{"id":11766,"date":"2011-12-28T04:12:35","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T04:12:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:49:10","slug":"kim-jong-il-was-source-of-entertainment-for-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11766","title":{"rendered":"Kim Jong-Il was source of entertainment for West"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Late North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il enjoyed an elaborate personality cult at home but he was also a favorite of Western popular media, which found him to be a time-tested source of laughs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From Hollywood to websites, satirists relished skewering a leader whose shrill missives to the world, intolerance for any dissent and bouffant hairstyle made him &#8212; at times literally &#8212; a cartoon villain.<\/p>\n<p>He was spoofed on Fox&#8217;s MADtv as a talk show host who raps about his pursuit of nuclear weapons and gleefully shoots petrified cast members who do not follow his every wish.<\/p>\n<p><strong>P. Diddy &#038; Kim Jong-Il<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iiLS-AlfO30\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Even more incongruously, a website dubbed &#8220;Kim Jong-Il Dropping the Bass&#8221; depicts the usually humorless dictator as a nightclub DJ, ceding the spotlight to revelers as he devotes himself to the turntables.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kim&#8217;s death has immediate consequences for one US show, NBC&#8217;s &#8220;30 Rock,&#8221; where a fictional Kim kidnapped a character. Fans have been asking on social media how the show will adapt.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Margaret Cho, the Korean American actress who has played Kim on &#8220;30 Rock,&#8221;<\/strong> wrote on her blog that while the role was obviously comedic, she felt a sense of tragedy when she donned his trademark jumpsuit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>30 Rock, Kim Jong-Il and Cho<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OhohteHuyPM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My heart broke for a country cut off from the rest of the world, whose only representative is a crazed megalomaniac who fancies himself a polymath&#8230; who can not only play the most incredible golf, he also directs films and is half man-half deity &#8212; also half-size &#8212; as well as being a full-time dictator,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the best-known satire of Kim Jong-Il was in the 2004 movie &#8220;Team America: World Police,&#8221; a biting take on US foreign policy by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of the popular animated series &#8220;South Park.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kim<\/strong>, in marionette form, feeds UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to sharks, plots to carry out bombings across the world and organizes a &#8220;peace ceremony&#8221; led by actor Alec Baldwin.<\/p>\n<p><strong>And some Asian Americans are uneasy about the media depictions.<\/strong> The humor in &#8220;Team America&#8221; plays on Kim&#8217;s small stature and some Asians&#8217; difficulties distinguishing between the &#8220;r&#8221; and &#8220;l&#8221; sounds in English.<\/p>\n<p>Frank H. Wu, chancellor and dean of the University of California Hastings College of the Law and author of &#8220;Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White,&#8221; <strong>said that while virtually no Asian Americans sympathize with Kim, the community is sensitive about racial stereotyping.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When individual Asian foreigners are criticized, as they should be, there is the risk of a group image that adversely affects Asian Americans,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Asians often are depicted as inscrutable and mindless in following a leader. Assimilated Asian Americans are accused of the same thing when they participate in politics here: being untrustworthy and not being capable of independent thought.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Danny Cho impersonating him is funny!<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RWXtc2Dzmlo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Oh well! RIP! LOL!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Source AFP<\/em><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Late North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il enjoyed an elaborate personality cult at home but he was also a favorite of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1009,1003],"tags":[2004],"class_list":["post-11766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-tv-film","tag-art"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Late North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il enjoyed an elaborate personality cult at home but he was also a favorite of","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Art","TV &amp; Film"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":142,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1009\">Art<\/a> <a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1003\">TV &amp; Film<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}