Thursday, June 17, 2010

I Spy. "Me, too."

So, I'm spending the first fifteen minutes of class this week playing "I Spy" with my classes. You remember:
I spy
with my little eye
something [color] / something beginning with [letter]

The activity helps build vocabulary and also practices the "Is it the ....?" construction. The kids are really into it; I go first, and spy something red, which is the indicator light on the motion sensor above the door. It's red, but really small, and makes itself harder to see because it blinks--if you look at the wrong moment, you won't see it. Yes, I know I'm cleverer than I look.

Anyway. So today I'm looking in the Korea Times and I come across two North Koreans on trial for--well, I'll let reporter Park Si-soo tell it:
Two men wearing ivory-colored prison uniforms stepped into the courtroom, Wednesday, handcuffed and escorted by seemingly somewhat nervous police officers.
Asked of their jobs by presiding Judge Cho Han-chang, one answered in typical North Korean dialect, "I'm an agent of the state Reconnaissance Bureau (in Pyongyang)." The other sitting next to him nodded and said: "Me, too."

Not, like "Shut up, you idiot," or "Your Honor, I don't know this guy next to me, here," or even, "I am but a humble cobbler," but "Me, too."

No wonder they got caught. The two 36-year-olds had arrived in Seoul on a mission to assassinate a high up defector from DPRK named Hwang Jang-yop, who is credited with creating the North's state ideology of "Juche", which is all about independence of thought and self-reliance, ironically enough.

NK spies are usually here to assassinate defectors. Or collect information, of course. Or "mastermind pro-North Korea campaigns," as the article puts it.

Oh, and they can reportedly "kill people with their bare hands." Cool.

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