back to article North Korea unveils its home-grown Netflix rival – Manbang

Denizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (aka Best Korea) get precious little internet access as it is, but the lucky (and loyal) few will now have a Netflix-style streaming service to match similar systems in the decadent rest of the world. The system – unfortunately dubbed Manbang – comes as a set-top box …

  1. swschrad

    nothing new here...

    the Nut Koreans keep waving their Dongs (their word for missle) around, and they are inevitably the Rong Dongs.

  2. Steven Raith

    The Content Delivery Network for this platform is amazing.

    Two old Amiga 500s with the RAM expansion pack and 50mb HDDs - that should suffice to keep the content playing for the three people in NK with internet.

    Steven "Obvious Joke" R.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: The Content Delivery Network for this platform is amazing.

      I have a feeling that the modems mentioned are not VDSL2. I wonder if the height of Nork (*) nerdery is discovering that AT&L0&M0 (**) turns off the beeping and squawking.

      Actually I wonder what they do have for the "lucky" few. It must be on the order of >1MBs-1 to be able to talk of streaming in any meaningful way.

      (*) If anyone is wondering whether "Nork" might have other meanings, beyond a contraction of "North Korean", they would do well to dig out their search engine and with a few well chosen search terms discover us (en_GB and en_AU at least) lot sniggering away.

      (**) I think I got my Hayes right - it was a while ago ... and my memory is a little dim ...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Only 50 odd years behind the curve

    I remember, when living in West Germany in the late 70s, hearing about the release of the then brand new Rolls Royce Silver Mist in the 60s. Well it would have been called Silver Mist until someone noticed that "mist" in German means shit (near enough). Cue rapid rename to Silver Shadow.

    It was about that time that global branding agencies appeared and nowadays we have loads of rather crap but safe brand names.

    Oh, and "Manbang"! I'm still sniggering but then I am only British.

    1. Efros

      Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

      Similar to the French version of the Toyota MR2 which is known as the MR, which avoids the homophonous "est merdeux" - is shitty.

      1. lglethal Silver badge
        Go

        Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

        Apparently (according to our Chilean cleaner in College) the Toyota "Pajero" means "Wanker" in Spanish.

        I always thought it seemed quite appropriate. A Chelsea Tractor indeed...

        1. Ynox
          Coat

          Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

          Was a Mitsubishi Pajero - a Jap import Shogun.

          1. lglethal Silver badge
            Facepalm

            Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

            My apologies! Of course you're right! Mitsubishi not Toyota... Still a wanker of a car though... ;)

        2. LaeMing
          Thumb Up

          Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

          Pajero formally means 'Manly' (which was why it was chosen) but it is pretty easy to see how that had long before shifted to the colloquial 'Wanker'.

    2. Uffish

      Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

      Taken from a random French ski accessories website "Fart de base liquide pour le fartage..." and "VOLA Fart rouge 200 g. Pour les skieurs recherchant une optimisation du fart..."

    3. Lotaresco

      Re: Only 50 odd years behind the curve

      In the late 80s I was in Düsseldorf for a trade show. Amstrad were unveiling their new laptop and they had piled them high on a table covered with a cloth. They did a big reveal, twitching the cloth aside (standard gorgeous pouting model used for this arduous task). The assembled crowd stared then burst out laughing. The Amstrad Lap Top (or was it Advanced Lap Top?) was marked ALT.

      Old.

  4. Sebastian A

    I have to wonder if they're making themselves a laughing stock internationally on purpose, to undermine their very serious image as a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that starves its citizens and brutally represses any attempt at improving their lives.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Typical monolinguistic anglophone

      I hope you're aware that some of your personal, and organisational names, as well as other innocuous words, sound super retarded or offensive in other languages.

      Also this will never be written as "man bang" because that's just a romanization (of which there are many) of Korean. Many of which aren't pronounced phonetically anyway.

      1. frank ly

        @AC Re: Typical monolinguistic anglophone

        I wasn't aware of that but did suspect it was so. Please give us a few examples for our education and amusement.

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: @AC Typical monolinguistic anglophone

          "Please give us a few examples for our education and amusement."

          A couple of stateside companies, Wang Laboratories and Fannie Mae.

          One from France, DiC Entertainment, pronounced 'dick'.

          Always brought a smile when a cartoon ended with a little girls voice chanting "DICK!"

        2. find users who cut cat tail

          Re: @AC Typical monolinguistic anglophone

          I can give you a reverse example: Here the usual equivalent of English ‘Really?’ is ‘Fakt?’ and a bit more emphatic form is ‘Fakt, jo?’. People say it a lot. And you do not need any hint what English speakers hear beside perhaps noting that ‘j’ is pronounced as ‘y’ in English...

          1. LaeMing

            Re: @AC Typical monolinguistic anglophone

            If you hear what you think is a Chinese person repeatedly saying the 'N' word, they might just be saying the local version of 'um....'

      2. Frumious Bandersnatch

        Re: Typical monolinguistic anglophone

        Yeah, "meh" on the "manbang" being funny. I actually liked Samurai Champloo (from Manglobe studios) and didn't feel overly inclined to fall into paroxysms of laughter at the mention of either "loo" or "globe". But that's just me ...

        Anyway, on a slightly different, but slightly related note, check out Chuck Norris vs. Communism. Best Romanian film I've ever seen. Hmmm... not meant to damn with faint praise ...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So assuming you live in NK and get one of these and assuming your one of the lucky few that has internet, what happens when you do a search for something thats Kim Don iLL doesn't like... do you get the heavy's come round for a little bit that a word in your ear.... I would say its just a propaganda platform, but we have the BBC, Fox, Etc.... so im not going to make to much of a point of that..

    1. Graham Lockley

      This discussion was going so well until you mentioned the F** word

      1. Lotaresco

        This discussion was going so well until you mentioned the F** word

        Fig!

    2. Winkypop Silver badge

      You assume these units have user-controls on them.

      PS: Please stand each time glorious leader appears on the screen. He will know if you don't.

  6. thomas k

    Manbang?!

    Why didn't Craig's List think of that?!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I bet it's got shed loads of Sony Movies on it.

  8. 28d073f4

    Would anyone like to...

    Manbang 'n chill?

    Anyone? Anyone?

    1. LINCARD1000
      Thumb Up

      Re: Would anyone like to...

      That's actually rather funny :-D

  9. Bumpy Cat

    On a serious note

    My Korean is terrible, but enough to make some guesses.

    "Manbang" (만방) is tricky to translate, but means something like "everywhere" or "global".

    "Dong" 동 (the missile name) means "east", and "nodong" 노동 means "labour" or "work".

    Still funny, but it's good to know the intended meaning!

  10. Fenton

    Feeds

    With a name like that does it have 24 hour grindr live feeds

  11. Mpeler
    Paris Hilton

    Manbang?

    Didn't Ashley Madison already do that?

  12. DocJames
    Childcatcher

    "Children pester us"

    Yeah, they do that here too.

    Obvious icon is obvious

  13. RJFlorida

    Comedy gold

    I swear to god, you can't make this stuff up better if you tried.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As was explained to Young Un's Uncle*

    When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

    * Shortly before they shot him with a heavy calibre anti aircraft gun.

    Anon because, well, did you see what they did to his brother at the airport???

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