This isn’t a comment about a particular news story, but about a newspaper itself.
The Pyongyang Times is a english language version of the Pyongyang Synum, a North Korean newspaper. The Times is published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, the central North Korean publishing bureau of foreign-language documents.
At first glance, the newspaper’s albeit rudimentary looking website seems just fine, but once you start reading the news titles you notice something’s off, here are some of my favorites:
Autumn Sports Tournament of Aged People Held
Girl assiduously follows her dream
Kim Jong Un visits various objects in Vladivostok of Russia
Speaking of Kim Jong Un, they have a whole category dedicated to him called: GENERAL SECRETARY KIM JONG UN’S REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES. Where the only topic is North Korea’s ruler.
As you may have noticed, the english grammar here is rough at best, and it’s even weirder when you actually read an article, sometimes they have one paragraph at best, and just the way they’re written ticks you off.
They also have some contact information at the bottom, but the Youtube, Instagram and Facebook buttons just lead to the respective site’s main page. What seems to be interesting though, is the email address and phone-number they have at the bottom, maybe i’ll try writing day someday, it would make for an interesting story.
I plan on commenting on a proper article from them at some point, but I felt that doing a general introduction first was a better idea.
Thanks for the link, Diego. I did not expect something like
this to exist. Yet, NK lives on propaganda, so why wouldn’t
it exist. You would think they would put in a bit more effort,
though.