BEIJING — North Korea's latest nuclear test may have stirred alarm in Washington, but its intimidation effect seems to have been lost on much of the Chinese web universe, which largely saw the announcement as a joke. "He's so naughty!" chided one web user, while another suggested that the resulting earthquake came from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un eating too much and falling on his posterior.
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It wasn't the first time Kim had been the butt of jokes in China. After North Korea's successful missile launch on Dec. 12, many expressed joy and pride on behalf of the North Korean masses. "The brigade members plowing the hills of Seipo County were so inspired by the successful launch of the second Earth observation satellite that they opened up thousands of hectares of wasteland in just a few days," one message from a popular satirist nicknamed Miss Choi in Pyongyang read, pretending to be oblivious to North Korea's failed rocket launch test in April. "Big Brother [China], please step up your effort, or we will surpass you!"
Liu Bin, a journalist at China's independent-minded newspaper Southern Weekly, told me he is uncomfortable with all the joking around. "What is there to laugh about?" Liu wondered. "Isn't laughing at North Korea like the pot calling the kettle black?"
That's exactly the point. Over the past few years, more than 100 North Korea-related satire accounts have emerged on Sina Weibo, managed by self-proclaimed North Korean patriots. They post messages glorifying the Kim regime in an extravagant propaganda style that invites jeers and ridicules from commenters who may or may not have gotten the joke: The real targets, of course, are China and the Chinese Communist Party.
The most popular account, "Writer Choi Seongho," has 600,000 followers. In his Weibo biography and in his posts, Choi claims to be a North Korean journalist based in China with his heart "tied to Pyongyang"; in a private message, he told me he is a North Korean defector from a "special family" and that he went to high school in China. Whatever the truth, most of his followers probably take him to be Chinese, for he posts hilarious messages in flawless Mandarin, which, while ostensibly mocking North Korea, often make for pitch-perfect satire of China.
After the one-year anniversary of Kim Jong Il's Dec. 17, 2011 funeral, for instance, Choi posted a photo of the weeping crowds with the message: "Could you let me know if there is a second leader in this world that was so beloved by his people?" "Your [leader] was the second, guess who was the first?" a user, catching Choi's allusion to the hysteria that characterized former Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong's funeral in 1976, answered wryly.
After the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Chinese writer Mo Yan in October, Choi wrote: "The Nobel Prize is not a big deal. Starting from next year, North Korea will offer the Kim Jong Il Prize for progressive figures all over the world to compete!" Here was another wry allusion to China: In 2010, immediately after the Nobel committee awarded the Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, an embarrassed and enraged group of patriotic Chinese established their own award. Named the Confucius Peace Prize, it drew mockery in China for choosing Russian President Vladmir Putin as its 2011 recipient. Choi's followers got the joke.
To those who tease him for his hyperbolic patriotism, Choi responds with feigned seriousness: "Watch your tone! The Internet is not a space beyond the law," a reference to the now-notorious title of a December editorial published in The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, that called for stricter Internet censorship. To those who accuse him of propagandizing for the Kim regime, he responds: "My colleague editor Hu in our Hu-Choi editorial department is cursed by netizens all over everyday, but he still posts messages on Weibo with great composure" -- an unmistakable jibe at Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid, and a frequent target of digital slings and arrows on Weibo.
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