One of the primary aims of North Korea’s propaganda machine is to show its founder Kim Il-sung and current leader Kim Jong-il as all-knowing, parent-like (and at times god-like) figures who devote themselves entirely to bettering the lives of every citizen of the state.

Kim Il-sung, known as the "Great Leader" is also the eternal president of the state formed at the start of the Cold War. His son Kim Jong-il, who took over when his father died in 1994, is known as the "Dear Leader."

The reality of course is quite different. While the Kim family basks in riches, North Koreans are some of the poorest people in North Asia, who are threatened with famine due to a lack of food in a state that several have criticised for having one of the world’s worst human rights records.

North Korea's state media from time to time runs stories about events that had taken place several years ago, even decades sometimes, to reinforce the message that its leaders have shown great concern for all the people.

Here is a story that came out this week about a visit state founder Kim Il-sung made to a cabbage patch nearly three decades ago.

    Pyongyang, October 12 (KCNA) -- President Kim Il-sung gave field
guidance to the Oryu Co-op Farm, Sadong District, Pyongyang one day in June
Juche 63 (1974).
    He went to a cabbage field where the cabbage grew well.
    He stepped into the field regardless of muddy ground with a bright smile on his face. Suddenly he stooped himself to see a head of cabbage carefully. Those accompanying him turned their doubtful eyes to the cabbage.
    Its leaves had only fine luster.
     After a while the President asked a farm official whether the cabbage had been hit by hailstones.
     At that moment the official was very surprised.
     Actually the cabbages had suffered a slight damage from hail when young.
    However, the cabbages were unusually in good condition so that it was difficult to find the marks of damage.
     The President found out instantly the marks that even the peasants and experts could hardly do.
     The officials were deeply moved by his extraordinary observation.

(Photo: North Koreans offer flowers to a statue of state founder Kim Il-sung to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the founding of the state, in Pyongyang September 9, 2009, in this picture released by North Korea's official news agency KCNA.)

Photo:A compilation by Reuters of pool photographs and images provided by North Korea's KCNA news agency showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from 2004 to 2009. The photograph in the lower right was released this week by KCNA

By Jon Herskovitz

The image the world once had of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, with a trademark paunch, platform shoes and a bouffant hair-do, is gone and may never come back. He has now become a gaunt figure with thinning hair who has trouble walking in normal shoes, let alone ones with heels 8-10 centimetres (3-4 inches) high like he used to wear.

A look at photographs the North’s official media has released of Kim over the past few months indicate he is not a healthy man. There has been an enormous amount of speculation about what is wrong with Kim, 67, including a report from South Korean TV network YTN this week that he has life-threatening pancreatic cancer.

Kim’s health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the highly secretive North and his actual condition is likely known by a handful of people in his inner circle who risk death or prison camp for themselves and their families if they ever whisper a word about Kim’s problems.

It is a state crime in North Korea to make any comment that questions Kim’s god-like status in the communist dynasty he has ruled since 1994 when his father and state founder Kim Il-sung died.

The most likely way that the outside world will ever receive any reliable information about Kim’s health is if his hermit state invites in foreign doctors to treat him. This appears to have happened about a year ago when he was widely suspected of suffering a stroke. U.S. and South Korean intelligence sources were then able to leak to the media information about what was ailing Kim.

Intelligence sources Reuters spoke to in Seoul would not confirm the latest reports of pancreatic cancer. They did agree on one thing, Kim is still sick.

Kim’s declining health has led to questions in the outside world if the man known at home as the “Dear Leader” still has his iron grip on power over the state he and his father have run since its inception more than 60 years ago.

Within North Korea, images of a weary Kim can actually help him win support among the public.

The North’s state propaganda has built an image of Kim as a person who works tirelessly to better his struggling state. The North's propaganda says Kim gets little sleep as he travels the country by day and forms its policies at night.

Kim rarely is seen in state media presiding over major state functions or greeting foreign dignitaries. That is mostly left to Kim Yong-nam, the North’s nominal number two leader and its head of state.

If Kim Jong-il looks weak and sickly, it arouses sympathy and support among the North Korean public who feel he has put his own well being at risk working for them.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will likely be more speculation as to what is physically wrong with Kim. Some of the reports will be more reliable than others. But the actual state of Kim’s health will not likely be known until a time the foreign doctors visit again or those nearest Kim feel safe to reveal the secret.

    By Rob Taylor
  

  “43 percent nasty” read posters dotting the press wing of Australia’s parliament this week under a photo of a beaming Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, pointing readers to a more benign 5 percent-strength beer on sale at a nearby news studio.
    The quip drew on a poll finding near one-in-two voters believe the boyish-looking Rudd has a nasty side, echoing other recent surveys showing the centre-left leader’s meteoric popularity is sliding back from a year of levels “with the gods” .
    The beer plug perhaps helps explain a bizarre and sudden switch in Rudd’s technocratic speaking style to a bush slang which has left even Australians bewildered as, with his usual obsessiveness, Rudd works hard to reconnect.

Photo: Rudd at the Asia Security Conference in Singapore, May 29, 2009/Reuters 

 "Fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate . . . It's chalk and cheese . . . Fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate . . . Well, again, fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate," the Mandarin-speaking former diplomat said with “ticking clock” monotony in a television interview this week which raised eyebrows nationally.
    Compare that to equally incomprehensible, but slang-free, comments by Rudd in Britain last year while meeting foreign leaders over climate change.
    "The parallel ideological synergies, vis-a-vis the development opportunity momentum in our own constituencies … that's where the low-hanging fruit lies," he said as attending journalists shook their heads.
    In the United States, Rudd spoke at the prestigious Brookings Institution of “a complimentarity that could be developed further in the direction of some short of conceptual synthesis”.
    Australians can be forgiven for wondering who their prime minister really is, with the question having added resonance amid a swirl of talk that Rudd could call early elections to overcome an upper house Senate currently giving Labor nightmares.
    “Will the real Kevin Rudd please stand up,” former conservative opposition leader John Hewson demanded on national television on Friday.
    Rudd was a virtual unknown outside the corridors of parliament when he led his Labor Party out of near 12 years in opposition and chronic leadership instability to a sweeping election triumph in November 2007.
    Rudd came to lead then-opposition Labor in late 2006 as almost last leadership man standing and since election his popularity has been at record highs. His standing belies the “Dr Death” nickname Rudd earned while cutting a swathe through staff numbers as a top bureaucrat in Queensland state in the early 1990s.
    But that began to downshift in April when stories emerged of Rudd’s temper and control obsession -- which political insiders have known of for years – boiling over at a air force stewardess he reduced to tears over food choice while on a VIP flight.
    Since then Rudd’s popularity, while still strong, has fallen from high 70s to around 58 percent in the closely-watched Newspoll series.
    “Rudd's whole life is an artifice. With his blond hair, round face, round glasses
and wholesome values, he would have us believe he's the Milky Bar Kid,” senior writer Ross Fitzgerald wrote in the Australian newspaper this month, comparing Labor’s star to a popular children’s chocolate bar character.
    “As the public is starting to realise, the real Rudd has more in common with Dr
Death than the carefully-crafted public persona of the Milky Bar Kid,” Fitzgerald said.
    “Strewth! There is now a Kevin Rudd for every occasion, and the only version of the Prime Minister that's missing is one that's real,” wrote conservative Herald Sun newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt after Rudd’s stream of sauce bottle slang.
    Speech experts have blamed Rudd's chameleon switch on his advisors trying to better reach ordinary voters, particularly swing-vote workers in crucial regional seats and suburban fringes, often ill at ease with Rudd’s natural intellectualism.
    But commentators, and the public, see the transition as far from smooth, raising questions on if it could actually harm Rudd in future opinion polling, and ultimately an election.
    Others say its shows a country and its leader unsure of their identity, torn between sophisticated city dwellers and a more insular retreat to nationalist symbols and protectionism among voters in regional areas.
    “While some of us have drifted off to lattes, designer wear and a taste for cosmopolitan things, others have retreated to the comfort of flags on our utes (SUVs) and Southern Cross tattoos,” the Courier Mail newspaper said.
    “In all fairness, it must be hard for any moderately intelligent Australian political leader to hit exactly the right note with his or her public persona in this shifting landscape that is our national character,” the paper said.
    So far Rudd is not retreating from the barrage of criticism and has even poked fun at himself and protagonists at a business power lunch in Sydney on Thursday, drawing laughter from those assembled.
    Channeling his inner aussie once more, Rudd called on media commentators to give him a "fair crack of the whip" and not "come the raw prawn".
     Does that leave you confused? Then spare a thought for wondering Australians as they await opinion testing of Rudd new style during a bruising parliamentary session over the next fortnight that could yet lead to surprise early elections!

I first visited China in June 1997.  It was eight years after the Tiananmen crackdown, weeks before the Hong Kong Handover back to China marking the end of British rule, and over a decade before the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was a family trip — my parents were looking forward to a college reunion with classmates they hadn’t seen in decades and I had just finished my second year of university. I was looking forward to finally seeing the place I’d heard so much about.

Born and raised in Canada, I grew up listening to stories of the past — lessons in history, humanity, tragedy and survival. And like many children of immigrant families, there is a constant search for a balance and a place between the different worlds that shape our identity.

(Caption: Neon lights from skyscraper and 1997 Handover signs cast a glow over Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and the extension of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (R, foreground) in this long exposure zoom photograph.  Picture taken June 21, 1997. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez)

Over the years I’ve witnessed a dramatic change in my parents’ attitude toward China. For them, the changes in China since they left — over 45 years ago for my father and 35 years ago for my mother — have been beyond anything they could have imagined in their lifetime.

Born just before Japan invaded China in 1937, my parents were children during the Sino-Japanese War and teenagers when Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Over the next 25 years, the dramatic upheavals, failures and deaths from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution spared no one.

In the spring of 1952, my grandfather was falsely accused of corruption and was executed about a month later. He was posthumously cleared and declared a victim of the anti-corruption movement at the time.

The years passed, my parents married and had a daughter.

My father, who went abroad to study in 1962, was one of the last to leave before China closed its doors to the outside world. My mother stayed behind but was isolated and persecuted in revolutionary meetings and posters that denounced her “foreign” connections. My grandmother — already nearly 60 years old — was sent to a labour camp for several years. The education system in China came to a halt for roughly a decade and many of my parents’ younger cousins were part of that “lost generation”. Their stories are by no means unique, merely an example of experiences shared by an entire generation of Chinese. They were among the lucky ones. Others suffered much harsher persecution and many lost their lives.

Twelve years passed before my parents reunited again in Canada. When my mother finally left in 1974, she was among the early handful to leave after China’s doors cracked open again. My sister joined my family four years later.

China was changing fast, but not fast enough in 1989.

When the Tiananmen protests erupted in April of that year, my cousin (who prefers to remain anonymous) was a student at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Nearly everyone attended the protests at one point or another, he said, and during its relatively peaceful early days, the students found it “fun” to be part of the gathering crowds.

(Caption: Crowds of jubilant students surge through a police cordon before pouring into Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 during a pro-democracy demonstration. REUTERS/Stringer)

The students leading the demonstrations weren’t always particularly well liked, he recalled, “but they were supported because no one else had the interest to stand up, because we never thought students would be able to win.”

Unlike Beijing’s media crackdown around sensitive events and anniversaries today, what was unfolding in the capital at the time was no secret. “The [domestic] media covered everything and was on the students’ side. People were unhappy about their lives, so they were happy to see the students fight with the government,” my cousin, who now lives in Canada, said.

After more than a month of demonstrations, many of the university students had lost interest and were more worried with having to go back to class.

(Caption: A captured tank driver is helped to safety by students as the crowd beats him June 4, 1989. REUTERS/File)

“Most of the people I know didn’t go onto the street any more since late May,” he said. The dark turn in Tiananmen Square took him and others by surprise.

Thousands of miles away in Canada, my parents were rivetted to the television as networks continuously broadcasted the events unfolding in their homeland. I had just turned 13, and was more disturbed by my parents unusual display of emotion than what was happening on TV in a place I’d never been and over issues I didn’t really understand.

(Caption: Student protesters arriving at Tiananmen Square to join other pro-democracy demonstrators, ride pass the portrait of late chairman Mao Zedong. Picture taken May 1989. REUTERS/File)

Ask anyone in China today and they will tell you things have completely changed in the last 20 years — almost exponentially so in some cases — for better and for worse, depending on who you ask.

Construction abounds everywhere and skyscrapers are built with unimaginable speed.

For the tens of millions of Chinese living in cities, the quality of life has transformed dramatically: First came household appliances like televisions. Now everyone wants a car. The new-found affluence means being able to go on vacation or even having a different cell phone for every day of the week. The chasm between the middle class — let alone the super wealthy — and the poor is mind-boggling.

(Caption: Fireworks explode during the closing ceremony in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 24, 2008. The stadium is also known as the Bird’s Nest. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay)

The first generation of the one child policy — infamously nicknamed “Little Emperors” — are now adults, and for many, politics holds little interest.

“People do not really care too much about [Tiananmen] anymore, especially the younger generations,” my cousin said. There are bigger problems facing the country now than June 4 (as the Tiananmen crackdown is known in Chinese).

There are local bursts of labor unrest, concerns about food and product safety and corruption is rampant in nearly all spheres and levels of life — something that was almost non-existent in the 1980s.

(Caption: A bride poses as pigeons fly during a pre-wedding photo shoot at a park in Beijing July 25, 2008. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV)

“If June 4 didn’t end in that way, China might have had a better chance to become a nicer country than what it is nowadays. It closed the door of political reformation but opened the door to all kinds of corruption as a compensation,” my cousin said. He left in the mid 1990s, but still maintains close ties to China.

“People in China are not very happy with what is happening in the country. Although they don’t care about June 4 anymore, it could become a trigger. That’s why the government is still very nervous.”

For a government that believes stability — social, economic, political — is paramount above all else, tightening security, clamping down on the Internet (even if it isn’t always that hard to circumvent) and television access from Hong Kong during sensitive events have become routine.

But my parents are pragmatic. Their experiences have shown how revolutions can create chaos and extremes. They want calm and peace and see the most effective change coming through natural, rather than forced progress. My father openly admits that now “we only see the good side” and that “the past has been forgiven.” He calls the changes in China a miracle.

Fed on a regular diet of CCTV (the official Central China Television), some may say my parents are being influenced by the powerful propaganda machine of the Chinese government. That may be true, but for them, there is also a sense of pride and optimism that a country that has seen so much suffering has come so far in such a short period of time. They go back annually now and witness the changes from year to year. They are not blind to the concern my cousin and others like him express, but it doesn’t dampen their hope.

(Caption: A young girl waves a Chinese flag as she and other school children wait for the arrival of Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Macau airport December 19, 2004. REUTERS/Anat Givon/Pool)

I spent a year working at a university in China in 2002. With the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown looming, I wanted to solicit some thoughts from my former students. Unusually — but perhaps not surprisingly in retrospect — I did not hear back. I did hear from friends who are currently studying abroad. The following views are from one 27-year-old originally from Fujian province, who came two years ago to do a Master’s degree in Canada. Anonymity was requested.

Caption: Undergraduates stand in front of a Chinese national flag after three minutes of mourning for Sichuan earthquake victims at Fudan University in Shanghai May 12, 2009. REUTERS/Aly Song

*****

Q: What are your thoughts on June 4th?

My knowledge about June 4th is from a three-hour documentary called Tiananmen. I know it’s definitely illegal in mainland China but these things always appeal to college students. I admire the courage of the protesters and their passion for this country. It’s quite difficult for me to imagine people acting the same nowadays. On the other hand, I don’t think those protests were well-organized,  and things seemed to be out of control when they were close to the end … Chaos won’t do any good to this country. We all know that China’s political system is not good, but what is better?

Q: How do you see life in China now?

Life is better, at least for people living in cities. The widespread use of computers and the Internet make it possible for us to find out hidden facts. Although the government has set up the Golden Shield Project [sometimes better known as the Great Firewall of China],  one doesn’t need to be a computer science expert to figure out how to deal with it.

Caption: Job-seekers visit booths of companies at a job fair held for graduates in Changchun, Jilin province, November 22, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer

But it seems that nowadays most people — and frankly speaking, myself included — care more about how to make life better than things such as democracy. Maybe it’s because most Chinese are still poor. Maybe it’s because of the way we were educated. Sometimes we college students do talk about the “lack of democracy”, but I guess most of us do not have much of an idea about what democracy really means. According to our textbook, the communist style is the only true democracy in the world, though most Chinese students just say this to pass the exam. Our government seems to be more open than before, but you can still catch the smell of autocracy everywhere. For instance, college students are not allowed to have a valid ID on their university BBS (bulletin board system) without reporting their true name to the network administrator. This makes it easy for them to track who said what in case there are “improper” political concerns on the BBS.

Q: How do you see China’s future?

I’ve seen enough trouble with these “one-child” generations, but I still believe the new generations are capable of making our country better, both in economy and politics. We’re better educated, and have more opportunities to learn from the outside world compared to our parents’ generation. For me, the most impressive part of the younger generations is that most of them know how to think independently and question instead of merely accepting what they’re told.

I do wish the day will come, however, when we Chinese people don’t need to ask before an interview, “Hi, is this an anonymous one?”

Caption: A Chinese honor guard is entangled in his flag during a welcoming ceremony for Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak outside the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square in Beijing June 3, 2009. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause

                                              By Jon Herskovitz

North Korea says somewhere up in the sky, a satellite it launched at the weekend is beaming to earth two revolutionary paeans: "Song of General Kim Il-sung" for the founder of the reclusive state and "Song of General Kim Jong-il," for the son who succeeded him when he died.

U.S. and South Korean officials said the North Korean rockets did not send anything into space and all pieces of the rocket crashed into the sea, including the claimed satellite, which might have been North Korea's oversized attempt to replicate an iPod.

The North Korean report was a a bit of a blast from the past because North Korea made a similar claim in 1998 that it had sent a satellite into orbit playing the exact same two songs.

There is far more to North Korea's hit parade of songs than the two homilies it said were aboard its rocket. This is a country where soldiers sing, farmers sing, the hundreds of thousand gather in the centre of the capital Pyongyang to dance in special days and a refined teenage girl always has her accordion ready to play a tune.

The North Korea songbook is diverse. It has the dance number "Let's Dash Forward to Build a Great Prosperous and Powerful Nation". It has a tune for choral groups called "May the Song of a Happy Soldier Reverberate Far and Wide," and it has a children's song called Generalissimo Kim Il-sung Danced With Us." Here are the lyrics as translated into English by the North:
On the New Year's,
We danced together hand in hand
We danced out of our wish for his pleasure
The Generalissimo danced with us
Out of his wish for our happy future.
His parental love for us
Moved us to tears.
Our respect and filial devotion are growing.
The Generalissimo danced with us.

I saw this song performed about a year ago at the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace when I went to Pyongyang for the New York Philharmonic concert. The school is dedicated to the performing arts and the children, many still of primary school age, sang and danced their way through songs such as "Jingle Bells" and "We are Faithful Only to Kim Jong-il."

When they grow older, the North Korean song book awaits them. Here is a top 10 list in no particular order of North Korea's greatest hits:

* "Song of Defending Homeland"
* "The Ten-point Programme of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland"
* Let's Dash Forward to Build a Great Prosperous and Powerful Nation"
* Let's Hold Higher Rifle of Working Class"
* "Hopeful Is the Future of Us under the Care of the General"
* "May the Playing of My Accordion Resound Forth"
* "Song of the Coastal Artillery Women"
* "We Will Defend the Headquarters of Revolution with Our Lives"
* "Our General is Best"
* "We Have Planted Apple Trees on Mountains"

Perhaps, the next time North Korea attempts to launch a satellite, it might want to load a few of these tunes in order to expand its repertoire.

{Photos of Kim Jong-il with  with scientists and engineers involved in a rocket launch and a protest in Seoul against the launch]