How Andy Borowitz Channels North Korean Leader on Twitter

With two speeches under his belt, Kim Jong-un, the new leader of North Korea, is far more loquacious than his father, who spoke publicly only once. Still, it’s hard to say with any certainty what the young Kim is really thinking.

That hasn’t stopped writer and comedian Andy Borowitz. He channels the North Korean leader using what little we know and making up the rest using the twitter handle KimJongNumberUn.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is “The World”, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. I follow a lot of Twitter feeds for this job and the one we’re about to talk about is one of my favorites. It’s written by political comedian Andy Borowitz, but he plays the role of North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, or, as Borowitz calls him on Twitter, KimJongNumberUn. We don’t know much about Kim. Neither does Andy Borowitz.

Andy Borowitz: Let me make it clear what my relationship is with Kim Jong-un because I don’t want to exaggerate it. I am really just channeling his thoughts. I would not pretend that I was elected president of North Korea.

Werman: Right.

Borowitz: Of course, neither was he though, so I mean we’re sort of talking a level playing field. What it was was as a comedian, Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, was such a gift. I mean I, in my Borowitz Report book in 2004, I did a blog of Kim Jong-il, and when he passed it was such a loss for comedians because we loved him, and I wanted to give something back. So Kim Jong-un comes on the scene and I thought, “Well, let’s just get this ball rolling.” And so in January I set up this KimJongNumberUn Twitter feed and now it has something like a hundred and twenty thousand followers.

Werman: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing, and I confess I am one them. Give us one of the tweets that you wrote. It’s actually a tweet that came out a month or so ago about the apple store because I think it really sums up the really neat sense of humor that delivers through.

Borowitz: Well, could you read it? Because it will sound so much more official coming from, with your voice as opposed to mine.

Werman: “If an apple store opened in North Korea there would be rioting because people would think they were selling apples.”

Borowitz: Yes. Well, you see this is a perfect example of the feed because it combines sort of our stereotypical view of North Korea, which, our only view of North Korea is stereotypical because we don’t really know what’s going on there, but it combines that with, I would say, extreme bad taste which is, I think, another sort of signature of the entire feed.

Werman: With a hundred thousand plus followers of KimJongNumberUn, is the humor working as kind of a sugar-coated pill to raise Americans’ awareness of these big topics?

Borowitz: Well, I’m always nervous whenever anybody talks about the stuff that I do as performing any kind of public good. I’m always nervous about that because it’s far from my intention. I’m really just trying to get a laugh, but, you know, the fact is whenever you do anything that gets a laugh, the only reason it gets a laugh is because there’s some kernel of truth in it. And so even though I’m never trying to improve the world in any way, I really think I’m more part of the problem. I think that’s my role. I think that people are certainly more aware of North Korea as a result. This is the most prominent North Korean Twitter feed in the world by virtue of the fact that North Korea doesn’t allow people to be on Twitter. So this is as close as we’re going to get into a window into the Kim regime.

Werman: Now, sometimes, Andy Borowitz, the Borowitz Report seems to morph with KimJongNumberUn like you’re going after, now that you seem to be kind of pitting Kim Jong-un against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Borowitz: That’s right. Kim will often retweet links to the the Borowitz Report and I think the number one retweeted tweet about the Walker recall was actually from the President of North Korea where he said that . . .

Werman: And tell us what that one was. I don’t have it in front of me.

Borowitz: Well, I think in a word he said, “I send Scott Walker my best wishes from one brutal dictator to another.” It was just very simple. It wasn’t clever or anything. It was just really kind of a statement of his, I guess, commonality, his sense of collegiality with Scott Walker. He felt that Scott Walker should have given him some credit for some programs that are a lot like the programs in North Korea.

Werman: Such as?

Borowitz: For example, well, cutting lunches for schoolchildren. Anything that involves eliminating food, KimJongNumberUn feels that he has some authorial intellectual property rights on that because it’s a big specialty of his.

Werman: “Yo, Scott Walker, congrats,” KimJongNumberUn writes, “I’m always stoked when a leader who deprives children of food stays in power.”

Borowitz: That’s right. The famine theme is big and the apple story touched on that too. I mean the fact is there’s a rotating menu, I guess I shouldn’t use that word, but a list of things you can joke about because we know so little about them. Nuclear weapons, of course, that was a real low watermark for the new regime when that rocket failed and I think he tweeted obliquely about it. He said, “I swear this is the first time this has ever happened to me.” I think that’s what he said. He was just a little bit, a little humiliated.

Werman: Andy Borowitz, he’s in charge of the of The Borowitz Report and the Twitter account KimJongNumberUn which we can link to at theworld.org. His latest book is an unexpected twist about his experience with an obstructed bowel. You like the light topics, don’t you?

Borowitz: Now that is a funny book.

Werman: Andy Borowitz, thank you.

Borowitz: Thanks, Marco.

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Full interview with Andy Borowitz