Please indulge me while I divert from all things SCV… feel free to ignore this post in other words.
In addition to cycling, technology, blogging, and photography, one of my favorite hobbies is amateur and shortwave radio.
Blame it on my dad who has been a radio engineer since before I was born. He first introduced me to the wonderful world of radio when I was five years old. I still remember turning the dial on an old GE solid-state radio that was built in the 1960s. It had a wonderful, creamy, rich sound. Fantastic crafstmanship, made in the USA and built like a tank.
Fast forward to 2009 and my interest in radio hasn’t dimmed a bit, though I do find it hard to set aside time to engage in this esoteric hobby.
But every now and then I make time, and this week, as North Korea has reared its head (h/t to Sarah Palin for the phrase), I decided to tune into an old favorite of mine, the Voice of Korea shortwave broadcast, which originates in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Voice of Korea program is a one hour news, culture, and propaganda show, the likes of which you’ve never heard. I don’t know what else to say about it other than the fact that it is an authentic radio program from a totalitarian/Orewellian communist state, complete with Bible-like parables about the Great and Dear Leaders (Kim Sung Il, father of DPRK, and Kim Jong Il, his son) and copious references to the great Korean workers.
Shows like this used to litter the shortwave radio dial. Radio Moscow, Beijing radio, and the East Germans all used to broadcast similar radio programs that could be heard all over the world, but after the collapse of communism, those broadcasts vanished, leaving only North Korea to fill the communist/totalitarian radio genre.
Anyway, I decided to tune in this morning because earlier this week North Korea successfully detonated a nuclear weapon underground. They followed that up with several rocket launches, and today they’re making noises about exiting the 1953 Armistice pact they signed following the Korean War (which is, technically, still in effect).
It’s all quite worrying to me considering that Seoul is in the bulls eye of some 20,000+ North Korean artillery pieces and, possibly, nuclear weapons. I have friends who are Korean right here in the SCV, and I know many Korean students attend College of the Canyons. There’s also a large population of Koreans on the West Side of Santa Clarita, so I imagine they must be concerned as well.
I recorded the first seven minutes of the show this morning to see if the North Koreans had anything to say about their nuclear test. The quality of this broadcast is poor, so get ready to adjust your volume, but you can hear the English-speaking announcer talk about the nuclear test at 5:40 and then segue into the usual nonsense about “US Imperialists.” Also note that the voices are not intelligible until about 55 seconds into the program after I made some adjustments on the radio.
I also recorded a musical segment starting at about 8:30 seconds into the video. It’s what you would expect: a mix of Martial hymns & patriotic scores.
The pictures were borrowed from Flickr and Wikipedia. I provided links at the end of the video, but you should go here to see them all.
As I wrote in the video, this was all recorded this morning from right here in Newhall in the SCVTalk.com radio laboratory. I have a shortwave radio attached to my PC and a 45 foot radio antenna strung in the attic of my condo which allows me to pick up most Asian shortwave stations and a few European ones (not many left unfortunately).
It’s difficult to find VOK live on the web (reliably anyway) so I figured I’d post this recording to YouTube and I hope you enjoy it.