North Korea calls Obama a 'crossbreed' in viciously racist attack
Reuters/Corbis
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
A North Korean state-run news agency earlier this month launched an ugly, racist diatribe against President Obama, calling the U.S.'s first black head of state a "crossbreed with unclear blood." The agency also said that Obama "still has the figure of monkey while the human race has evolved through millions of years," and that "it would be perfect for Obama to live with a group of monkeys in the world’s largest African natural zoo and lick the bread crumbs thrown by spectators."
The screed was recently brought to light by Josh Stanton, who blogs frequently about North Korea.
The issue of race has special resonance in North Korea, where the Stalinist regime has gone to great lengths to instill a sense of racial purity in its citizens. Some background from The Washington Post:
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
[W]hen North Korea talks about race, it's almost always important — and telling about the state ideology.
Some academics — most notably B.R. Myers — argue that North Koreans fundamentally have a "race-based" worldview, showing more similarity to fascist Japan during World War II than Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. Myers condenses North Korea's state orthodoxy into a sentence: "The Korean people are too pure blooded, and therefore too virtuous, to survive in this evil world without a great parental leader." [The Washington Post]
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.