I doubt it, despite what the Telegraph says.

More than one million North Koreans crowded Pyongyang's streets for anti-American rallies today, part of government commemorations marking the 53rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

The crowds vowed to fight US pressure by building nuclear weapons, state media said. It was apparently part of efforts to fuel anti-American sentiment amid the nuclear standoff with the United States.

They state it as though it's a fact, but the article is bylined as "correspondents in Seoul." How would a "correspondent in Seoul" know how many people are marching in Pyongyang?

Oh, here's their reliable source:

Led by senior communist party and state officials, Pyongyang citizens packed streets and plazas, "shaking with towering hatred and resentment against the US imperialists", said North Korea's state-run KCNA news agency.

Well, there's a story you can take to the bank.

Rand, I'm not sure I see the grounds for your incredulity: if there is one thing the DPRK can do, it's put a million people in the street for a political rally.

I suppose it's possible that there were a million people out in the streets, but I doubt if they were "demonstrating." Also, given the probable state of their bellies, I doubt if they were doing much of anything with any true enthusiasm.

I am so sick of hearing about U.S Imperialism!!

Where is this suppsed empire? What do we "steal" from its inhabitants? What do they manufacture, grow, mine, or build for us, their imperial masters? Why don't they riot, revolt and overthrow our Imperial Occupation Troops?

WHY don't they?? BECAUSE there is no friggin empire!! We should tell all these leftist jerks to take a flying leap to hell, right after we stop ALL, I said ALL, foreign aid to their countries. And, if they don't like that and threaten us with nukes, or biological weapons or terrorism. We remind them that our military is well versed in getting rid of problems. Refer them to Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.

In the mean time, they can kiss my Imperial Back Side.

Well, watching the recent and excellent BBC reportage "Holidays in the Axis of Evil" I have to say I don't find it all that unlikely.

North Korea is a badly broken place.

The issue isn't so much whether it's true or not, as why the Telegraph would simply reprint DPRK propaganda as though it were fact.

Well, personally I don't have much time for the Telegraph.

I wonder is the Telegraph printed the DPRK press release in order to maintain "access" to Pyongyang, like CNN and Saddam?

Like Andrew said, if there's one thing I'll believe the DPRK about, it's people "protesting". I just won't believe that the protest is spontaneous and neither carrot'd with promises of food, nor stick'd with threats of gulag or execution.

But I will believe they got a million people on the streets in Pyongyang.

My point is not the actual number of people on the streets (I have no idea if there were ten, a million, or ten million), but the fact that it's reported as a fact, when in reality they have no good way of knowing. While the regime is capable of putting people on the streets, why even bother, when they can simply put out an unverifiable story on their state-run house organ, and the media goes along with it?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/view/

Check out the very beginning of the third segment - the funeral of Kim Jung Il - and from about 5 min 30 sec on in the fourth segment - which has some of those card flipping mass demonstrations. It's quite a spectacle.

But I think these emotions of loss and devotion to the state by the North Koreans are, in fact, genuine -- but that's the evil of totalitarianism... is it does in fact so warp the mind.

I see what your point is, Rand, that it's not anything other than the state boosting itself, but it is -- nevertheless -- interesting.