That's Shanghai's deputy editor Leslie Jones recently visited North Korea to get a glimpse at life after the death of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, and ponders questions like whether or not the mass public mourning that took place in Kim's honor was actually forced. more ›

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A few links to start off your day: China claims that all government agencies will be using legitimate software by the end of 2012. Uh-huh. If they're for real, Microsoft is going to have a pretty sweet year. In an Op-Ed for the NY Times, Georgetown professor Victor Cha predicts that China will move towards effectively adopting North Korea as a province to prevent any possibility of growing US influence. A piece by Damien Ma in the Atlantic this week covers the rise of social media in China, and whether or not it can become a force for making the government more open and accountable: more ›

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"I will change sorrow into strength and courage and remain faithful to respected Comrade Kim Jong Un," says the woman at the end of this video from Korean Central News Agency. more ›

James T. Areddy of the Wall Street Journal paid a visit to some of Shanghai's most popular North Korean restaurants following news of the demise of the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. Here's what he found more ›

Kim Jong Il, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, passed away Saturday of exhaustion brought on by a sudden illness, according to the Korean Central News Agency. more ›

For North Korea's fledgling tourism economy, China represents the largest inbound market. This clip from a Japanese documentary gives you an eye-opening glimpse of what Chinese travellers are shown on their DPRK tours. more ›

In order to commemorate the ten-day anniversary of Gloriously Benevolent Patriarch Kim Jong Il's departure from China (newly proclaimed happiest country in the world), we'd like to bring you some must-see CCTV News footage that details the Dear Leader's trip in full. more ›

Yesterday in Bejing, Kim Jong-Il wrapped up a seven-day unofficial visit to China, where he cruised around to various cities on his armored train looking at stuff such as salad dressing. To send him off, People's Daily online released this high def gallery of DPRK-selected-and-approved uber representative "industrial representatives." We like the pretty girls posing with industrial equipment and firearms. more ›

Reclusive North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is currently making his way around southern Chinese cities and is expected to visit Shanghai soon. His luxury train entered China's Jilin province last Friday and arrived in the nearby city of Yangzhou on Sunday before going to Nanjing. (The leader reportedly has a fear of flying and only travels by train.) Though many of the details of his trip are cloaked in secrecy, the visit was confirmed by Premier Wen Jiabao who said China invited him to observe market reforms that enabled China to go from an economic backwater to the world's second largest economy. more ›

Rumors were swirling about plans for this trip before, but today South Korea's Yonhap news agency confirmed that Kim Jong Eun, likely successor to Kim Jong Il as head of North Korea, has indeed arrived in China. According to Yonhap, Kim crossed the border into China this Friday morning over the bridge on the River Tumen, but his exact route from there on is unknown. The trip is supposedly meant to set the stage for Kim Jong Il’s youngest sons first foreign visit as a state leader, on which he will allegedly meet with high Chinese officials. The trip might also be meant to boost the legitimacy of the only 20-something year old and untested heir. more ›

Over the last few days, South Korean media have been pouring scorn on the DPRK's Kim Jong Un, who looks set to inherit the hermit kingdom over from his daddy Kim Jong Il, who recently hit the big 69. In question is footage aired by North Korean state TV showing the "Brilliant Comrade" looking through a pair of binoculars upside down. Yonhap News Agency labelled the footage a "rare blunder" of the North's propaganda machine which typically goes out of its way to prune the image of its leaders. While the story makes for great headlines, some experts are saying that certain binoculars are made to look just that way. But if Yonhap was right, maybe we've finally found the reason behind the North Koreans' unique view of the world!
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69 years ago today, the Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, was born on Mount Paektu, heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain, or so the story goes according to his official biographers. more ›

North Korea will be playing the Ivory Coast in the World Cup tomorrow, and with its harrowing loss to Brazil and its even more total defeat to Portual, it's pretty sure that they won't be going on to the semi-finals. So, to commemorate their exit (and because we know all of you who can't make it to the Expo are interested in this) here's a photo gallery of everything in the North Korea pavilion. more ›

Long-time Shanghaiist readers will know that we don't usually put up homoerotica here, but what's a blogger to do when he wants news about Kim Jong Il and none of it's available anywhere? more ›

That's the biggest question in our minds, now that reports have confirmed that North Korea's "Dear Leader" has sneaked into China again -- on his armoured 17-carriage luxury train. He is believed to be somewhere around Dalian right now and is expected to arrive in Beijing, where the DPRK's national theatre troupe is scheduled to perform the Chinese opera "A Dream of Red Mansions" this weekend. more ›

• Like the citizens of Shenzhen where the incident occured, we're not quite sure what to think about the so-called "pigeon bomb" that occured last week, killing one unlucky bird and causing zero harm to humans. We understand that terrorism is still a hot topic, what with the recent bombings in Russia, but we're not sold on the idea of a Jihad pigeon. We're going with "spontaneous pigeon combustion" on this one.[China Geeks]
• Speaking of terrorism, do y'all remember how the UK recently released that old Libyan dude who bombed a Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 because he was decimated by cancer and didn't want to "die in jail"? If you also remember Hu Jia and his Olympics-disrupting hijinks from a couple years ago, you'll be interested to know his wife is using the same tactics to petition for his release. Though his sentence is only three-and-a-half years and it's questionable to some that he even committed a crime, Mrs. Hu insists her husband is suffering from a "grave illness" and wants him out, stat. [The Guardian]

Korean American missionary Robert Park is besieged by journalists at the Beijing Capital Airport after being freed from detention by North Korea. The 28 year old entered North Korea from China last Christmas by walking across the frozen Tumen River, carrying a letter to Kim Jong Il asking him to close down concentration camps and release all political prisoners. A report by the DPRK's Korean Central News Agency claims that Park attended a church service in Pyongyang, whereupon it suddenly dawned on him that "the DPRK people can read and believe whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want" and that he has since "seriously repented of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West's false propaganda". Sinologistical Violoncellist notes that police in Yanbian appear now to be trying to track down Park's collaborator in Yanji and that while the media circus surrounded Park in Beijing on Friday, Kim Jong Il was busy watching Russian opera. [h/t to Danwei] more ›

• Prepare to fight China, Qaeda figure tells Uighurs [Washington Post] "A prominent al Qaeda militant urged Uighurs in Xianjiang to make serious preparations for a holy war against "oppressive" China and called on fellow Muslims to offer support. Abu Yahya al-Libi, in a video posted on an Islamist website on Wednesday, warned China of a fate similar to that of former communist superpower, the Soviet Union, which disintegrated some two decades ago."
• Inside the Ring [Washington Times] "China's most senior military intelligence official, a veteran of spy operations in Europe and cyberspace, recently made a secret visit to the United States and complained to the Pentagon about the press leak on the Chinese submarine that secretly shadowed the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in 2006. Maj. Gen. Yang Hui said senior Chinese leaders suspected the Pentagon deliberately disclosed the encounter as part of a U.S. effort to send a political message of displeasure to China's military."
• A Beautiful Life: Mean Streets and Meaner People [NYTimes] "It takes nerve to award Bai Ling a singing role in a serious drama, but nerve may be the one thing “A Beautiful Life” does not lack. Set among the mean streets and meaner people of downtown Los Angeles, this laughably clichéd dive into sexual masochism and hardscrabble survival replaces story with outline and characters with place holders. No wonder Ms. Ling’s breasts are the most animated objects on screen."

North Korea had some strong words for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she referred to the country's leaders as "unruly children" and pointed out that even their most steadfast friends, China and Russia, were no longer willing to support their hijinks. The Foreign Ministry issued the following statement, "We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady, as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community," adding that "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping." Low blow, North Korea! We're not sure those words are going to convince the world you're not acting juvenile. Source: NY Times more ›

• NKorea's Kim Jong Il looks OK in new photographs [AP] "North Korea released new photographs of Kim Jong Il touring a factory following reports earlier this week that the 67-year-old leader has pancreatic cancer and less than five years to live. Wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeved shirt, Kim appeared generally OK in the images released Tuesday night — thin but no worse than in other recent photographs. He has grown frailer over the past year after reportedly suffering a stroke last summer."
• How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang [Foreign Policy] "The government's crackdown on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, was nasty, brutish, and short. Overnight curfews were imposed. Thousands of police officers dispersed. President Hu Jintao left the G-8 summit in Europe to focus on putting out fires at home. But not all aspects of China's policies toward Uighurs and other minorities are characterized by such precision."
• Something’s Rotten in Chinese Steel Industry [NYT Dealbook] "Long before four employees of the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto were detained in Shanghai last week on suspicion of stealing state secrets, people working in China’s steel industry were complaining about bribery, deceit and a system turned rotten, The New York Times’s David Barboza writes."

Dear Leader, our close if crazy friend over on the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, apparently is dying of pancreatic cancer, according to Korean news source Yonhap Television News. The information was attributed to unidentified Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources, and was backed up by a report by a Japanese paper that Kim Jong-Il had a "serious pancreatic disorder." So what will North Korea do if their one God-like leader falls? It seems that Kim may be paving the way for his youngest son, 25-year-old Kim Jong Un to succeed him. The Times UK said that Jong Un had been in Beijing this past week meeting the leaders of the only country still willing (and perhaps not for long) to call the DPRK its ally. more ›

It's good to know that despite us being bosom buddies, China is still “resolutely opposed” to North Korea's nuclear weapons test. A Foreign Ministry statement called Pyongyang's test in defiance of the international community and its own commitments against nuclear weaponry. It called for North Korea to avoid actions that would raise the tension between it and other nations, and return to dismantling its nuclear programs. But will stern words from their compatriots (and aid providers... and tickets to the 60th Anniversary bash providers) be enough to stop Kim Jong-Il from going ahead with his atomic vision? Nobody puts Dear Leader in a corner! Source: AP more ›

Seems like we may be looking forward to a visit from China's good buddy, Kim Jong-Il, during the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Chinese Communist Party. The Great Leader has allegedly accepted an invitation from Premier Wen Jiabao to join in on the fun. Previously, Wen was quoted telling North Korean officials that “We will ardently welcome Comrade Kim Jong-Il and senior officials of the Korean party and government to visit China at a convenient time.” Source: Channel News Asia more ›

President Kim Jong-Il may not have been there personally for yesterday's Olympic torch relay in Pyongyang, but that did not stop hundreds of thousands of ecstatic North Koreans from turning out in full force and waving the Kim Jong Ilia (flower named after the "Dear Leader") as the flame went across their city for the first time in the history of the Olympics. Earlier this week, DPRK officials promised the Chinese a smooth and trouble-free event (no doubt the greatest challenge of their lives), and my my, just take a look at this exuberant and spontaneous display of enthusiasm from the people. Sure made us shed a single tear. more ›

A prominent former Thai senator accused of sex crimes against four underage girls was sentenced to 36 years in prison on Tuesday, when an appeals court stiffened the sentence of a lower court. more ›

On the same day that the "Dear Leader" of our friendly northeastern neighbour decided to press ahead with nuclear tests, a brave Singaporean entrepreneur announced his decision to invade the reclusive commie state with his brand of -- guess what -- sushi! more ›