Note: Annyeong (안녕) means goodbye, and is not a reference to Arrested Development.
Yes, grief hits us all differently; for the internet, laughter is a common defence mechanism.
You may have seen videos of the frankly mad outbursts of public crying by the denizens of PyongYang:
The super-racist part of me wants someone to make a .gif of that and slap a caption on it about getting bad grades at school. That, or the nation running out of dog meat. I'll leave now...
Hard to know if it's true brainwash-induced sadness, or if surrounding guards have a gun to their kids' temple off-screen or something.
Apparently a good deal of the refugees who escaped the country at great risk to themselves still believe in their nation's leader and ideals, such is the power of their upbringing...
I think this is a good opportunity to post about an awesome video Vice did after riskily finding a way into N.K. I can't embed the video so link to part one here.
It's a truly mesmerising doc, and gives a fascinating insight into a country that is able to remain completely insular and controlled despite existing in the modern era of information technology. It's also ashamedly humorous to see the sheer po-facedness of their jingoism.
Not that I'm a typical Westerner laughing at how repressed and backward N.K. is, whilst falsely assuming that I live in a land of sober, unfettered liberty.
As Julian Assange said in a recent interview: "Censorship is a sign that your country's government is healthy, because it's still scared of the power of information". I'm paraphrasing, so here's the original interview/debate with Slavoj Zizek:
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