The US newsmagazine is the first western magazine to follow up on Slippedisc’s report of the execution of a North Korean conductor on orders on Kim Jong-un.
The North Korean authorities have refused to comment.
Newsweek report here.
The US violinist has announced she is still…
We gather that Juilliard has summarily fired a…
The Atlanta gadfly music critic Mark Gresham reviewed…
The Metropolitan Opera has appointed Daniele Rustioni as…
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Newsweek? Ok, next one. (This is the magazine that The Washington Post Company sold in 2010 for one dollar.)
I don’t buy the “body so full it couldn’t be lifted” element.
First, unless they were using special low power ammunition, nearly all the bullets would pass through the body.
Even if the body were full of bullets, the weight would not be a significant impediment. Each member of the firing squad had to be able to fire a heavy weapon loaded with 30 bullets, so the weight of 90 would not be an impediment.
More likely, 90 bullets would inflict such butchery on the body that it would be almost impossible to lift it intact. It’s not a question of being full as being disintegrated.
This is a thoroughly distasteful story. My hope is that factual errors such as “so full…” are a signal of the story being false.
“More likely, 90 bullets would inflict such butchery on the body that it would be almost impossible to lift it intact. It’s not a question of being full as being disintegrated.”
IIRC that’s what’s said in the video.
The terrible thing about this horrific story is not that it might be exaggerated or distorted, but that it could have some truth in it.
This line in the article says it all: “There is currently no independent corroboration of the story.”
What happened to verifying the facts of a story via three *independent* sources before running it?
Of course, that doesn’t happen any more. Much of what the mainstream news outlets pass off as “news” is really just repeating of stories from sketchy Internet sites with no intervening fact-checking.
And I call “hyperbole” on at least one point: The bullet of a 7.62x39mm AK-47 round typically weighs 123 grains. The weight of NINETY such bullets adds up to 717 *grams* or notably less than 2 lbs. Even if all 90 rounds lodged in the body (which is highly unlikely to happen), nobody would notice the increase in weight.
NOW, I’m not saying this event did not happen. But it’s highly unlikely we’ll see it reliably corroborated.
I agree with your comment on lack of corroboration.
But how does one get corroboration of news and events from North Korea ?
“Just show me a two more examples of the lightning striking here, please…”
I consider ‘Newsweek’ a tabloid like Slippedisc.
Not to the shift blame elsewhere, but Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ way of handling this North Korean despot probably didn’t help matters. I’m sure he was advised that no real ‘deal’ was at hand. Regardless, Jung-on apologized to his own people for failing them, but has reacted further with crackdowns in the name of ideology. This brutal behavior truly is Stalinist, in the sense that he’s acting of out of frustration and paranoia. As a result, N.K. continues to slide deeper and deeper into a starving, Covid addled nightmare.
But just to show I’m not typing this with the usual Republican vs. Democratic agenda in mind, Dennis Rodman should never have been permitted to act as an American spokesperson either. Regardless of who’s sitting in the White House, this probably isn’t going to end well. Someday.