Mick Hartley

If you want to read the lyrics to the new revised Chosun Youth March, go here:

The first verse says, “Let's take splendid steps to gather around General Kim,” the second proclaims, “Let's hold the red flag high and gather around General Kim,” while the last concludes, “Friends, let's join shoulders and gather around General Kim.”

According to North Korean defectors, this song is actually a revision of “Democratic Youth March,” a song composed after the foundation of the North Korean Democratic Youth League on January 17th, 1946.

And now it's been resurrected and updated, so that "General Kim" refers to new fat boy ruler Kim Jong Eun. With tyrants elsewhere ranting delusionally as their house of cards tumbles round them, it's astonishing how this particularly brutal house of cards keeps standing – and that it should do so by recycling the same old Glorious Socialist Fatherland nonsense that was already an anachronism first time around, 65 years ago.

It's information about what's happening elsewhere in the world that will eventually bring about change. But how to get that information across when the Kim dynasty has such a stranglehold on what people see and hear?

Helium balloons to be floated to North Korea will carry propaganda leaflets with news of the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East, a lawmaker said Thursday. The military will also attach clothes and medicine to the balloons, a practice discontinued in April 2000.

The Defense Ministry submitted a report to Future Hope Alliance lawmaker Song Young-sun on Thursday saying the military has sent about 3 million propaganda leaflets since North Korea's shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in October last year, including 400,000 immediately following the attack and 2.4 million since early February.

"The military plans to update its propaganda leaflets by adding news of popular uprisings in Egypt and Libya and also criticizing the hereditary succession under the long-term dictatorship, and distribute them on a large scale," said Song quoting military sources.

Starting this month, it sent over 10,000 items including 14 daily necessities such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, and tissues, as well as underwear, hats and gloves, and medicine such as cold pills, ointment and antiseptic, plus microwaveable instant rice and radios.

Apparently it works:

The best way to reach North Koreans with news about the outside world is propaganda flyers from the South, the head of a defector radio station claimed Monday. Kim Sung-min (50) of Free North Korea Radio on Monday said, "There are no better channels than South Korea's leaflets that deliver accurate news into North Korea's controlled society."

He claimed news about recent uprisings in the Middle Eastern countries will persuade North Koreans to wonder about the state of their own country….

If the best way to reach ordinary North Koreans is by floating balloons over, it suggests what a long way there is to go, and how different North Korea is from Libya. Change will come, but probably not just yet.