So North Korea has issued a “Gangnam Style” video to mock a South Korean presidential candidate, Park Guen Hye, from the ruling conservative party. According to Malaysia’s The Sun Daily:
“The parody, posted on the official government website Uriminzokkiri, shows a crudely photo-shopped image of Park doing the “horse-riding dance” created by South Korean rapper Psy on the original “Gangnam Style” video.
The North Korean version mocks Park as a devoted admirer of the “Yushin” system of autocratic rule set up by her father, Park Chung-Hee, after he seized power in South Korea in a 1961 military coup.
“I’m Yushin style!,” read a subtitle under the image of the dancing Park, South Korea’s first female presidential candidate.”
Who says, the North Koreans have no sense of humor? Whether this will lead to a violent dance-off between the arch-rivals is still unclear. The US Navy is apparently ready and all too willing to intervene in any dance-off:
We await further updates from our Duck Correspondent in Korea, Robert E. Kelly…
I agree with Human Rights Watch in general – that whatever the validity of the film, truth-letting is politically necessary in order to move the country beyond two and half decades of armed struggle.
But I’m not so satisfied with Ross’s claim that we can’t know if the film itself is valid, since ultimately footage like this will increasingly matter, in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, as post-conflict justice is pursued through courts.
Would it not be useful to know more, for example, about how the UK acquired the video? How it made its way from the soldier who shot it to the human rights activist who passed it along to the journalist? One can imagine a number of legitimate scenarios; one can imagine others. Answers to these questions can be found, and have a bearing on the credibility of the film. Retracing that chain to the original cell phone could lead to additional facts of the case, a skill already in use by cyber forensic researchers in domestic contexts. And relevant evidentiary standards must be under development by US law enforcement agencies, cell phone video is increasingly being used to investigate criminals and agents of the state alike.
Not being a cyber forensics expert, I don’t claim to know what these standards are or offer suggestions as to how to view this particular video artifact. But such solutions should be devised, as claiming “one can never know for certain” will ultimately be self-defeating for the human rights community, feeding into the denials of abusive governments. The “Neda effect” – the use of cell-phone video to capture and make visible acts of brutality – has the potential to shift the balance of power between governments and citizens, but also the potential for abuse and misdirection. Human rights organizations should be taking the lead in figuring out how institutions of international justice can leverage such technology while mitigating its side-effects, rather than shrugging it off altogether.
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