International news is local

1. North Korea

One of the Japanese staff at my workplace asked me if I'd ever heard of Kim Jong-il, and I responded with the best Japanese facsimile I could manage of, "Yeah, do you think I'm an idiot or something?" I was met by consternation: North Korea was such a tiny country, so why should anyone hailing from halfway around the world care about it?

It was my turn to be confused, though I figured out what was going on in short order.

When North Korea gets into the news over here, it's typically related to the abduction issue. From the point of view of my Japanese staff, North Americans shouldn't be expected to care about this issue, and so they we shouldn't be expected to know much about North Korea. It never occurred to her that the news back home might have covered the issue of North Korea's nuclear capability (HEAD FOR THE HILLS!) in any depth, because in Japan people are not especially fixated on that issue. (Compare Chomsky on Iraq: "The only people afraid of the mushroom cloud are in the United States")

2. The United Nations

To the best of my knowledge no one in this country knows anything about the "oil for food scandal". Not even a little. Maybe some especially worldly Japanese peoeple have heard of someone somewhere caring about something related to the UN and Iraq. I mean, I'd imagine Koizumi has heard the phrase before. But, standing comfortably outside the American media cesspool, it's still a bit surprising to me to see someone online treat this as an important issue.