U.N. Promotes North Korea In New Brochure

There's nothing like happy, smiling kids to warm you up and pry open that wallet, eh?

That's apparently the thinking of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which splashed these happy kids on this brochure for its 2007 media fellowships. The program, according to UN-watcher Claudia Rosette, is a fund-raising piece for UNDP programs:

What’s doubly rich about this UNDP pamphlet, linked here, (and downloaded here, in case it now somehow vanishes from the UNDP site), is that the theme for this UNDP “media advocacy” fellowship is supposed to be “Corruption.” For that, you might suppose the UNDP would be trying to encourage the development of an independent press. But no. From the description, this fellowship seems to be mainly about co-opting the media to advertise the UNDP.

Well, nothing new or particularly controversial there: The U.N. has its hand out, and it doesn't much care who gives it money, free democracies or repressive dictatorships.

But if the theme of the media advocacy program is "Corruption," I join Rosette in asking this question: Why are the kids on the cover members of Li'l Kim Jong-Il's Young Pioneers?

And what are the singing children wearing? Why, the red scarves of the Young Pioneers, youngest tier of the ruling, repressive, murderous, totalitarian Workers’ Party of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea.

Of all the happily singing children throughout Asia, the inept, corrupt, mind-boggling U.N. picks children from Li'l Kim's Young Pioneers, rare children of privilege in a regime that sucks the lifeblood out of its slave-citizens, all for the glorious indulgences of Beloved Leader.

Anyone surprised? I didn't think so. Rosette reminds us that this is the UNDP after all, a group that under its former chief and U.N. big dog Mark Malloch Brown ignored its charter's call that its its funds be spent on development, and instead paid more than $567,ooo for what Rosetted describes as a "paean to the UNDP."

And, let's not forget, this same organization that uses Li'l Kim's Red Scarves brigade to promote anti-corruption is the same organization that is being investigated for allegedly funneling hard cash to Pyongyang -- all the while helping Li'l Kim conceal the regime's counterfeiting of U.S. $100 bills.

This post is brought to you as a public service by C-SM. Remember as you write your check to the IRS that Uncle Sam is the U.N.'s biggest source of income, helping to keep programs like the UNDP running.