April 4
Today in history has been a busy day in the world of radio and television station debuts.
WKRC-TV (April 4, 1949)
WKRC-TV, channel 12, Cincinnati, Ohio's ABC affiliate, signed on the air on this date 75 years ago. It is the second oldest television station that serves the Cincinnati area, and is still an ABC affiliate. The call sign was derived from the initials of the original owner of WKRC-AM, Clarence Ogden, who founded the Kodel Radio Company.
WYTV (April 4, 1953)
WYTV in Youngstown, Ohio, celebrates 71 years on the air today. It was originally known as WKST-TV for the first ten years that it was broadcasting, as it was partnered with WKST-AM 1200 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. The original call sign stood for the city of New Castle (KaSTle). Then, in 1963, the call letters changed to WYTV, simply standing for Youngstown TeleVision.
KFDA-TV (April 4, 1953)
Along with WYTV, Amarillo, Texas' CBS affiliate KFDA-TV celebrates its 71st birthday today. It is the second television station to sign on and serve the market in Amarillo, the first being KAMR-TV, who signed on in March of the same year. The call sign has stayed the same throughout the 71 years that KFDA-TV has broadcasted, the Amarillo Broadcasting Company suggesting they use the same call letters as their radio station that had been broadcasting since 1939. Unfortunately, we are unsure of what the call sign represents.
WPWR-TV (April 4, 1982)
A young station compared to many, WPWR-TV, the MyNetworkTV affiliate in Gary, Indiana, celebrates 42 years as a station today. It began as an independent station splitting time between the English WPWR-TV, and the Spanish language WBBS-TV. It then became an affiliate of UPN in 1995, MyNetworkTV in 2006, the CW IN 2016, then made a return to MyNetworkTV. These days, it shares a frequency with WFLD, Chicago's FOX affiliate. The call letters are easy to figure out -- PoWeR.
Radio stations:
Many radio stations around North America celebrate their anniversaries today. These include:
WLTJ, 92.9 FM, Pittsburgh, PA (1942, 82 years)
WJFP, 740 AM, Chester, PA (1948, 76 years)
WSIP, 1490 AM, Paintsville, KY (1949, 75 years)
CFAN, 99.3 FM, Miramichi, NB (1949, 75 years)
WJFK, 106.7 FM, Manassas, VA (1961, 63 years)
WUPR, 1530 AM, Utuado, PR (1964, 60 years)
KUCO, 90.1 FM, Oklahoma City, OK (1966, 58 years)
CFXE, 94.3 FM, Edson, AB (1968, 56 years)
WOHF, 92.1 FM, Bellevue, OH (1973, 51 years)
WOES, 91.3 FM, Ovid-Elsie, MI (1978, 46 years)
KAGJ, 88.9 FM, Ephraim, UT (1994, 30 years)
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What does life in North Korea look like outside of Pyongyang? 🇰🇵
Hey, I'm back again with a very scary "tankie" post that asks you to think of North Koreans as people, and to consider their country not as a cartoonish dystopia, but as a nation that, like any other place on earth, has culture, traditions, and history.
Below is a collection of pictures from various cities and places in North Korea, along with a brief dive into some of the historical events that informs life in the so-called "hermit kingdom."
Warning: very long post
Kaesong, the historic city
Beginning this post with Kaesong, one of the oldest cities in Korea. It's also one of the few major cities in the DPRK (i.e. "North Korea") that was not completely destroyed during the Korean war.
Every single city you'll see from this point on were victims of intense aerial bombardments from the U.S. and its allies, and had to be either partially or completely rebuilt after the war.
From 1951 to 1953, during what has now become known as the "forgotten war" in the West, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs over Korea — most of it in the North, and on civilian population centers. An additional 32,000 tons of napalm was also deployed, engulfing whole cities in fire and inflicting people with horrific burns:
For such a simple thing to make, napalm had horrific human consequences. A bit of liquid fire, a sort of jellied gasoline, napalm clung to human skin on contact and melted off the flesh. Witnesses to napalm's impact described eyelids so burned they could not be shut and flesh that looked like "swollen, raw meat." - PBS
Ever wondered why North Koreans seem to hate the U.S so much? Well...
Keep in mind that only a few years prior to this, the U.S. had, as the first and only country in the world, used the atomic bomb as a weapon of war. Consider, too, the proximity between Japan and Korea — both geographically and as an "Other" in the Western imagination.
As the war dragged on, and it became clear the U.S. and its allies would not "win" in any conventional sense, the fear that the U.S. would resort to nuclear weapons again loomed large, adding another frightening dimension to the war that can probably go a long way in explaining the DPRK's later obsession with acquiring their own nuclear bomb.
But even without the use of nuclear weapons, the indiscriminate attack on civilians, particularly from U.S. saturation bombings, was still horrific:
"The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II" - Charles K. Armstrong
On top of the loss of life, there's also the material damage. By the end of the war, the U.S. Air Force had, by its own estimations, destroyed somewhere around 85% of all buildings in the DPRK, leaving most cities in complete ruin. There are even stories of U.S. bombers dropping their loads into the ocean because they couldn't find any visible targets to bomb.
What you'll see below of Kaesong, then, provides both a rare glimpse of what life in North Korea looked like before the war, and a reminder of what was destroyed.
Kaesong's main street, pictured below.
Due the stifling sanctions imposed on the DPRK—which has, in various forms and intensities, been in effect since the 1950s—car ownership is still low throughout the country, with most people getting around either by walking or biking, or by bus or train for longer distances.
Kaesong, which is regarded as an educational center, is also notable for its many Koryŏ-era monuments. A group of twelve such sites were granted UNESCO world heritage status in 2013.
Included is the Hyonjongnung Royal Tomb, a 14th-century mausoleum located just outside the city of Kaesong.
One of the statues guarding the tomb.
Before moving on the other cities, I also wanted to showcase one more of the DPRK's historical sites: Pohyonsa, a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple complex located in the Myohyang Mountains.
Like many of DPRK's historic sites, the temple complex suffered extensive damage during the Korean war, with the U.S. led bombings destroying over half of its 24 pre-war buildings.
The complex has since been restored and is in use today both as a residence for Buddhist monks, and as a historic site open to visitors.
Hamhung, the second largest city in the DPRK.
A coastal city located in the South Hamgyŏng Province. It has long served as a major industrial hub in the DPRK, and has one of the largest and busiest ports in the country.
Hamhung, like most of the coastal cities in the DPRK, was hit particularly hard during the war. Through relentless aerial bombardments, the US and its allies destroyed somewhere around 80-90% percent of all buildings, roads, and other infrastructure in the city.
Now, more than seventy years later, unexploded bombs, mortars and pieces of live ammunition are still being unearthed by the thousands in the area. As recently as 2016, one of North Korea's bomb squads—there's one in every province, faced with the same cleanup task—retrieved 370 unexploded mortar rounds... from an elementary school playground.
Experts in the DPRK estimate it will probably take over a hundred years to clean up all the unexploded ordnance—and that's just in and around Hamhung.
Hamhung's fertilizer plant, the biggest in North Korea.
When the war broke out, Hamhung was home to the largest nitrogen fertilizer plant in Asia. Since its product could be used in the creation of explosives, the existence of the plant is considered to have made Hamhung a target for U.S. aggression (though it's worth repeating that the U.S. carried out saturation bombings of most population centers in the country, irrespective of any so-called 'military value').
The plant was immediately rebuilt after the war, and—beyond its practical use—serves now as a monument of resistance to U.S. imperialism, and as a functional and symbolic site of self-reliance.
Chongjin, the third largest city in the DPRK.
Another coastal city and industrial hub. It underwent a massive development prior to the Korean war, housing around 300,000 people by the time the war broke out.
By 1953, the U.S. had destroyed most of Chongjin's industry, bombed its harbors, and killed one third of the population.
Wonsan, a rebuilt seaside city.
The city of Wonsan is a vital link between the DPRK's east and west coasts, and acts today as both a popular holiday destination for North Koreans, and as a central location for the country's growing tourism industry.
Considered a strategically important location during the war, Wonsan is notable for having endured one of the longest naval blockades in modern history, lasting a total of 861 days.
By the end of the war, the U.S. estimated that they had destroyed around 80% of the city.
Masikryong Ski Resort, located close to Wonsan. It opened to the public in 2014 and is the first, I believe, that was built with foreign tourists in mind.
Sariwon, another rebuilt city
One of the worst hit cities during the Korean War, with an estimated destruction level of 95%.
I've written about its Wikipedia page here before, which used to mockingly describe its 'folk customs street'—a project built to preserve old Korean traditions and customs—as an "inaccurate romanticized recreation of an ancient Korean street."
No mention, of course, of the destruction caused by the US-led aerial bombings, or any historical context at all that could possibly even hint at why the preservation of old traditions might be particularly important for the city.
Life outside of the towns and cities
In the rural parts of the DPRK, life primarily revolves around agriculture. As the sanctions they're under make it difficult to acquire fuel, farming in the DPRK relies heavily on manual labour, which again, to avoid food shortages, requires that a large portion of the labour force resides in the countryside.
Unlike what many may think, the reliance on manual labour in farming is a relatively "new" development. Up until the crisis of the 1990s, the DPRK was a highly industrialized nation, with a modernized agricultural system and a high urbanization rate. But, as the access to cheap fuel from the USSR and China disappeared, and the sanctions placed upon them by Western nations heavily restricted their ability to import fuel from other sources, having a fuel-dependent agricultural industry became a recipe for disaster, and required an immediate and brutal restructuring.
For a more detailed breakdown of what lead to the crisis in the 90s, and how it reshaped the DPRKs approach to agriculture, check out this article by Zhun Xu.
Some typical newly built rural housing, surrounded by farmland.
Tumblr only allows 20 pictures per post, but if you want to see more pictures of life outside Pyongyang, check out this imgur album.
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the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.
sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.
you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.
it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.
but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.
they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.
they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.
barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.
and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.
but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.
they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!
this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.
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