Ramana - before dismissing Hecker "types" with statements like above, I wish you (and others) really read such article(s) for the useful technical information they contain.ramana wrote:...
...Hecker type guys are to lull the gullible public wherever they are.
...The article is psyops ..
Ramana - Did you read any of the articles posted? If not please do read them. The google technical talk I posted is also a good resource.ramana wrote:OK for sake of the unitiated what technical info does Mr Hecker provide about the NoKo only.
Thanks, ramana
Interesting that Dr Hecker does not recognize any D-T facilitites in Noko depite his over six visits. And the last report was dated Nov 2010 after NoKo announced achieving fusion.N. Korea likely to test fusion-boosted fission bomb able to reach U.S
By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent
North Korea's next nuclear test could enable it to use a smaller, more sophisticated bomb mounted on a long-range ballistic missile to strike the U.S. mainland, Japanese government sources said.
Pyongyang will likely experiment with a fusion-boosted fission bomb in a "high-level" nuclear test it said would target the United States, according to the sources.
A fusion-boosted fission bomb induces nuclear fusion with slight nuclear fission, enabling more efficient nuclear fission. A fusion-boosted fission bomb can therefore be made about one-fourth the size of an ordinary nuclear bomb.
Either uranium or plutonium can be used to develop the bomb.
North Korea said Jan. 24 it will carry out a third nuclear test in opposition to a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the launch of a long-range ballistic missile--that Pyongyang claimed to be a satellite--in December.
In a statement, the country's National Defense Commission said the "high-level" nuclear test, as well as the long-range rockets North Korea plans to fire, will be targeted at the United States, which it declares its enemy.
The Japanese government has concluded that North Korea is ready to test a fusion-boosted fission bomb, and sources said Pyongyang will be able to put it to practical use after a single test.
Japan has been monitoring North Korea's nuclear development program with the United States and other countries. It has analyzed nuclear-related materials North Korea has imported and nuclear-related facilities it has constructed or developed.
While North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006 resulted in an explosion equivalent to less than 1 kiloton of trinitrotoluene (TNT), the second test in 2009 generated an explosion of several kilotons.
In May 2010, North Korea also announced it had succeeded in achieving nuclear fusion.
According to Akihiro Kuroki, a managing director at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, a fusion-boosted fission bomb uses substantially smaller amounts of explosives and buffer materials than an ordinary nuclear bomb.
North Korea is believed to possess an atomic bomb similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, which weighed about five tons.
A successful test of a fusion-boosted fission bomb is expected to enable the reclusive communist country to reduce it to a little more than 1 ton.
North Korea is also developing an improved version of the Taepodong-2 long-range ballistic missile, which will be able to carry a nuclear bomb of between 800 kilograms and 1 ton.
North Korea is believed to have studied other countries' development of fusion-boosted fission bombs.
The United States first succeeded in testing an ordinary nuclear bomb in 1945 and is said to have developed a fusion-boosted fission bomb in 1956.
By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent
Any update in any science magazine about this one since last one year?
Isotopes hint at North Korean nuclear test
Data suggest that the country has experimented with a fusion boost to its fission weapons.
Geoff Brumfiel 03 February 2012Article toolsPrint
North Korea may have conducted two covert nuclear weapons tests in 2010, according to a fresh analysis of radioisotope data.
The claim has drawn scepticism from some nuclear-weapons experts.
It might also explain a bizarre statement issued by North Korea's state news agency in May 2010, which said that the country had achieved nuclear fusion. The news was largely ridiculed in the South Korean and Western media — but it was not so quickly dismissed by the small circle of experts who devote their careers to identifying covert nuclear tests. South Korean scientists had detected a whiff of radioactive xenon at around that time, hinting at nuclear activity in its northern neighbour, which had already tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.
In August 2010, experts meeting in Vienna informally discussed the South Korean data and measurements from an international network of radioisotope-monitoring stations operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which supports an as-yet-unratified treaty that seeks to ban nuclear-weapons testing.
Among those experts was Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric scientist at the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Stockholm. When they looked at the monitoring data from Russian and Japanese stations close to North Korea, "the conclusion from everyone was, 'Hell, we cannot explain them.'",De Geer recalls (see 'Nuke watching').
Unwilling to let the matter rest, De Geer took the radioisotope data and compared them with the South Korean reports, as well as meteorological records. After a year of work, he has concluded that North Korea carried out two small nuclear tests in April and May 2010 that caused explosions in the range of 50–200 tonnes of TNT equivalent. The types and ratios of isotopes detected, he says, suggest that North Korea was testing materials and techniques intended to boost the yield of its weapons. His paper will appear in the April/May issue of the journal Science and Global Security.
Isotope detective
De Geer’s theory rests on the detection of several short-lived radioisotopes that are generated during man-made nuclear processes.
Ratios of xenon-133 and xenon-133m (a higher-energy, ‘metastable’ form of the isotope) point towards an explosion in mid-April. The ratio of more short-lived isotopes — barium-140 and its radioactive decay product lanthanum-140 — pointed to a second test around 11 May. Indeed, the presence of barium-140 can be explained only by a sudden nuclear event, he says. "In Sweden, we saw this kind of thing decades ago from Russian underground tests." Ratios of other xenon isotopes also point to a fast nuclear reaction that involved uranium. Until now, North Korea's programme was thought to be based on plutonium, although rumours of a covert uranium programme have persisted for years.
De Geer speculates that North Korea is trying to build a more powerful bomb. Advanced nuclear weapons often have a small quantity of the heavier isotopes of hydrogen, known as deuterium and tritium. When a warhead detonates, it squeezes the deuterium and tritium until they fuse together. The fusion reactions release neutrons that in turn boost the fission process, increasing its yield. De Geer says that low-yield tests of the sort he suspects took place can be a first step in building a tritium-boosted weapon.
Frank von Hippel,a physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey, says that De Geer’s analysis provides convincing evidence of some kind of nuclear fission explosion. But he does not agree that it necessarily involved two weapons tests, or a fusion boost. "I hope that other experts will analyse it and see whether they can put forward alternative, simpler explanations," he says.
{This guy high priest of NPAs and is violently anti-India!!! Look how reluctant he is to even entertain the idea that NoKo has doen something that rubbishes the monitoring system the guys dreamed uop under the CTBT!}
Others remain deeply sceptical that the tests took place at all. Most troubling is the lack of any seismic vibrations to support the radioisotope data, according to Ola Dahlman, a retired geophysicist who spent years working with the test-ban group's detection network. The Korean peninsula is wired to spot the tiniest shake from a nuclear explosion, Dahlman says. "It should have been able to see something."
{Recall the CTBT was to be able to detect low yields explosions of ~0.25 kt. From what DeGeer wrote the NoKo tests were belwo this level and almost close to the sub-critical only they were not. Hence the reliance on detection of fission isotopes. To demand corroborating seismic data is ridiculous when the yielkd numbers are so low. Its tantamount to obfuscation just as the South Africa/Isarael test was pooh-poohed in 1979 as a lightning in order to avoid dealing with the consequences. IOW they have doen this before.}
Far from conclusive
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia non-proliferation programme at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, agrees. De Geer’s hypothesis "doesn't feel right to me", he says. The monitoring system alone simply can't prove that some other sort of nuclear incident, such as a reactor accident, wasn't responsible. Dozens of reactors are currently operating in East Asia, he says, and without seismic data or on-the-ground inspections it is impossible to verify where the isotopes come from. "You need other data."
{NoKo has intent and capability. To demand more data when confronted with such a combination is suicidal.}
De Geer’s arguments rest in part on data collected by the CTBTO’s network of sensors, but the organization itself has never officially analysed all these data, according to Lassina Zerbo, director of the data centre in Vienna that handles the sensor network.Zerbo says that although the data are processed and shared quickly after such an event, formal analyses are done only if requested by the CTBTO's member states. None of the 182 signatories to the treaty ever made such a request, he says. Zerbo adds that the organization does not have access to the South Korean data mentioned in the paper, which was collected by that nation’s network of monitoring stations.
{So pass the buck around. How were the local NPAs in India claiming faith in International instituions!}
De Geer hopes that his paper will spur debate and encourage another look at the mysterious emissions. Zerbo says that it may indeed prompt scientists in CTBTO member states to re-examine the data — and then possibly to ask the CTBTO to conduct a formal analysis.
Amber G. wrote:Ramana - Yes. (How much.. will obviously depend on the design/yield/leakage-venting from ground etc)..I would guess one of the reason one would look at Xe is it remains for a long time.. ( for example I-135 half life is rather short .. so the measurement is more time sensitive)
FWIW:
Few things to note: (and here may be others could do more research/goggle for other events)
- Fusion (or boosted fission device) is not relevant. (You need fission to produce Xe)
Other Items which could produce elevated (News reports say 8x times normal) Xe:
- Release/dumping of (medical) radio isotopes (Are Hospitals around the area disposes isotopes? - accidental dumping etc)?
- Reprocessing facilities... (Did they really closed all the operations or lying about it .. Believe they had some which they promised to close down a few years ago)
- Starting up (or doing some thing which will vent) of a nuclear (fast breeder type) reactor
Do you have a good link/source which gives more details on numeric data.. (Eg when, how much of Xe etc) which could be taken as reliable?... and also what kind of hospitals/reactors/reprocessing facilities are close by .. are there any report of startup/accidents etc at those?
Thanks for the two links.. I will read them and see if I change my mind (:) ) but in the meanwhile ...ramana wrote:Amber G. wrote:Ramana - Yes. (How much.. will obviously depend on the design/yield/leakage-venting from ground etc)..I would guess one of the reason one would look at Xe is it remains for a long time.. ( for example I-135 half life is rather short .. so the measurement is more time sensitive)
FWIW:
Few things to note: (and here may be others could do more research/goggle for other events)
- Fusion (or boosted fission device) is not relevant. (You need fission to produce Xe)
Other Items which could produce elevated (News reports say 8x times normal) Xe:
- Release/dumping of (medical) radio isotopes (Are Hospitals around the area disposes isotopes? - accidental dumping etc)?
- Reprocessing facilities... (Did they really closed all the operations or lying about it .. Believe they had some which they promised to close down a few years ago)
- Starting up (or doing some thing which will vent) of a nuclear (fast breeder type) reactor
Do you have a good link/source which gives more details on numeric data.. (Eg when, how much of Xe etc) which could be taken as reliable?... and also what kind of hospitals/reactors/reprocessing facilities are close by .. are there any report of startup/accidents etc at those?
AmberG, After two years here is an article on the radio-nuclides found by a Danish scientist.
Needs some academic access!
<snip>
Radionuclide Evidence for Low-Yield Nuclear Testing in North Korea in April/May 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — Even if North Korea follows through with its threat to conduct a third nuclear test, Washington and its allies will have difficulty determining whether the device detonated is made of plutonium or uranium, a prominent American nuclear scientist and South Korean officials said on Tuesday.
Whether North Korea will set off a uranium bomb is a question high on the minds of policy makers and analysts in Northeast Asia. A failure to answer it would complicate their efforts to assess North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
Until a few years ago, North Korea’s atomic bomb fuel had been believed to be composed solely of plutonium gleaned from its small nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of the capital, Pyongyang. That reactor was partially dismantled in 2008 and remains offline after yielding enough plutonium for half a dozen bombs, according to American estimates. Until a new reactor North Korea is building in Yongbyon goes online, its plutonium stockpile is limited.
A uranium detonation, however, would indicate that North Korea might be well on its way to substantially expanding its nuclear arsenal through uranium enrichment, a harder-to-detect means of making bomb fuel. That would also make the North’s nuclear program more menacing, its government probably more recalcitrant and its neighbors more anxious, as seen in South Korea’s recent decision to extend the range of its missiles.
<snip>
But to find out which type of bomb is used, “you have to be very lucky,” said Siegfried S. Hecker, (mentioned in brf) a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and now a professor at Stanford University in California. He was speaking on the sidelines of a forum organized by the South Korean news agency Yonhap and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford.
<snip>
While scientists can determine the size of the explosion from its seismic signals, differentiating between a plutonium bomb and a highly enriched uranium bomb requires quick detection and analysis of the different types of xenon gases produced in an atomic explosion.
“The problem with xenon gases is that 10 to 20 hours after the detonation, it gets extremely difficult to tell their ratio difference between a plutonium and atomic bomb,” (some one is quoting brf
<snip>
I did read this (and the Danish scientist's original paper), and the old posts in brf (including my own comments). I think what I said then still remains valid.ramana wrote: ....
Next report from NAture about one year old todate!!!
Isotopes hint at NoKo test
...
Any update in any science magazine about this one since last one year?
I doubt it made further research.
This source says:Amber G. wrote: - Starting up (or doing some thing which will vent) of a nuclear (fast breeder type) reactor
Hope this is helpful.. Where the Xe came from ..
The last important possibility is a nuclear reactor of one sort or another. It seems that whenever a reactor is started up or the pressure vessel is opened for refueling, gases escape, including xenon. A typical light-water reactor is refueled annually. And given all the power reactors across the Far East, that probably happens around there with some regularity.
All that’s really required to explain the unusual reading at Geojin is for a reactor startup or opening to have occurred within hundreds of miles in the previous week or so. Heck, if you want a specific candidate, Japan’s Monju breeder reactor was restarted on May 6.
To be clear, they do not claim that it definitely was from FBR, they just say it could have been..ramana wrote:To summarize the Xe detected in East Asia was from the Japan Moju FBR restarted on May6th and not a suspected NoKo test.
Thanks for settling this issue.
Wish you had blog to document this.
From above(CNN) -- North Korea's plans for a new nuclear test, like most things that happen inside the reclusive state, are shrouded in mystery. But that's not stopping analysts and officials from making some informed guesses about what's going on.
Why is North Korea planning to conduct a nuclear test?
<snip>
When is it likely to happen?
<snip>
How will other countries know if it has happened?
<snip>
What stage will North Korea's nuclear weapons program be at following a new test?
<snip>
What are the consequences likely to be?
<snip>
In an article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last year, Hecker and another analyst, Frank Pabian, speculated that North Korea could test two devices at the same time, one using plutonium and the other uranium.
"Two detonations will yield much more technical information than one, and they will be no more damaging politically than if North Korea conducted a single test," they wrote.
Some observers have even suggested that Pyongyang could make an early attempt at testing a thermonuclear device, which uses nuclear fusion to create a more powerful explosion. But others say they don't believe the North has that ability within its grasp yet.
In any case, the test is expected to take North Korea closer to having a nuclear weapon it can direct at its enemies. But actually achieving that goal still remains a longer-term effort, according to Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.
"I still think we're years away from North Korea having a capability to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile even to a country as close as Japan or South Korea," Cirincione said recently. "And they're even further away from having a long-range missile that
out of the wood work these guys come out.In any case, the test is expected to take North Korea closer to having a nuclear weapon it can direct at its enemies. But actually achieving that goal still remains a longer-term effort, according to Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.
"I still think we're years away from North Korea having a capability to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile even to a country as close as Japan or South Korea," Cirincione said recently. "And they're even further away from having a long-range missile tha
The South Korean government is under the impression that if North Korea goes ahead with its third nuclear test, it would likely use a small and lightweight nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile. It also appears likely that it will use highly enriched uranium instead of plutonium, which it is difficult to produce more of. Speaking before the National Assembly’s national defense committee on Feb. 6, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Jung Seung-jo raised another possibility: that North Korea could begin developing a hydrogen bomb, a weapon with hundreds of times the force of an atomic bomb.
Nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker {Stanford Prof}, who has visited North Korea on numerous occasions, told Yonhap News in a Feb. 6 interview that the chief aim of the country’s nuclear test was to develop something small and lightweight. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense also has concluded that their goal is to develop something small and light enough to be mounted on a missile. A nuclear device carried by missile is the most deadly of weapons.
The Scud B missile carries a warhead weighing up to 1,000 kg and measuring 90 cm in diameter. .....
. But Hecker was skeptical, saying it would take several launch attempts, and about five years, to develop a functioning ICBM because of the necessary reentry technology. In other words, if North Korea does come up with a lightweight nuclear device, it would be able to launch an armed ICBM toward the continental US in roughly five years.
■ Plutonium? Uranium? Hydrogen?
For its test, North Korea is expected to detonate a device using highly enriched uranium (HEU). The reason for this is its depleted stock of plutonium, which was used for the previous two tests. It is believed to have produced about 50kg of plutonium since 2002 through reprocessing of spent fuel rods, with around 40kg of it left after its two tests. One nuclear bomb requires 6kg of plutonium, which means North Korea could make six to seven of them with its current stores. Its problem is that it won’t be able to produce any more of it in the near term because its reprocessing facilities were disabled in 2008 as part of an agreement reached in the six-party talks.
Instead, it produced another type of weapon through uranium enrichment. When Hecker visited in 2010, North Korean authorities showed him centrifuge facilities in Yongbyon, North Pyongan province, and told him they had 2,000 of the devices. With that equipment, it would be able to produce 40kg of HEU in a year. In other words, it could have as much as 40 to 80kg of it already. This could be used to make two to six devices, since one bomb requires 15 to 20 kg of HEU. Hecker estimated that North Korea already had one or two such devices developed.
Another possibility that has been suggested is that North Korea may detonate both an HEU device and a plutonium device at the same time. Analysts said that Pyongyang’s repeated mention of “qualitatively and quantitatively increasing the nuclear deterrent” may have been a reference not only to the development of lightweight uranium-based weapons, but also to a hydrogen bomb. Speaking before the National Assembly’s national defense committee on Feb. 6, Jung said the military was “not ruling out the possibility that North Korea will test a boosted weapon as the next stage before, a hydrogen bomb using nuclear fusion.” A hydrogen bomb has hundreds of times the force of an atomic weapon.
See the link above for the articleNorth Korea’s recent threat to conduct an underground nuclear weapons test, its third, is provocative enough on its own. The North Korean nuclear weapons program is illegal, dangerous and destabilizing, has been widely condemned by the rest of the world and is even causing some tension (alas, probably relatively minor and temporary tension) in Pyongyang’s all-important relationship with China.
Some analysts fear, though, that an upcoming test could feature a uranium-fueled weapon, rendering it potentially even more provocative. North Korea has in the past used plutonium. Why would the switch to uranium matter? Here are four reasons.
<snip> points raised are:
1) Uranium enrichment is easier to hide. “It doesn’t need a reactor like plutonium, and can be carried out using centrifuge cascades in relatively small buildings that give off no heat and are hard to detect,...
2) Weapons-grade uranium is easier to ship abroad. ...
3) Iran might be able to build a bomb without a nuclear test.
4) North Korea would have two different ways to build a bomb....
On the other side of Asia, the United States' blow-hot, blow-cold crisis with North Korea appears as calm as a dormant volcano, but is liable to erupt at any time without warning. Prior to the US presidential elections in November, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had been stalling for time, hoping perhaps for a John Kerry victory, which could have resulted in direct negotiations with the US. But with a Bush victory, the Korean peninsula is once again headed toward a possible showdown. Here too, the ambiguity about the North's nuclear program has been a big hindrance for the US.
The bone of contention with North Korea is its clandestine uranium-enrichment program, whose existence it denies. The North contends, not too credibly, that it kept to its end of the 1993 framework agreement and therefore deserves direct talks with the US. In addition, the release of news of an earlier secret South Korean nuclear-weapons program (since abandoned), gives the North a much-needed lever. The North's main patron, China, has long demanded to see proof of the uranium program, even though it should know about it for sure. No prizes for guessing who holds the key to the secret door hiding Kim's uranium program - it's A Q Khan again.
..."It's a nuclear test," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "That magnitude and that location -- it's awfully unlikely it's anything else."
In Washington, a senior administration official said the United States was working to confirm a nuclear test....
ShauryaT wrote:NoKo/Pak H-bomb test superior to Indian S-1
Several conclusions in my previous blog (“Rogue Triad and H-Bomb Tests”) have been borne out. According to a source, it is confirmed that what was exploded was a fusion-boosted fission device of Pakistani design that was vetted/refined by Chinese weapons scientists. Officially, South Korean siesmic sensors read 4.7+ on the Richter scale, the US 4.9+, Japanese 5.2+, but the most reliable read is from the Russian station at Petropovlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula nearest to the test site with 5.3-5.5+ Richter. Petropovlovsk also has, according to this source, a radionuclide detection facility. While the Granite stratum of the Hamygeong test site dampened/suppressed the shock waves, the 5.5 on Richter translates into a certifiably estimated 20-30 Kiloton explosion. This, on the face of it, is a better performing design than the S-1 device tested in Pokhran on May 11, 1998. This should worry GOI enough for it to order resumption of N-testing, because now there’s no doubt whatsoever about Pakistan obtaining, centrally with Chinese help and assistance, thermonuclear armaments.
BEIJING — North Korea's latest nuclear test may have stirred alarm in Washington, but its intimidation effect seems to have been lost on much of the Chinese web universe, which largely saw the announcement as a joke. "He's so naughty!" chided one web user, while another suggested that the resulting earthquake came from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un eating too much and falling on his posterior.
It wasn't the first time Kim had been the butt of jokes in China. After North Korea's successful missile launch on Dec. 12, many expressed joy and pride on behalf of the North Korean masses. "The brigade members plowing the hills of Seipo County were so inspired by the successful launch of the second Earth observation satellite that they opened up thousands of hectares of wasteland in just a few days," one message from a popular satirist nicknamed Miss Choi in Pyongyang read, pretending to be oblivious to North Korea's failed rocket launch test in April. "Big Brother [China], please step up your effort, or we will surpass you!"
Liu Bin, a journalist at China's independent-minded newspaper Southern Weekly, told me he is uncomfortable with all the joking around. "What is there to laugh about?" Liu wondered. "Isn't laughing at North Korea like the pot calling the kettle black?"
That's exactly the point. Over the past few years, more than 100 North Korea-related satire accounts have emerged on Sina Weibo, managed by self-proclaimed North Korean patriots. They post messages glorifying the Kim regime in an extravagant propaganda style that invites jeers and ridicules from commenters who may or may not have gotten the joke: The real targets, of course, are China and the Chinese Communist Party.
The most popular account, "Writer Choi Seongho," has 600,000 followers. In his Weibo biography and in his posts, Choi claims to be a North Korean journalist based in China with his heart "tied to Pyongyang"; in a private message, he told me he is a North Korean defector from a "special family" and that he went to high school in China. Whatever the truth, most of his followers probably take him to be Chinese, for he posts hilarious messages in flawless Mandarin, which, while ostensibly mocking North Korea, often make for pitch-perfect satire of China.
After the one-year anniversary of Kim Jong Il's Dec. 17, 2011 funeral, for instance, Choi posted a photo of the weeping crowds with the message: "Could you let me know if there is a second leader in this world that was so beloved by his people?" "Your [leader] was the second, guess who was the first?" a user, catching Choi's allusion to the hysteria that characterized former Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong's funeral in 1976, answered wryly.
After the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Chinese writer Mo Yan in October, Choi wrote: "The Nobel Prize is not a big deal. Starting from next year, North Korea will offer the Kim Jong Il Prize for progressive figures all over the world to compete!" Here was another wry allusion to China: In 2010, immediately after the Nobel committee awarded the Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, an embarrassed and enraged group of patriotic Chinese established their own award. Named the Confucius Peace Prize, it drew mockery in China for choosing Russian President Vladmir Putin as its 2011 recipient. Choi's followers got the joke.
To those who tease him for his hyperbolic patriotism, Choi responds with feigned seriousness: "Watch your tone! The Internet is not a space beyond the law," a reference to the now-notorious title of a December editorial published in The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, that called for stricter Internet censorship. To those who accuse him of propagandizing for the Kim regime, he responds: "My colleague editor Hu in our Hu-Choi editorial department is cursed by netizens all over everyday, but he still posts messages on Weibo with great composure" -- an unmistakable jibe at Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid, and a frequent target of digital slings and arrows on Weibo.
A land that remains stubbornly isolated, perpetually relevant, and eternally weird, North Korea makes an appealing subject for satirists all over the world, from comedian Andy Borowitz, who tweets as @KimJongNumberUn (bio: "I used to be an unemployed twentysomething still living at home. Now I have nuclear weapons. It's all good, yo.") to North Korean propaganda artist-turned-defector Song Byeok, who paints subversive pictures depicting Kim Jong Il as Marilyn Monroe in her famous subway grate scene, or as a loving father surrounded by barefoot, starving children.
In China, however, satirists and the public seem to embrace the subject with particular enthusiasm: Besides Choi, other "North Korean patriots" such as Miss Choi in Pyongyang, Pyongyang Art Troupe Member Kim Ranhui, and Park Chunghwan in Pyongyang have also launched themselves to Weibo fame by professing their undying love for the Great Leader. One of the most watched send-ups of Kim Jong Un, dubbed Fat Kim the Third by web users, is a stand-up routine in which a comedian sharing Kim's physique parades around the stage and complains about territorial disputes. The Chinese public gleefully indulges itself in the thrill of ridiculing the communist dictatorship next door, as China's strict censorship has made it difficult for them even to search for some of their own leaders' names online.
Satirists like Choi acknowledge this psychology and cater their work to it. "I give [the Chinese public] an outlet because I know they need to pour out their feelings to me," Choi told me. "They live under an authoritarian regime in which they will get punished for criticizing their own officials. They won't, however, if they criticize" North Korean leaders.
North Korea today still shares more in common with China than most Chinese would like to admit. In a June 2010 essay titled "Orphan of Asia," Han Han, one of China's most influential social critics, described his feeling toward North Korea as "a straggler looking back sympathetically at someone trailing even further behind." A 2007 film made by Chinese filmmaker Hu Ge named 007 vs. Man in Black has been viewed online 3.7 million times. It tells the story of a secret agent working for a totalitarian state (similar to North Korea) setting out on a mission to procure a bottle of Hennessy XO, supposedly Kim Jong Il's favorite beverage, for the "great king." The agent comes to China, where, motivated by his love for the king and the spirit of self-reliance, he overcomes great difficulties and accomplishes the mission. When he brings the liquor home and serves it, however, the king dies of poisoning, for the alcohol turns out to be an adulterated product sold illegally in the Chinese black market.
In a public sphere as tightly controlled as China's, in which a harmless political parody on Weibo can land a citizen in a month-long detention, North Korea-related satires have opened up precious room for the Chinese public to vent its frustration with own domestic politics. But sometimes, the jokes go too far for nationalist Weibo users. One recent Choi post, for example, seems to have touched a raw nerve of many of his followers. Above a picture of a dilapidated train cart, he wrote: "North Korea did not, and does not plan to build a high-speed rail system, because we do not have billions for them to embezzle," alluding to the gargantuan corruption associated with China's high-speed rail construction project. Some web users scolded: "Get out!" ("My followers are all very patriotic," Choi explained. "I can satirize some bad things, but there is a line I am not allowed to cross. When I crossed that line in their heart, I always just had to delete those messages.")
What makes Choi's job easier is the Chinese media, which sometimes treats North Korea as a respected ally. This can cause embarrassment: In late November, the U.S. satirical newspaper The Onion announced its decision to name Kim Jong Un the "sexiest man alive" for his "devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong, sturdy frame."
Evidently failing to recognize the parody, People's Daily Online, the website affiliated with the Communist Party's official newspaper, endorsed the nomination by citing the Onion article and posting a 55-photograph slide show of Kim Jong Un on its website. Choi rushed to express his support. "The highest commander is much more handsome and fashionable than the aged cadres around him, isn't he?" he said. "Editors at People's Daily Online have spoken the mind of people all over the world!"
