leadership affect conflict in Africa, Eastern Europe, Ukraine and any other place there is actual conflict. Apart from the Korean peninsula where all the conflict of the last 60 odd years has been bluster and rhetoric of the losing side locking down and pretending to themselves they won?

    • I keep thinking how the US will drone strike wedding receptions on flimsy evidence, even assassinating our own citizens and their children for even *meeting* with an alleged terrorist

      ...and a single drone strike in NK could solve much of the world's conflict.

      Take one of the Chinese ambassadors aside, have a quiet word, get a secret "OK" from the leadership, and *BANG!*. No more fear, uncertainty, and doubt in South Korea or Japan.

      You are right, that this could be done. But the situation is a bit more complex.
      1) China is sincere when they say they want a nuclear free Korean peninsula, but they view all NK regime changes as bad for them with no possible good outcomes. They fear that once the peninsula is unified under a South Korean government that the US won't leave Korea and will, in fact, station US troops on China's borders. China also benefits from the current situation by, among other things, getting cut rate prices on Nort

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      Who is in a position to take over North Korea if Kim Jong Un dies? Blowing up this party convention will create a tremendous political vacuum in the country and you'll quickly discover who is the best connected and most ruthless of the remaining governmental leaders.

      It is seductive to think that you can assassinate a few "bad men" to solve the world's problems, but if you don't think about the fallout of your action you're more likely to make the situation worse. You transform an unfriendly country wi

  • Awww, honey.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @09:14PM (#52032783) Journal

    "Awww, baby, you know I'd love to marry you, but Dear Leader says we can't."

    Best. Excuse. EVER.

  • And they are still testing missiles. Some NORK Air Force general is due to step into Kim Jong-Un's position when one of these goes seriously off course. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

  • You know what's ironic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:39PM (#52033065)
    While we're making fun of all the psychotic shit in North Korea, half of us are carrying cellphones assembled by slaves in factories with suicide nets installed under the windows.

    It makes me wonder who put together my Samsung!

  • Sources (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @11:07PM (#52033183)
    Information about NK may be true or false, who knows? How can we have reliable sources for such a closed country?
  • I don't even understand how that is logically possible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      How it that so hard to understand: 1) declare that weddings aren't permitted 2) enforce the ban 3) profit

      This is about limiting groups of people and having control of movements of people. Nothing strange about it, just compare the people control used during e.g. a presidential visit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        The problem is step 2. You can't enforce it because you don't necessarily have any way to know that a wedding might even be happening.
  • Aren't the North Koreans merely doing explicitly what most countries partly-succeed in doing by social subterfuge?
  • This is the kind of thing that's covered by the Huffington Poser, not Slashdot.

  • cocaine.....

    Seriously, what's to stop this fruitcake nation-state autocrat from becoming hopelessly addicted to substances which

    1) make him feel poweful in the face of overwhleming odds, i.e. going up against the U.S.

    2) seriously and permanently shift his reasoning and perception facilities deep into the megalomaniac-omnipotent spectrum ?

    Answer- nothing and no one.

    Hopefully the people around him have an Easy button under their desks they can push before he waddles them into nuclear oblivion.

  • I read this in a much too positive way... biggest one in 36 years?

    Sounds like a blast, way better than those missile tests! (pun intended :)

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