Oooo… More Useful Idiots

I’m sure you’ve seen these by now, but give ‘em a looksie if you haven’t.

Joseon-eun hada-da, baby. Joseon-eun, hana-da (see here for the background).

Oh, and then there is this guy, of course. Shockingly, he’s a Berkeley boy.

This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on July 21, 2006 at 1:08 pm, filed under North Korea, Stupid Foreigner Tricks. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

7 Comments

  1. Juggertha your flag
    Posted July 21, 2006 at 11:06 am | Permalink

    So.. I was trying to figure out what exactly those foreigners were fighting about. Some seemed to want only their perspective told, or rather they didn’t want one guy to tell/publish his story?

    The two Euro lookin’ dudes semed quite full of themselves.

  2. Solomon your flag
    Posted July 21, 2006 at 11:51 am | Permalink

    I hadn’t seen it. Pointer to some back story?

  3. joshua your flag
    Posted July 21, 2006 at 12:36 pm | Permalink

    The fat guy who is putting flowers in everyone’s hair is Alejandro Cao de Benos, from Barcelona Spain, now a North Korean “honorary” citizen. The other fat guy with the unflattering close-up is Bjornar Simonsen from Norway. The skinny guy is Jason LeBouyer. He doesn’t have a wikipedia page, but there are plenty of photos of him that you would recognize. They’re members of the Korean Friendship Association.

    More video of Cao de Benos here. And be sure to check out some of the editing history on his Wikipedia page.

    I’m frankly amazed that this video made it out of North Korea. Based on the Wikipedia description, the person promising the North Koreans better press than they had ever had was ABC News journalist Andrew Morse. Afterward, Cao broke into his hotel room and trashed his laptop.

  4. Solomon your flag
    Posted July 21, 2006 at 12:59 pm | Permalink

    Many thanks. Will check that out. Especially enjoy the picture of LeBouyer. :)

  5. Lameda your flag
    Posted July 21, 2006 at 2:18 pm | Permalink

    There’s also this video of them at the DMZ:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=VH3HXV_DrGY

  6. Lameda your flag
    Posted July 21, 2006 at 2:22 pm | Permalink

    Also, a Dutch documentary exists about the trip in these clips called “Friends of Kim”.

    http://www.friendsofkim.com/
    http://www.idfa.nl/idfa_en_fil.....lmid=24967

  7. snow your flag
    Posted July 22, 2006 at 5:31 pm | Permalink

    “Shockingly, he’s a Berkeley boy.”

    Shocking? Actually, I’m not surprised. Isn’t the place a hotbed of anti-Americanism?

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