DPRK doggerel fest

The Korean Central News Agency is a treasure trove of news about the greatest nation on this planet and the most steadfast, fearless and peace loving leader.. and by far the fittest and healthiest too. Its convoluted, nay tortured, prose style is an utter delight to read. (long live Sorghum! death to the enemies of Touche! and so on and so forth – Wow, I managed to write this paragraph with a straight face!)

It is with, ahem, great pleasure to note that KCNA reported that an award ceremony was held as part of the DPRK’s 60th anniversary for international works books “praising the greatness of the three generals of Mt. Paektu and introducing and giving publicity to the greatness of the Songun politics of the Workers' Party of Korea and the true picture of the DPRK”. Apparenty 600 such works were created in more than 40 countries

Prize recipients included Alejandro Cao de Benos, chairman of the Korean Friendship Association and S. Surenjav, president of J. Sambuu Herders Development Fund of Mongolia. An appeal to the writers and progressive people of the world loving justice and conscience was adopted at the awarding ceremony.

I have previously posted examples of juche poetry from Cao de Benos and from Britain’s own Dermot Hudson. It is execrable stuff created by utter idiots (although the DPRK considers them useful idiots, I’m sure) but to give you a flavour of the sort of sheer rubbish that receives prizes here’s a poem by American Songum junkie John Paul Cupp in praise of Kim Il Sung

We are the masses.
You were the masses' leader.
We are the driving force of history.
You were the best in all of us.
You were the Father of Juche;
a reminder to the poor and wretched ones
that anything but unshakled (sic) independence is untolerable (sic).

Protecting the dignity with Guns!
A brilliant Iron-willed Supreme Commander.
A Guerrilla of Genius and Merit.
Japan will never rule Korea, again!
Even the US was forced to leave Korea in defeat!
An example for freedom fighters, everywhere.

Oh, how much we love and venerate you,
Great Leader KIM IL SUNG!!!
You will always be our red-glowing sun shining!

Heroic Communist who held the Party's flag aloof!
You truely (sic) loved the people,
and the people in turn rallied behind you!
This is the relationship of a new kind,
between the masses and their leader,
and without such a leader their will never be a revolution.
Great Leader, I only desire to be a Communist of the KIM IL SUNG-TYPE!

Compare Cupp’s dogshiterel with this poem by Osip Mandelstam.

We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
Ten steps away no one hears our speeches

All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer,
The murderer and peasant-slayer.

His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,

His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.

Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders -
fawning half-men for him to play with.

The whinny, purr or whine
As he prates and points a finger,

One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin.

And every killing is a treat
For the broad-chested Ossete.

The poem is about Stalin but change Kremlin for Baedku and Ossete for, let’s say, Korean and we have a far better description of the Dear and Great Leaders than Cupp’s (or cao de Benos’s or Hudson’s) propagandist rubbish.

Thanks to the comments section on this Portland Indymedia post for the comparison between Cupp and Mandelstam.