SEOUL — CNN, which for years has courted North Korea with flattering pieces from correspondents and producers anxious to obtain visas for exclusive coverage of the North, is now the target of Pyongyang's rage over an hour-long special that consists primarily of footage that has appeared elsewhere.
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Video showed 11 N. Koreans being brought to a public trial and execution in Hoeryong in late February. The charges included human trafficking of North Korean women into China. One of the two men executed was from the factory where an anti-Kim Jong-Il poster was found last year.
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Pyongyang’s Korea Central News Agency, in a commentary, charged that the video was “full of sheer lies negating the popular and class nature and the democratic principle of the DPRK’s laws and tarnishing its image from A to Z.” The commentary, offering what it calls “clear proof of a sheer fabrication,” says those “who know about the DPRK even a bit claimed that the way of speaking and dressing of those who appeared on the screen and the background against which the scenes were shot were quite different from the reality in the DPRK.”
The video, however, is widely acknowledged as authentic. The wobbly nature of shots and the scenes surrounding the execution all appear as a realistic portrayal of the execution in a town near the Tumen River frontier between North Korea and China.
KCNA said CNN broadcast the special in a desperate bid to raise ratings.
“CNN is losing popularity as the days go by,” said the KCNA commentary, “although it had high audience rating in the world in the past.” CNN, it said, “staged such poor farce to improve its image” but was "reduced to a trumpeter and a political waiting maid for the U.S. administration.”
The CNN special dresses up the report on death and suffering in North Korea with interviews with an unidentified man, his face blurred out, who purportedly shot the video and fears for his life after getting to Bangkok, where he was rebuffed by both U.S. Embassy and United Nations officials.
The special, however, relies on old footage to get across the devastation of North Korea. Footage of a starving boy in a marketplace, of another boy stealing food from a market stall and of a woman chasing and beating him is at least eight years old. But the script includes no acknowledgement of who shot the footage or when.
Another segment, showing slogans painted in red denouncing North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Il, was aired earlier this year amid controversy over its authenticity.
