For an outdoor antenna, we stretched some wire across our backyard (one end suspended by our lemon tree) and found Pyongyang's "Voice of Korea" on Saturday evening April 15. We provide audio excerpts below.

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The broadcast began with the "Song of Kim Il Sung," followed by the "Song of Kim Jong Il," followed by a song whose title we couldn't decipher, which led into "news line." (Our audio excerpt omits the music and starts with the "news," below.)

From our shortwave hobby listening years ago, we know that North Korea's "news" typically consists of stories praising North Korea's party and government officialdom and denouncing the "U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet clique." However on this day (the 105th birth anniversary of the "Great Leader Kim Il Sung," the "Day of the Sun,") its "news" consisted entirely of announcements of various delegations (from Japan, China, Mexico, Iran, Italy, Vietnam and an "anti-imperialist" delegation from South Korea) coming to Pyongyang with gift baskets, flowers or sending congratulatory letters. North Korean officials, and those who visit them, are always described with their various party positions and government titles.

This went on for roughly half an hour. Then came music. The first song was a rousing chorus of "The Leader and the General Are Twins"

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To hear excerpts of Pyongyang's "Voice of Korea" monitored on April 15, click here.

Some caveats before launching our audio below. Shortwave signals bounce off the ionosphere, a constantly changing layer of charged particles above the Earth activated by the sun. If conditions are just right, the ionosphere bends ("refracts") shortwave signals at the proper angle so they arrive in a target area thousands of miles from the transmitter. Since the signals typically bounce along slightly different paths before reaching a listener's receiver, there's inevitable fading, distortion and the like. It takes some concentration to "fill in" a word or two you may miss, but the basic message comes through.

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And yes, by Saturday evening Pacific time, much of the world knew that North Korea had test-fired a missile that blew up shortly after launch. But no, there was no mention of this in North Korea's English language broadcast. According to web postings, Pyongyang's foreign language broadcasts are typically one day behind the North Korean government's news agency dispatches.

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