North Korea Responds to Stupid World Net Daily Article, But Response May Be Worse

Impact

Finally! Everyone, you can relax. We can stop holding our collective breath. North Korea was NOT behind the terrorist attacks in Boston last week. Phew.

Oh wait! That’s right. My bad — nobody actually thought that.

Except for these guys.

World Net Daily, a self-proclaimed “independent conservative news website with an emphasis on aggressive investigative reporting and gossip” notorious for its outlandish conspiracy theories and offensive articles, was back at it again this past week after the Boston Bombings. Staff writer and former Senior Security Policy Analyst for the Secretary of Defense F. Michael Maloof published an article on the slanderous online publication linking North Korea to the Boston Marathon attacks, citing “anonymous analysts” as reference for the suspicion (really?).

The article, while probably generally disregarded or, more probably, unknown to most of its intended U.S. audience, generated a response from Kim Jong Un to assure the U.S. and the rest of the international community that North Korea “has consistently maintained the stand of opposing all forms of terrorism.”

This isn’t the first time an American article of very little magnitude has been misinterpreted or misconstrued by an Asian country, but the rhetoric that came with North Korea’s response this time may prove to be even more concerning than its misunderstanding of the otherwise marginal article.

There’s no question that North Korea has ramped up its war rhetoric in recent months, with the U.S. emerging as a primary target for the communist country. Consequently, in its response to the World Net Daily remarks, the Korean Central News Agency felt compelled to add that North Korea would of course not hesitate to wage terrible wars upon the evil American imperialists, but just not in secret as the WND accusation suggests. Comforting.

In the end, the movements made by both parties in this past week — the WND writer and the North Korean responders — were equally destructive and narcissistic. One can only hope that neither act will serve as justification or rationalization for more outlandish antagonistic rhetoric between the American and North Korean actors. As Washington Post Foreign Affairs Blogger Max Fisher astutely points out, North Korea seized this opportunity given to them by WND to develop its propaganda campaign of evoking fear in its people of an impending invasion, which then, when the invasion never comes, will be twisted to prove that the great leader Kim Jong Un successfully scared away the big bad imperialists. Similarly, WND correspondents used their publication to provoke fear in their readers, which would then translate into nationalism and pride in our American-defense system.

Ugly, strategic acts on both sides, really. And they're probably both getting more attention then they deserve for this meaningless back-and-forth rambling. So, I’ll stop adding to their attention and end this article here.