Well That's Nice to Hear

Alright, so a piece on Open Radio for North Korea (ORNK) has finally announced that North Korean national football team coach Kim Jong Hun has, to mine and everyone else's great relief, not been sent to a construction site or received any other deplorable punishment for his team's poor showing in South Africa, and is, on the contrary, still in charge.

As Michael Madden put it here, "sometimes a criticism session is just a criticism session."

As per the ORNK piece, translation my own, "North Korea national football team coach Kim Jong Hun is in the middle of training the team at the Escort Bureau-managed Lee Myung Su Sports Complex Football Stadium."

"Kim took personal responsibility for the World Cup result, and offered to resign, but he got one more chance."

Kudos to this piece, "NK’s National Soccer Team Punished for Defeat in South Africa?", which I cannot link but promise was also carried by Open Radio. It got to the bottom of things early doors, and revealed a depth of knowledge clearly absent from the mainstream "quality" dailies (not a charge I am levelling at The Sun, by the by, a paper which can be relied upon to plumb the depths of shoddy journalism on literally any given day);

But the source said, the government will probably not take extreme measures. "Many people believe Kim Jong Il is crazy for soccer, but he's not. He likes soccer because it makes money for him. He likes other entertainment more," said the source.

The soccer team earned at least 1,600 million dollars (18 billion won) by receiving a dividend (at least 900 million dollars), club compensation for the players ($960,000), and the donation from Legea ($490,000).

Since the national soccer team brought a lot of foreign currency into North Korea, the players should be safe, the source said.

This, friends, is how modern North Korea works. What we are left with is another case to file under too few sources, too much gullibility and too great a desire to sell newspapers, it seems.