Opinion

The perverse fawning over brutal Kim Jong Un’s sister at the Olympics

The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Kim Yo Jong, deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of North Korea, and sister of Kim Jong Un, is no exception.

This is, apparently, news to the news media. As the Winter Olympics opened in South Korea, US reporters and analysts gave Kim the TMZ treatment, going so far as to liken her to Ivanka Trump.

That Ivanka comparison, by the way, brought to you by the Washington Post. A dispatch on Kim from Anna Fifield began, “They marveled at her barely-there makeup and her lack of bling. They commented on her plain black outfits and simple purse. They noted the flower-shaped clip that kept her hair back in a no-nonsense style.”

Strange reading a red carpet-like report about a member of a regime that has concentration camps the size of Los Angeles, where children have been secretly photographed starving in the streets and whose leader uses anti-aircraft weaponry to execute his political enemies.





Fifield’s colleague Philip Bump, a national correspondent for the Washington Post, tweeted a GIF of Kim giving Vice President Mike Pence “deadly side-eye.”

Unavailable for comment on that side-eye? Otto Warmbier, an American college student brutally tortured and killed by the North Korean regime last year. His father, Fred, was a guest of Pence’s at the Olympics, and was present also at the State of the Union.

WaPo wasn’t an outlier.

CNN posted a column with the headline “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics.”

The NBC Olympics Twitter account was captivated by the synchronized red-clad dancing and singing of North Korea’s cheerleaders during competitions, tweeting a video of the group with the caption “this is so satisfying to watch.”





Would it be as satisfying to watch if viewers were aware of the torture and death that would await any of those cheerleaders and their families were they to attempt to defect while in South Korea? Would we be so enthralled with the moves if we knew the fate of anyone who makes the mistake of not delivering a perfect performance in the stands, let alone what may happen to those in competition if they don’t come home with a medal?

Perhaps it’s easier to not think about such things.

But think about it we must. There are some in the media so consumed with their rage against President Trump and his administration, they’re willing to not only whitewash the brutality of the North Korean government but promote the idea that it is somehow better than our own.





New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer tweeted the CNN column with the caption “Do you realize how massively you have to f–k up so that Kim Jong Un’s family looks good by comparison? But Trump & Pence have pulled it off.”

Not everyone was fooled into parroting propaganda. MSNBC host Willie Geist tweeted, “I can report South Koreans here in PyeongChang are not as enthralled with Kim Yo Jong and the North Korean cheerleaders as it seems some media are back home. Something about N.K. killing, starving, imprisoning its people while threatening South Korea with nuclear annihilation.”

Indeed. One does not have to be a fan of the Trump administration to realize just how misguided it is to give a brutal dictator and his ruling family attaboys like they’re pussyhat-wearing members of the anti-Trump #resistance. The resistance in North Korea, after all, is treated a bit differently.





Speaking of which: Recently there was a North Korean spectator worthy of our admiration at a major event — the State of the Union. The North Korean Ji Seong-ho, a defector living in South Korea.

Inexplicably, just a few weeks after the president told Seong-ho’s story, which included having his limbs run over by a train while scavenging for coal to try to feed his family, the same media that reported on his triumph are whitewashing the regime that tortured Ji’s father to death when he was caught trying to defect.

The picture of North Korean triumph is not a member of the Kim family giving our vice president “side-eye,” nor is it singing cheerleaders in the stands of the Olympics. It’s that of Ji Seong-ho holding the wooden crutches he used to escape over thousands of miles, across China and Southeast Asia, over his head in the US Capitol, after being honored by the president of the United States for his courage.





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