A North Korean state-run news agency earlier this month launched an ugly, racist diatribe against President Obama, calling the U.S.'s first black head of state a "crossbreed with unclear blood." The agency also said that Obama "still has the figure of monkey while the human race has evolved through millions of years," and that "it would be perfect for Obama to live with a group of monkeys in the world’s largest African natural zoo and lick the bread crumbs thrown by spectators."

The screed was recently brought to light by Josh Stanton, who blogs frequently about North Korea.

The issue of race has special resonance in North Korea, where the Stalinist regime has gone to great lengths to instill a sense of racial purity in its citizens. Some background from The Washington Post:

[W]hen North Korea talks about race, it's almost always important — and telling about the state ideology.

Some academics — most notably B.R. Myers — argue that North Koreans fundamentally have a "race-based" worldview, showing more similarity to fascist Japan during World War II than Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. Myers condenses North Korea's state orthodoxy into a sentence: "The Korean people are too pure blooded, and therefore too virtuous, to survive in this evil world without a great parental leader." [The Washington Post] Ryu Spaeth