Oh and also if your family is deemed a dissident, the next 3–4 generations (including unborn children) will be imprisoned and raised in prison labor camps where children get killed by bashing their skulls open for stealing one (yes a single) grain of rice.
Not a paradise indeed. I’m not convinced the sanctions have much to do with any of the above though.
[1]: https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324
[3]: https://www.youngpioneertours.com/top-five-best-fake-north-k...
Other sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea#...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-...
Doesn't sound too much different from countries where the people are indoctrinated to believe their leader was born from a virgin, doesn't it? You'll say the difference is 2000 years into the history, so, we just need to give NK ~1925 more years.
Not a day goes past where I don’t see someone try to minimize commie atrocities…
I watched a documentary about North Korean defectors that wanted to go back to North Korea, one of the many reasons was to be with their families. They never mentioned their family were imprisioned. And it wouldn't make much sense to want to go back if their family was imprisioned.
Again, I'm no North Korean supporter or whatever, I just think there is a LOT of propaganda and misinformation about NK, and I think we should take everything with a grain of salt... Unless you think the US is a saint and would never lie about enemy countries.
And about the sanctions, I dind't mention any sanctions, you are just assuming that I support X or Y, when I never said such thing.
We don't get tourists from North Korea because they aren't allowed to leave the country. We don't talk with North Korean people on the internet, because their access to the internet is tightly controlled.
There's no grand western conspiracy to suppress information about NK. It's North Korea itself that does that.
I know that on HN many consider blind contrarianism to be synonymous with rationalism, but seriously...
You seem to think the USA is just a monolith, and as such can be modeled as what the face of our government says. This is silly.
While it's true that business and especially the media is "in bed with" our government quite a lot of the time, it remains true that all have distinct interests.
It seems disingenuous to try and brush off the well documented brutality that is the way of life in North Korea, as being something made up by US / South Korea..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims
Jesus, the guy is saying people are indoctrinated into thinking the great leader "didn’t defecate ever". Do you really think North Koreans are that stupid and have zero biology knowledge? Or maybe, uh, this is just fake? Pure propaganda? Are you really that dumb to believe something like that?
Yoyre like someone who thinks gravity doesn’t exist. Literally everyone knows this, they’re not stupid, they’re lied to their entire lives. There are tons of defectors who will back this up and you can’t talk to anyone in North Korea outside of carefully guided tours set up by the state
"Hey, I have some doubts that the DPRK isn't Satan incarnate."
"You do realize that's the same as not believing in gravity right!?"
Alright, let me setup a experiment in my room to divine their mathematical _evil_ constant.
Or maybe even more mundanely, it's like Santa Claus. Adults don't believe that he lives at the north pole with flying reindeer. But we continue to teach children that he does - not because it's literally true, but because we seem to feel that having children believe this somehow makes our culture better.
I imagine that similarly, Kim is getting this reverence - but since it's channeled into a framework of him being their supreme leader, it reinforces his hold on the nation.
Are there particular things in this report which you don't agree with, or consider suspicious, or know that it's an outright lie?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324
[3] https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is...
[4] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/fake-news-north-k...
I'm not arguing they are lying or not, I'm just saying that we shouldn't blindly believe it.
But watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM made me a little bit skeptical about those defector stories. It's a very good watch, and I guess it doesn't hurt to hear a different perspective.
On the other hand, there's no reason to doubt the story too much. NyT's stories are generally highly factual, even though their primary bias is left-center. And we know that NK is a hellhole, not just from defectors, as the "Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul" video states, but from a myriad of other, independent sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims
I have absolutely no doubt that North Korea is hell in earth, but there is a very very very good reason to say that every story has two sides. But maybe you just haven't experienced being the victim of "the reputable side" lying without any consequences. As a Muslim that grew up during the war on terror, I can't really say the same.
I bitterly told people before the second war with Iraq that there were no WMDs. Any well read, educated, intelligent person should have been able to confidently say the same.
For example, a report about a new science result, the science is "one side." The "other side" is not the crystal healing quack that believes in magic. Two, you have video evidence of something along with multiple eye-witnesses. That is one side. The other side is not "oh but maybe all the witnesses are really part of a huge conspiracy and the video is fake!"
Some claims are not strong, and if a specific claim is not strong then you can explain why. But you cannot just flippantly say every story has two sides, that's bullshit. You need to say why a particular claim should be doubted.
Again, the saying means that we as mere observers of huge, complicated geopolitical moves cannot know the full context and are vulnerable to propaganda. Yes even from the good(your) side. No conspiracy is required for that.
You talk about science, yet, every anti-NK article sent in this thread are extremely poorly written and lack evidence to their claims. How is that "science"? Unless you are claiming that "science is when it matches my beliefs".
For exemple, did you know the US launched 3 bombs for every person in Laos? There are VILLAGES in Laos built with unexploded bomb left overs from the Vietnam War.
Did you know that there are children being born with life threatening health problems in Vietnam due to the amount of orange gas the US dropped there 40 years ago?
And quoting from a recent speech from Trump this year: "How about we are buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it up, would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door"
Is this the reliable country we should blindly believe? Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect their interests?
regardless of that, shouldn't you also truly believe on "let North Koreans travel freely"?
It's more like a poor quality article though, they start off by claiming massive new difficulties for these people in the last couple of years but don't tell you anything about why that happened. Mass surveillance and greedy traffickers who ended up stealing the money and ratting everyone out existed years ago as well, so they didn't really add any new information here, or at least didn't explain it very well.