North Korea's Kim Jong Un may take his clown show on the road...

Stepping out...

Via Ohio Com

After three years of watching his fellow leaders mix and mingle while he was secluded in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un is looking more and more likely to visit Russia in his first trip abroad since taking power in the world’s first look at the young North Korean leader at work on the international stage.
Moscow has invited many world leaders — including Kim and the presidents of China and South Korea — to celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, which will include a massive parade on Red Square.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said last month the Kremlin had received the “first signals from Pyongyang” the North Korean leader is planning to attend the May 9 festivities. South Korean media quoting anonymous sources in Beijing reported this week that Kim is likely to accept. U.S. President Barack Obama has reportedly decided to stay home, so that awkwardness has apparently been averted.[…]

Live in North Korea? Is your name Kim Jong Un? You need to change that...

I wonder if the penalty for refusing is a forced labor camp or getting fed to hungry dogs?

Via WaPo:

Kim Jong Un, North Korea's young dictator, sits at the top of a nation that for decades has enshrined the ruling Kim dynasty as demigods. [...]
It also leads to whole ranks of the population having to surrender their names.
According to a new report on a South Korean TV station, North Korean authorities issued a directive in 2011 — when Kim Jong Un came to power after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il — to reject birth certificates of newborns named Kim Jong Un and to revise the official documentation and identity cards of those who still had that name.
“All party organs and public security authorities should make a list of residents named Kim Jong Un … and train them to voluntarily change their names,” read the document, which was revealed by the KBS TV station on Tuesday.

Korean barbecue: Kim Jong-un style...

This man is insane.

A senior North Korean official has been executed with a flamethrower after

Kim Jong-un branded him an ‘enemy of the state’, it has been claimed. 

O Sang-hon is said to have been brutally killed for his close ties to the communist leader’s uncle Jang Song-taek, who was himself publicly tried and executed in December after being found guilty of corruption and ‘counter revolutionary’ activities.

Mr O is thought to be the latest of 11 senior Workers Party figures to have been executed this year over their links to Mr Jang, with South Korean media reporting that Kim Jong-un has plans to execute or imprison hundreds more of his supporters and extended family members.

Mr O had been Mr Jang’s deputy at North Korea’s ministry of public security, and his execution by flamethrower took place after being found guilty of helping his boss turn the state department into a personal security division and hide corruption, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.

The ministry of public security has since been closed, with all 11 of the most senior officials said to have been either executed or sent to one of Kim Jong-un’s concentration camps in a second wave of vengeance following conviction of Mr Jang.

The first round saw Mr Jang’s closest relatives and colleagues – including North Korea’s ambassador to Cuba – executed for their links to the ministry.

H/T JWF. 

Too good to check: NK Leader Kim Jong Un may have been deposed?

Kim Jong Un starving in the fields with his countryman would be justice...

Via IB Times:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has not been seen in public for the past two weeks sparking widespread speculation amid escalating tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

Unconfirmed reports which suggested a coup against the leader have been rubbished by experts in Seoul citing no unusual military movement in the country.

Alongside a flurry of threats from North Korea, Kim’s absence has set rumour mills rolling. One question being asked is whether Pyongyang has been forced to tone down its war rhetoric against the US and South Korea.

Kim was last seen in public on 1 April when he headed a parliamentary session. The leader has been missing in action for the last 15 days at a time when the country is set to mark the birth anniversary of his grandfather and former leader of North Korea Kim Il-sung.

It is widely speculated that North Korea will launch a ballistic missile to mark the occasion.A source familiar with matter told the Seoul-based Yonhap news agency that Kim’s absence is a “psychological warfare that could grab attention from South Korea and the United States”. Keep on reading…

A more likely explanation is he is hiding somewhere in case the U.S. decided to attack. 

Interesting: Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro tells North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to chill...

Castro made it into retirement without getting himself killed or Cuba destroyed.  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should take heed to Castro's advice.

Via The Daily Caller:

Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro warned North Korea against war on Friday, and said that it is primarily the United States’ responsibility to prevent a conflict from breaking out.

Castro wrote the advice in a column — his first in nine months — for Cuban state media. He spoke as an ally, from one communist regime to another, in the wake of North Korea’s mounting threats of direct war with South Korea and the U.S.

Describing the current tensions in the Korean Peninsula as one of the “gravest risks” of nuclear holocaust since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Castro urged North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to back away from the brink of war, and consider the harmful repercussions his actions might have on both Koreas and the world.

Keep on reading…

China’s Communist Party newspaper gets duped by The Onion...

China’s Communist Party newspaper actually though NK's dictator Kim Jong Un was named “Sexiest Man Alive?" Really?

BEIJING (AP) –  The online version of China’s Communist Party newspaper has hailed a report by The Onion naming North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as the “Sexiest Man Alive” — not realizing it is satire.

The People’s Daily on Tuesday ran a 55-page photo spread on its website in a tribute to the round-faced leader, under the headline “North Korea’s top leader named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012.”

Quoting the Onion’s spoof report, the Chinese newspaper wrote: “”With his devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong, sturdy frame, this Pyongyang-bred heartthrob is every woman’s dream come true.”

“Blessed with an air of power that masks an unmistakable cute, cuddly side, Kim made this newspaper’s editorial board swoon with his impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and, of course, that famous smile,” the People’s Daily cited the Onion as saying.

The photos the People’s Daily selected include Kim on horseback squinting into the light and Kim waving towards a military parade. In other photos, Kim is wearing sunglasses and smiling, or touring a facility with his wife.