N. Korea Screws Up Threat Vs. South's Media

Pity North Korea: Even when, in typical grandiloquent style, it threatens the "fools, idiots, and blockheads" in the South Korean media with "a merciless sacred war," it manages to muck that up, reports the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the North got really peeved at South Korean media's coverage of its Children's Day celebrations (the North's propaganda was compared to the Nazi youth). So the North threatened to blow up several South Korean newspapers and TV stations (not for the first time), offering longitude and latitude coordinates for its targets (for the first time).

The problem? Pretty much all those coordinates were wrong. One newspaper was listed as "37 degrees 56 minutes 83 seconds North Latitude and 126 degrees 97 minutes 65 seconds East Longitude"—of course, there are only 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, so those numbers made no sense (the same error appeared in the Korean and English versions of the story). Trying to figure out where those coordinates are, as the North Korea Tech blog did, would most likely put you in Gangwon Province, quite a distance east of the target in Seoul. In fact, only one set of coordinates was even close, and even that was a building across the street. To enjoy the full effect of North Korea's flowery rhetoric, check out its original "open ultimatum" at the KCNA website. (More North Korea stories.)