HW 11: A Say Outside of North Korea

After reading Rebecca MacKinnon’s interview, “Making Global Voices Heard” (Kline and Burstein 325-333), I chose to view the North Korea Zone blog at http://nkzone.org/nkzone/. At the top of the blog there’s a picture of statues of men who are all around statues of flags. At the top of this picture it says, “North Korea zone” and underneath that is says, “A zone for discussion and information exchange about North Korea”. I’m not necessarily sure who blogs on this blog, they seem like people in the world who aren’t in any authoritative position. There are really only two people, however, that are constantly blogging back and forth named Timothy Savage and Michael Rank. The style of writing is formal. One can tell that these topics are very well thought out, but then again certainly not sugar-coated. The topics that are discussed in this blog are diplomacy, engagement, North Korea Art, trade, television, current affairs, military, North Korea nuclear weapons, Japan-North Korea relations, politics, etc.
After reading the North Korea blog zone, I believe the blog still corresponds to MacKinnon’s view of it. After reading “Making Global Voices Heard” it gave me the impression that the blog would just be information about North Korea written by those outside the country. After reading the blog, I read what I expected. People who don’t live in Korea write about Korea. MacKinnon also states that there is "no firsthand information about what is happening in North Korea" (Kline and Burstein 326). After reading the blog, it is very true. There is no firsthand information on NK, instead topics are on politics, nuclear weapson etc...information that can be written and read about outside of the country. Of course, many will probably disagree with my assertion, that MacKinnon's view of the blog then and how it stands now, and that it is the same. They make think it's different because the information may be more informative now then it was when Mackinnon viewed it.