February 19, 2015

Quiz: North Korean Slogan or TED Talk Sound Bite?

Who said it: Pyongyang propagandists or viral visionaries?

Mother Jones illustration. (Kim: KCNA/Zuma; TED: urban_data/Flickr; parade: Du Baiyu/Zuma)

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North Korea recently released a list of 310 slogans, trying to rouse patriotic fervor for everything from obeying bureaucracy (“Carry out the tasks given by the Party within the time it has set”) to mushroom cultivation (“Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms”) and aggressive athleticism (“Play sports games in an offensive way, the way the anti-Japanese guerrillas did!”). The slogans also urge North Koreans to embrace science and technology and adopt a spirit of can-do optimism—messages that might not be too out of place in a TED talk.

Can you tell which of the following exhortations are propaganda from Pyongyang and which are sound bites from TED speakers? (Exclamation points have been added to all TED quotes to match North Korean house style.)

HERE ARE THE FACTS:

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ONE MORE QUICK THING:

Our fall fundraising drive is off to a rough start, and we very much need to raise $250,000 in the next couple of weeks. If you value the journalism you get from Mother Jones, please help us do it with a donation today.

As we wrote over the summer, traffic has been down at Mother Jones and a lot of sites with many people thinking news is less important now that Donald Trump is no longer president. But if you're reading this, you're not one of those people, and we're hoping we can rally support from folks like you who really get why our reporting matters right now. And that's how it's always worked: For 45 years now, a relatively small group of readers (compared to everyone we reach) who pitch in from time to time has allowed Mother Jones to do the type of journalism the moment demands and keep it free for everyone else.

Please pitch in with a donation during our fall fundraising drive if you can. We can't afford to come up short, and there's still a long way to go by November 5.

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