North Korea's Kim Jong-un makes rare new year speech

[Bosonic]

Source: BBC

The North Korean leader has delivered a new year's message on state TV, the first such broadcast for 19 years.

Kim Jong-un, in power since 2011, spoke of the need to improve the economy and also to reunify the Koreas, warning that confrontation only led to war.

The speech came less than a month after the conservative Park Geun-hye was elected president of South Korea.

In 1994, Mr Kim's grandfather, Kim Il-sung, spoke on radio and TV. His son, Kim Jong-il rarely spoke in public.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20880301

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[secondwind]

1. He looks so alone and lost up there......

[Diclotican]

3. secondwind

secondwind

It is alone on the top - specially in country like North Korea where the leader really is alone - on the top...

Diclotican

[AnnieBW]

15. He's so ronery

Just like his Dad...

[craigmatic]

2. I don't see how people still consider North Korea a communist country. It's a monarchy with a red

flag.

[Angleae]

10. Because the NK govt owns everything.

Communism is mainly an economic system, not a political system.

[craigmatic]

13. it's a religion, economic system, and political system. the party is the mechanism which works the

economics and makes state ownership possible.

[babydollhead]

4. sexiest man alive...

“And that’s the quality that makes him the sort of man women want, and men want to be. He’s a real hunk with real intensity who also knows how to cut loose and let his hair down.” the onion

[UnrepentantLiberal]

11. He's a sexy sexy dictator.

[slackmaster]

5. I didn't know NK used the Gregorian calendar

[Diclotican]

6. slackmaster

slackmaster

Most country do use the gregorian calendar - some doesn't do it in church dealing - but for all purposes, the gregorian calendar is the one been used by most of the world.. I bet Pope Gregory XIII would have been amused if he know that most of the world are using his invention so many years after...

Diclotican

[Posteritatis]

7. They use that calendar but officially have a different zero point for the year

Government documents date things from Kim Il-Sung's birth, so King Jong-un's announcement was ringing in the year 102, not 2014.

[slackmaster]

9. Yeah, I had a dim recollection of some date related to the late Great Leader

But in the interest of commerce they have to do business in the calendar that everyone else uses.

[Adsos Letter]

8. "The message coincides with UN Security Council discussions on how to punish Pyongyang

...for a recent long-range rocket launch."

[UnrepentantLiberal]

12. And here I thought he was sincere.

[davidpdx]

14. Given Park Geun-hye was elected as the next president

I am expecting things will get worse. It was bad enough with Lee Myung bak (ferretface) was elected, but now that the dictator's daughter is president the North will go off the deep end.