North Korea's Loch Ness Monster (2016) | Hacker News Reader

North Korea's Loch Ness Monster (2016)

earthnutshell.com

I'm fascinated by North Korea.

I think the author shouldn't be so smug about seeing through their propaganda. We have such a sophisticated propaganda in the west that it's much harder to see it.

In comparison NK propaganda is refreshingly childish, funny I would say.

> In comparison NK propaganda is refreshingly childish, funny I would say.

I think you're yourself falling for North Korea propaganda, the reality there is nothing childish:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-china-sex-slav...

I don't see the link between your article and propaganda. That seems unrelated.

NK propaganda is to portray themselves as "childish and fun" for the outsiders, so they won't look in the abuse they do at home.

A) No they don't B) That wasnt his point.

I have read the article. Assuming it's true, from what I understand it's not NK government that do the trafficking but criminal gangs in China.

I fail to see any NK propaganda here.

Now if you wanted to say that I shouldn't take the situation there lightly, I get it, it's only funny on the surface.

The Korea Future Initiative is unsurprisingly funded by NED, making this article propaganda indeed.

This is a fairly deceptive statement. The Korea Future Initiative received a grand total of $50,000 (about 16% of its total fundraising) in 2020 from the NED.

https://www.ned.org/region/asia/north-korea-2020/

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/chari...

It's amazing how every time an article like this comes up, somebody tries to equivocate it with the west.

It's not the same.

The difference is that if you go around in North Korea (or in China, these days) saying Dear Leader is clown, somebody shows up at your doorstep with guns. Here it's a national sport.

The difference is the people with guns. Ask Denise Ho.

And yet here we are in the USA with the most prisoners per capita of any country in the world. Turns out we have many people with guns here. The security forces in the US are well funded.

It's not for lack of trying.

>"We have such a sophisticated propaganda in the west"

Do not flatter. It is quite visible and primitive.

It's very much sophisticated, it has several layers. What you call primitive are only the first layers.

Big brother, is that you?

Dude the fact you and him even accept the concept of "the west" is a testament to relentless and constant propaganda. That there is a unified front of "mostly white people" all sharing american values, guns and private prison alike.

Even China loves this idea of the western "box" they can put me, a French, in to associate all my ideas to every stupid american policies.

From Moscow to Los Angeles, everything west of China is divided, subtle and different. There is no west and therefore no western propaganda.

And I d say the american propaganda seems to work better than the French one. Where we try convince there is diversity, all you say is that "western propaganda is primitive" :(

There IS a more or less common understanding about what "Western" in the context mean. You want to waste time arguing semantics - be my guest. I have zero desire.

“Western” is a shortcut for the dominant alliance of imperialist countries: US, UK, most of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Materially also Israel and Japan, but rarely in rhetoric.

The concept is used both to critique the imperialist countries and to strengthen their alliance, by different people.

Rather odd to describe Canada and New Zealand as imperialist. How far do their empires extend?

Canadian finance capital own a great deal of the worldwide mining operations, if not a majority by now. They extract a great deal of value from poor countries through unequal exchange.

New Zealand is a less prolific exporter of capital, but does it all the same.

We’re just brainwashed to support a capitalist system rather than a communist one. We only don’t see the propaganda because we’ve been subjected to it since birth.

The fact that Elon Musk has fanboys should tell you all you need to know.

> We only don’t see the propaganda because we’ve been subjected to it since birth.

That's precisely the joke here.

>> We have such a sophisticated propaganda in the west that it's much harder to see it

The North Korean claim that the wall is only visible from their side reminds me of the Ha-ha:

>A ha-ha (French: hâ-hâ or saut de loup) is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier (particularly on one side) while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond from the other side

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha

I think this would be more of a ho-ho.

I’m disappointed there’s no backstory on the author, how / why did he get into North Korea?

Non-American tourists go to North Korea all the time, the tours are just heavily controlled by the government. It's a proper industry.

There are also tours normally geared towards Chinese tourists, but that are staffed with English-speakers (both the Chinese tour guide and the North Korean guides/handlers), so English-speaking Westerners can get a heavily controlled tour that's just a bit less controlled than the one typically offered to Westerners. The crossing into NK is made at Dandong in China, and after crossing the river, you take a regular internal NK train to Pyongyang, instead of taking a foreigners-only plane or train direct from Beijing to Pyongyang. US citizens used to take these tours, but I think it's probably even more insane to do that nowadays.

I knew a Western guy who ran tours inside NK. He gave tourists the government-sanctioned version, but he told me because they trusted him he had way more freedom than most Westerners and had traveled solo extensively through the country.

From his website: "I’m Elliott. I’m the tour director at North Korea tour operator Uri Tours. I travel a lot myself, sometimes to the unusual, weird and wacky. Earth Nutshell is where I share my experiences. Interested in visiting North Korea for yourself? Shoot me an email". He's from Tazmania.

The NK situation will resolve in some way in the future and whatever the outcome our descendants will look back with sadness that we didn’t come to a solution sooner - it is so clearly hell on Earth.

Do you speak from experience ?

No but I’m not sure I need first hand experience on the topic to have that opinion.

There is enough smoke around NK that the fire is clearly pretty big.

Funny, many Europeans say the same about America. Not defending NK but the situation has persisted because nobody wants to deal with the flood of refugees a collapsed regime would create. I wouldn’t count on the situation resolving itself in our lifetimes.

Americans have trouble paying for healthcare. That is true and terrible. It is also not equivalent to having ten percent of your population starve to death in a famine or being executed for religious proselytizing.

This exactly. I like comparing the absolute bottom denominator. I would never want to find myself in a US prison. They appear to be some of the worst in the 'developed' world.

I would easily choose a US prison over a North Korean prison, and one could even make a decent case of time in a US prison vs time as an average peasant in North Korea.

I always find the need for HN to look at these countries ruled by literal dictators and say, 'but America is bad as well!' incredibly perplexing.

Because “other country bad!” is quite frequently used in media propaganda to distract attention from domestic issues. This is in no way unique to the US either.

To me it comes across as belittling the problems experienced by the victims of these regimes

I’m European and the US blows my mind a bit on somethings but to put it at the same level as NK is laughable.

Great read, thank you

Reply on news.ycombinator.com