North Korea just published this list of 310 weird new patriotic slogans. What do they mean?

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If I were someone in the market for too-cryptic-for-squares-like-you T-shirts, this seems like it would be a rich vein of things to print on them.

What do you say to somebody wearing a shirt that says, without any additional comment, “Builders!” or “Plant a large number of flowering and cover plants so that no land is left bare!”?

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Please someone create a twitterbot out of these, PRONTO!!! (Sam, is “pronto” a real word?)

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“May voluptuous millinery protect our wise and patriotic generals from gravity accelerated anvils”

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In the days of Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, there were lots of similar cheesy sounding slogans from those countries too. Communist countries tend to be charmingly un-self-aware in that way.

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They all translate as, “Straighten up and fly right!”

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…and in other news, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea discovers Markov text generation

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I think you missed one:
“Fool the Axis — use Prophylaxis!”

I bet that translates well to your average North Korean.

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Are we all just getting excited about goofily bad translations?

Surely the highlighted line about fragrant seafood isn’t very different in sentiment from the line “…for purple mountain majesties, for amber waves of grain…” from a song that stirs patriotic feelings over here in the USA. Perhaps seafood is as much a part of archetypal North Korean national identity and pride as a farmer’s sunset-lit field of beautiful non-gluten-free grass is over here.

Maybe “America the Beautiful” translates to “Song of Big Wheat Haul” in Korean, and the 50 people in North Korea with access to the internet are laughing about it on their BoingBoing equivalent.

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And there’s all the fun sucked out of that topic… :wink:

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Silly backward North Koreans. Canada is already a country of mushrooms.

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Everbody Wang Chung tonite!!

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“Pronto” is at least as real as “Stat!”

Come on, “Song of Big Wheat Haul” was pretty fun. I laughed. Then I laughed again trying to image the North Korean BoingBoing equivalent. I bet their moderators are real interesting characters.

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Dang !!1!

For someone who self-identifies as non-neurotypical, you nailed the HE|| out of that one :exclamation:

Respect to you !!!

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Wait, which anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea is it again?

I like the phrase “Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism”, it reminds me of the old Fox News favorites “Marxist-Socialist” and “Judeo-Christian.”

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Jeez, at first glance, I thought these were generated by a bot, like maybe @OtherMichael created something new and didn’t tell anybody…

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I’m pretty sure this list was compiled after careful consultation with the Pyongyang Exclamation Point Production Brigade #17, a state industry controlled by the Kim family moving with full diligence and a total commitment to the “military first” policy of Kim Jung Il implementing all points of the 1997 People’s summit to improve on all fronts an undeniable thrust to smash production targets proving the Juche approach building of socialism.

Oh, sorry:

“!”

(Edited to reduce redundancy)

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