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Kim Jong-Il Was an "Internet Expert" 238

pigrabbitbear writes "The late Kim Jong Il made many bizarre claims and bestowed upon himself many extravagant titles during his iron-clad rule over North Korea. But here's one that's particularly interesting in light of the recent SOPA debate – 'Internet expert.' The DPRK's Dear Leader fancied himself as such during an international summit in 2007. Seven years prior, he had asked U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright for her email address, indicating that the North Korean internet black hole was perhaps not as thoroughly opaque as we made it out to be — at least not for those at the top."

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Kim Jong-Il Was an "Internet Expert"

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  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:45AM (#38434290)

    But Glorious Leader was the first to truly MASTER it.

    And, unlike Gore, Glorious Leader at least put his money where his mouth was on global warming. At the time of his death his country used less electricity than any other Asian country and he had decreased its carbon footprint significantly by reducing its population by over a million people in just 15 years. And no polluting Western factories spewing carbon dioxide into the air or wasteful beef production in Glorious Leader's country. Suck on THAT, China and Western imperialists!

  • by RagManX ( 258563 ) <ragmanx@gamerdem ... m minus language> on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:51AM (#38434400) Homepage Journal

    Surfing porn all day does not make one an internet expert.

  • Well duh! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Attila Dimedici ( 1036002 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:54AM (#38434450)
    Anybody who thought that North Korea's draconian rules applied to those at the top (especially to the one at the very pinnacle) does not understand how totalitarian systems work, or what their purpose is.
    • Re:Well duh! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mr1911 ( 1942298 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:31AM (#38435014)

      Anybody who thought that North Korea's draconian rules applied to those at the top (especially to the one at the very pinnacle) does not understand how totalitarian systems work, or what their purpose is.

      Oh they will. Governments of formerly free countries are working feverishly to ensure a totalitarian system will be thrust upon us all very soon.

      Don't worry. It is 1) for the children, or 2) to keep you safe from terrorists.

      And all the sheep slept well.

      • You have missed one step:

        3) it will create jobs.

        • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @12:38PM (#38436896)

          What people who fall for the "they create jobs" meme fail to see is that they don't need a job, they need money. The job is just the means to the end, not the end itself.

          In other words, it's certainly no problem creating jobs. Not at all.

          • Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @01:58PM (#38438188) Journal

            What people who fall for the "they create jobs" meme fail to see is that they don't need a job, they need money. The job is just the means to the end, not the end itself.

            A job is much, much more than just "a way to make money".
            Being able to work for your own and your family's sustenance and improvement gives people a purpose in life, makes them proud of their own accomplishments and basically makes them MORE than mere consumers.
            Which is what just giving them money makes them into.

            Mind you, I am not speaking against government or anyone else helping out those in need or those unable to work or fully support themselves or their families through their work.
            Personally, I believe that acts like that don't just make us more civilized but also "good". Or at least better.

            Monetary help - good and often needed.
            Sustaining and fulfilling work - much better.

  • by drobety ( 2429764 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:56AM (#38434482)
    The way Kim Jong-Il is holding the mouse in the accompanying picture, there is no denying of his internet expertise.
  • Awesome picture (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JohnnyBGod ( 1088549 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:58AM (#38434506)

    That looks like another fine picture for http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/ [tumblr.com].

  • by Scootin159 ( 557129 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:58AM (#38434526) Homepage

    "I'm an interenet expert, and I've seen what damage it can do... you don't want it"

    Possible that he just self-proclaimed himself as an "internet expert" to add credibility to his claim that DPRK doesn't need or want to be on the internet? Also would add to his magical mystique - "All praise our dear leader for being so skilled on the internet to save us from it".

    • Re:Trust me... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrNiceguy_KS ( 800771 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @11:34AM (#38435988)

      This could apply to other areas of North Korean life.

      "I'm a food expert, and I've seen what damage it can do... you don't want it."

      • by ifrag ( 984323 )

        "I'm a food expert, and I've seen what damage it can do... you don't want it."

        Well, one of the biggest health risks in America is obesity. I guess he had to find something he could do better than us. Congrats on that I guess.

  • Footage of Kim (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rapidreload ( 2476516 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @09:59AM (#38434542)

    I've noticed a few things from all the news footage available of Kim Jong-Il:

    1. Kim is generally doing one of three things: pointing/gesturing at something, watch someone pointing/gesturing at something, or clapping. Never speaking, never doing something actually interesting.

    2. People in North Korea LOVE clapping for some reason. All the political footage involving Kim tends to involve a shitload of clapping. If the leader is clapping at something, everyone else is that's for sure. Maybe everyone's really happy over there?

    Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime was afraid he'd say something stupid.

    • I've noticed a few things from all the news footage available of Kim Jong-Il:

      1. Kim is generally doing one of three things: pointing/gesturing at something, watch someone pointing/gesturing at something, or clapping. Never speaking, never doing something actually interesting.

      2. People in North Korea LOVE clapping for some reason. All the political footage involving Kim tends to involve a shitload of clapping. If the leader is clapping at something, everyone else is that's for sure. Maybe everyone's really happy over there?

      Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime was afraid he'd say something stupid.

      Maybe Bush should have followed the same policy...

    • by c ( 8461 )

      > Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime
      > was afraid he'd say something stupid.

      He was telepathic, obviously. He didn't have to speak to communicate. Did you think he got to be an expert in 10000 areas by reading books?

      Incidentally, this nicely explains all the photos of him standing around, staring intently at a vegetable, listening patiently to its concerns and comments about the field or factory it found itself in. Dear Leader cared about all his subjects, even the most

    • by cusco ( 717999 )
      He was rumored to have had several strokes the last few years, clapping may have been a safe substitute for speeches.
    • I like the picture of the dear leader looking at the sausages, with the 2 females behind him. All are smiling [amazonaws.com].

      Of-course here is another picture with more chicks and food and smiles. [amazonaws.com] Maybe it's just that when there was the dear leader, chicks and food around, everybody felt like smiling. Aaaah.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It is a way to give his minions more authority and to elevate him to near divine status.

      Because members of his party tend to speak for him they can claim almost anything like is his order and no-one can question it. It gives his government officials the power he needed to keep an iron grip on everyone. By speaking only rarely it makes getting to listen to him a special event, and he never speaks off-the-cuff so he doesn't make mistakes or contradictions like normal people.

      Brainwashing is a myth, people in N

  • Obituary (Score:5, Funny)

    by NewWorldDan ( 899800 ) <dan@gen-tracker.com> on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:01AM (#38434564) Homepage Journal

    When I think back on the many great accomplishments of this man, there is no doubt that he will have the longest and greatest obituary ever written. A short exceprt:

    The only man known to have shot 18 consecuative holes-in-one during a round of golf. In 2007, Kim Jong Il led the New England Patriots to a perfect 19-0 NFL season. In addition to his sporting exploits, Il was a noted Internet expert. Known for releasing the worlds first internet worm. His fame exploded when he devised a method of breaking public key encryption. He is believed to be the sole author of the Windows Vista operating system.

    I'm in awe of this man.

  • When I was redesigning the Amazon front-end in HTML5, Dear Leader sent me a note about using CSS3 descritors that saved me over 50000 hours of work! I'm sure that others have the same story!

    Dear Leader knew everything about Internets!

  • He's probably an "internet expert" in the same sense that my friend who "likes computers" considers himself a "computer expert" because he knows how to run Windows Update manually.

  • by vlm ( 69642 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:05AM (#38434622)

    What was his /. nym?

    Find someone who stopped posting around the time he croaked. I'm guessing a pretty low UID, since he was pretty old. We now know I was not him, just in case you were wondering. Unless I'm an automated poster. I suppose I could pass a Turing test to prove it, or there's always the old "there's a tortoise, lying on its back in the desert. You're not helping it. Why are you not helping it?"

    • by vlm ( 69642 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:07AM (#38434656)

      What was his /. nym?

      Find someone who stopped posting around the time he croaked. I'm guessing a pretty low UID, since he was pretty old. We now know I was not him, just in case you were wondering. Unless I'm an automated poster. I suppose I could pass a Turing test to prove it, or there's always the old "there's a tortoise, lying on its back in the desert. You're not helping it. Why are you not helping it?"

      Oh I know, I haven't seen that "cmdrtaco" guy post in awhile. Are there any references to cmdrtaco having great hair and liking kimchi? That would explain a lot.

      • by Nyder ( 754090 )

        ... Are there any references to cmdrtaco having great hair and liking kimchi? ....

        Kim Chi, is she hot?

    • by Surt ( 22457 )

      The real evidence that you're not him is that you imagine that writing a Turing competent AI to continue posting after his death is beyond the Il's skill.

    • "there's a tortoise, lying on its back in the desert. You're not helping it. Why are you not helping it?"

      What do you mean I'm not helping it?

  • Typical computer (Score:5, Informative)

    by f1vlad ( 1253784 ) Works for Slashdot on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:08AM (#38434672) Homepage Journal
    This is what typical computer lab looks in North Korean school: http://tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/_MG_0082.jpg [tema.ru] I guess if you are the only one in the country who has a modern computer, that'll make you an internet expert :)
  • by snsh ( 968808 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:08AM (#38434678)

    Immortality Kim Jong Il has also found. Replacement clone [naenara.com.kp] he has.

  • He could code HTML and PHP as well as Java and JS better than anyone else.

    He wrote most of the code for Apache under several psudonyms.

    He also invented TCP/IP the western history books are all lies!

    He also was the one who put the moon in the sky and made the sun rise every morning.

    • And you don't say a word about him inventing the world and creating life? I mean, at least start at the beginning.

  • by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:18AM (#38434822)
    I know plenty of schoolboys who claim to be internet wizards. Yet they just know a little more than the average user, often a crucial difference in solving problems.

    The internet has so many holes that it doesnt really take much expertise to compromise it. Some of these holes are due to its open architecture. And others due to sloppy security engineering.
  • http://thefatboychronicles.com/ [thefatboychronicles.com]

    "Inspired by a true story, The Fat Boy Chronicles reveals the emotionally painful world obese teens experience in the face of a thin-obsessed society. At age fourteen. 5'5 Jimmy weighs 187 pounds. "

    A must read for any Jong Fat dictator.

  • According to reports from N. Korea; Kim usually got 18 holes in the low 30s. Lord only knows what other near super-human powers he possessed.

  • by StuartHankins ( 1020819 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:28AM (#38434962)
    I think most people have to agree that this man -- based on numerous press releases, political events, etc -- was not in full control of his mental faculties. He was not a mentally healthy man. It's unusual that someone in that state became a political leader and was accepted by his people for so long (until the very end), and perhaps if that society were not totalitarian it could not have happened.

    The pictures of North Korea are all very sad. I can't imagine living anywhere under those conditions.

    Now that he has passed, I'm not sure if I should breathe a sigh of relief or if the problems will just get worse. Sometimes a dictator holds together a group that, divided, are even worse than the dictator. What a horrible thing, but that does not make it less true.
    • by vlm ( 69642 )

      Now that he has passed, I'm not sure if I should breathe a sigh of relief or if the problems will just get worse. Sometimes a dictator holds together a group that, divided, are even worse than the dictator. What a horrible thing, but that does not make it less true.

      Historically the design pattern for all oriental style absolute despotisms (That phrase is a Gibbon-ism, it applies in this case) has been for the despot to kill everyone surrounding the despot with any talent, lest the despot get knifed in the back. After the despot inevitably croaks, the surrounding inferior, unmotivated yes men are usually not quite up to the level required to keep the empire going. The only advantage the NK have, is NK is not multicultural, so tribal warfare like Iraq is unlikely. Th

    • by cusco ( 717999 )
      Tito kept Yugoslavia intact and at internal peace for decades. Thoroughly nasty person, but the outcome after his death has been a thousand times worse than his rule ever was. At least North Korea is a single homogeneous entity, they should be spared THAT particular version of hell.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:29AM (#38434978)

    Wow! He really was ronery.

  • by headhot ( 137860 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:34AM (#38435076) Homepage

    In North Korea it doesn't take much to be an internet expert. Simply knowing the internet exists would probably qualify you.

  • by Steauengeglase ( 512315 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @10:54AM (#38435362)

    He was a PHB?

  • by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @11:05AM (#38435570) Journal

    In a long and varied life, Kim Jong Il made one undeniable and catastrophic mistake; he claimed to be an internet expert.

    After making this claim, his life was made a misery by a succession of late night calls from friends and family demanding his help in ridding their PCs of various pieces of malware.

    It was during one of these conversations, during which he was explaining to his elderly aunt for the thirty-seventh time why she shouldn't click the links in random e-mails claiming to be from DHL and talking her through the process of reinstalling Windows so that it would stop flashing up photos of young ladies taking their clothes off every time she tried to google for humorous cat stories, that his blood pressure finally reached critical point and his heart exploded.

    Case solved.

  • Wikipedia has a list of some of his titles.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kim_Jong-il's_titles [wikipedia.org]

    My personal favorite : "Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love".

  • He was an internet master. In a country where abject poverty is so commonplace anyone just having a computer could be considered an internet expert. And now he has truly found his place.... a hole in the ground.
  • ...the one-eyed man is King.

    Or maybe that should be blindfolded.

  • The "old management" has threatened with "unexpected consequences" [in-other-news.com], which in commy-speak probably means "we will nuke you".

    Nobody knows much about the new guy, so almost anything can happen.

  • You act like you never had a boss that thought he reinvented the computer because he figured out how to use shortcuts instead of the mouse to get through the office menu. Why do you think this would be different, especially in the light of a man who never got any honest reply in his whole life?

  • .... just look up keyword "douchebag".

  • by TheCarp ( 96830 ) <sjc AT carpanet DOT net> on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @03:01PM (#38438998) Homepage

    It wont come out for a few years, but, I imagine this scene from his unauthorized autobiography....

    It was 2003, Kim was surfing online, reading articles on slashdot. The communities strong libertarian stripe had started to make inroads. He read about free speech, and beginning to be swayed. He began to think "Maybe we can scrap the nuclear program and wire up our country, give the people freedom" .... and just as he thought that....
    he saw a link to a nude picture of Natalie Portman....
    he clicked on it.... because come on, you know you did too....

    and as Goatse.cx loaded for Dear Leader, a window of opportunity for change closed.

  • by fatp ( 1171151 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @06:25PM (#38442048) Journal
    Stolen from someone else's facebook:

    Q: What were your last words to your people?
    A: Stay hungry, stay foolish.

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