NewsTracker Answers for week of June 03, 2024

Q: North Korea last week began sending balloons carrying bags of trash and other waste over the heavily fortified border toward South Korea, where the defense minister called it "unimaginably petty and low-grade behavior." Where is North Korea, which shares the East Asia’s Korean Peninsula with South Korea?

Circle the area on this map

Q: North Korea’s trash barrage was an apparent retaliation for South Korean activists sending balloons north carrying anti-regime leaflets, pop music recordings, cash, and even some banned snacks. North Korea’s ruling family was placed in power in 1946 by which nation?

A. China

B. Japan

C. Mongolia

D. Soviet Union

D. In the closing days of World War II, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan which had ruled Korea as a colony for 35 years. As the war ended, U.S. troops occupied the southern part of the peninsula and Soviet troops occupied the north. The Soviets put communist Kim Il Sung in power. He, his son and his grandson ruled North Korea ever since.

Q: The North Korean regime is sensitive to any challenge to its tightly controlled media which has built a cult of personality around the Kim dynasty and its “heroic leaders.” What other leader used propaganda to develop a cult of personality?

A. Adolf Hitler

B. Benito Mussolini

C. Mao Zedong

D. All of the above

D. Authoritarian leaders have often used mass media to gain hero status and then punished anyone who was not loyal enough. Hitler was portrayed as a “heroic genius” saving the German people. Italians were told over and over that Fascist dictator Mussolini was “always right.” China’s first Communist leader Mao was praised as an infallible heroic leader.

Q: Since taking power after his father’s death 2011, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly has ordered hundreds of killings including his exiled half-brother Kim Jong-nam. He was assassinated with a nerve poison in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in which Southeast Asian nation?

A. Cambodia

B. Indonesia

C. Malaysia

D. Vietnam

C. Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Malaysia. Kim Jong Un also ordered the execution of his uncle for alleged treason, including the offense of only clapping "half-heartedly" for Kim at a public meeting.

Q: Kim Jong Un and former President Donald Trump held two summit meetings in Southeast Asia. The first was in Singapore and the second was in the Vietnamese capital of ...

A. Hanoi

B. Phnom Penh

C. Vientiane

D. Yangon

A. The 2019 Hanoi summit was cut short after the sides failed to reach an agreement on removing nuclear arms from the Korean Peninsula and ending economic sanctions against North Korea. The meetings were the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.