How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp
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utsalumni.org
What I found most remarkable was that despite NK's best efforts at total and complete isolation of the prisoners -- Shin was born into the camp and knew nothing of the outside world -- the human soul still inherently wants to be free. You can "nurture" a miserable existence all you want but it won't keep.
And in the end, what cracked the walls of the prison (metaphorically speaking) was an outsider with nothing more than stories.
No wonder dictatorships fear things like free speech and dissidents. Even the slightest hint of a better place (through words alone) can start the chain reaction.
I read elsewhere that a post-Juche NK would need one or two generations of special oversight before full reunification could take place due to the amount of mental trauma inflicted on the population (of ~20 million).
How would such a reunification compare to, say, East and West Germany?
The movie 'The Lives of Others' was motivated by the filmmakers' desire to smack down the Ostalgie-types achieving popularity in Germany. It is common there to see shops selling East German themed stuff, and there is at least one chain of shops solely dedicated to East German paraphernalia. Polls suggest there is a real yearning in some areas to go back to the days where the secret police and rationing of basic goods were real things. It's bizarre.
I was not able to find a single person saying, please send back the STASI, it was better with.
You must only accept that early 2000, the bubble crashed, the complete economy went out of track and that just 10 years after the reunification. They did not had the time to taste the good working capitalism.
My father lived in various bits of East Germany during the communist era. He had nothing to say but good things about the situation, until he pissed off a couple of Stasi in the late 1970s that was and was deported to the West after a fairly light telling off (fortunately versus locked up). The main thing that pissed him off about this is that he had just bought a new Robotron TV that he spent two years saving up for and had to leave it behind. He is bitter about this to the day :)
If it wasn't for the Stasi, it would have been a modern Utopia. Stable employment, manufacturing oriented economy (value added everywhere) and could pretty much stand alone. They even pushed family values and equality for all over conspicuous consumption, which is pretty much the entire facade of capitalism these days.
This ALL went down the shitter at reunification.
Perhaps someone should try it again (without the Stasi that is).
Some Ostalgie: I have three bottles of Vita Cola in the cupboard (that stuff rocks) and a Praktica MTL 5 camera which I use regularly - I find these to be the essence of the good bits of the GDR :)
Dragged through the courts for using Facebook and Twitter, held indefinitely without trial under the Terrorism Act, all the technology is imported from the communist far East, low quality things with a contract attached, luxury as a form of class ego via conspicuous consumption, everyone works for the minimum wage in service industries, no incentive to do anything but live on state handouts.
Yet, although I think the EU would rather like us to be.
There was very little, if any freedom of expression or freedom of speech. Not very utopian.
Average citizens had their exposure to the outside world limited. Not very utopian.
Citizens lived in a very tightly controlled society. A society controlled by the government and secret police. Not my idea of utopia.
Even if the modern internet had existed then, it's doubtful that a citizen would even be allowed to come to a site like this and even have this discussion.
As far as the Stasi go, you can't just say "without them it would have been fine" because they are completely intertwined with that society. That society required very little or no dissent to continue and that is why the Stasi existed: To crush dissent and keep everyone thinking how wonderful their "utopian" existence was....
Perhaps there is a reason that a "Stasi" always ends up appearing in these kinds of societies?
The reason for Ostalgie is that if you didn't piss off the Stasi, you actually had a reasonable life. Also, since reunification, the West Germans have treated the East like a second class lepper colony and closed all their businesses down resulting in much pissed-off-ness.
Not very bizarre. Other things were also "real things", like job security, food for everyone (even if little), a sense of belonging, etc. And a far better culture (including a vibrant counter-culture against the regime) than the BS that the media serve today.
If you visit some places full of dirt poor families, abandoned buildings and meth addicts, you'll get a nice glimpse why some might want it another way.
Do you really think complete control over another human being is morally acceptable, even if it prevents that person from becoming a drug addict?
I mean, we could cure all drug addicts today by sending them to a prison camp with violent punishment for carrying drugs. But would that be preferable to actually having drug addicts?
We can achieve a lot of things with force. The question is if the force itself creates more destruction than it prevents.
Do you really think a complex political system like in a former socialist country, can be reduced to "complete control over another human being"?
The idea of capitalism, and with it the associated idea of having to compete for people's business, is still somewhat new to them, you see...
An amazing, gripping story...and then I read a thread about Who hates on other platforms more - Android fans or Apple fans?
Here's a free idea, assuming it hasn't already been done in some form: In a Twitter-like interface, people with first world problems type in what's bothering them (eg "Didn't get an iPad for Xmas - my parents suck!") and when they hit submit, an algorithm returns either a brief story, picture or video from less fortunate countries that neatly correspond to their problem (eg, picture of a child begging a guard for something to eat).
It would be a great place to help us get over the little things that bother us more than they should. Seems http://www.firstworldproblems.com is already taken.
"Judy: I'm so thirsty" "@Judy Here's the story of Jamie in Zambia. Jamie is always thirsty http://link
You can't cover up thoughts with thoughts. Or emotions with emotions.
I wish more people had this perspective. Most Westerners I met take what they have for granted, completely oblivious to what goes on in other parts of the world.
I don't know what the answer is, but I think hindsight will lead future generations to condemn perceived inaction on our part.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_22#Conditions_in_the_camp
More immediately, Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. In the renewal of hostilities, Seoul would be flattened within hours, and Seoul has 15 million people living in it. More than Russia and China, that gun pointed at South Korea's head has always mandated extreme caution when dealing with the North (and allowed the North to get away with provocations that would have been crazy anywhere else).
Koreans have shown already that they sometimes still think of themselves as one people, with north and south koreans being friendly toward each other and wanting a reunion of the country (the way of the reunion that is the disagreement).
North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world. South Korea also has a huge army.
Also both of them have huge amounts of military equipment.
And finally, Korea in general (both from north and south) and very belligerant, or was at least, in the past, Korea history is filled with wars that they caused, and crazy conquest attempts.
Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship.
The united Koreas, maybe will just awesomely advance the world technology... Or maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China.
There are several countries that don't want to risk the second option, and thus every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself.
I am not saying I agree or condone that, but this is how it works.
As a Korean-American, I'd say that's accurate, but it would be more accurate without the phrase after the comma and without the negative in the part before the comma.
Regular North Koreans will be eager to join but then they won't be so happy in fifteen years seeing how their life quality won't nearly match the "historical south" and only jobs available to most of them will be of low prestige and pay.
Also won't want to have my lifestyle degrade because my country suddently have 20 million unproductive mouths to feed.
Nobody is saying unification will be easy for anyone, but they're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers just because the burden is a lot to shoulder.
Not to mention it's not South Korea blocking the development of North Korean workers at the moment.. there have been attempts to work together (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region) but between the batshit crazy government up north and everyone else scared shitless of what they can do it's not possible to manufacture and import/export a lot of technology instead of just mass-manufacturing clothing with cheap labor. Pretty frustrating.
Right now there are families in which people who were once together are now divided, but those generations are rapidly aging. How many generations can these two groups of people be relatively isolated before those bonds start to falter?
It's big, but not quite biggest according to Wikipedia. Or are you using a more specific definition of "standing army" than the amount of active servicemen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...
(Just a nitpick though, I appreciate your input.)
This might be true of China and Japan -- though I'm not sure I'd call them Western -- but I doubt if any European country would be the least bit bothered.
> Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either.
Name one.
> North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world.
No, it doesn't. The US, China and (India, IIRC) all have larger standing armies.
> Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship.
This is a poor and complex example. Several quite Japan-specific cultural issues are at play here. It's also not as welcoming to non-Korean foreigners as you seem to imply.
> The united Koreas... maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China.
This is ridiculous.
> ...every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself.
Aside from the factual inaccuracies ("biggest army of the world"), this feels like a half cooked conspiracy theory. Do you have any evidence whatsoever?
"Human Wave" [1] Tactics didn't work very effectively in the Korean war, they would work even less in a modern combat theater.
The Chinese were quite successful in the Korean war. But yeah I do not think those tactics would work today.
Wasn't speeder explaining why people wouldn't want a united Korea, probably based on faulty assumptions and stupid theories?
Not that I found his comment very convincing anyway but things like this do not have to be true to be the reason for policies.
Regardless, you clearly were not making the point that no one has those faulty assumptions, you were pointing out that they were faulty. That was my entire point.
As a generality, sure. However, "fear of a united Korea" is not a driving factor behind any "Western" plot to keep them divided. It's preposterous to anyone who knows anything about geopolitics in the region.
> Regardless, you clearly were not making the point that no one has those faulty assumptions, you were pointing out that they were faulty. That was my entire point.
You're interpreting my post a little narrowly.
The "assumptions" are faulty to the point of being ludicrous. It's implied that no-one actually believes it to be true.
It's a bit like saying terrorists "hate us for our freedom".
Excellent example!
My point is that that preposterous assumption is widely believed by people who vote and is therefore a large factor in foreign policy, even if those who are using it as a talking point have other motivations and don't actually believe it.
Then there are also those that are in office and do believe this kind of stupidity, optimists generally feel these types of politicians "can't exist" because how would they get into office without being smarter than that. As I got older and actually met a decent number of politicians I realized they were normal people who can be just as stupid and confused as the public in general, especially when it's in their interests to believe these things.
North Korea was a proxy for the USSR and South Korea a proxy for the US.
US wants a strong presence in the area given how Chinese are growing on the world scene currently. I am not saying that the Kim family are saints, but US is not present in South Korea for charity work. Everyone in the game is for their interests.
Almost ALL Foreigners living in Japan rarely get citizenship in Japan. Havent you been told ? Your example means NOTHING.
As for the crazy conquest/wars started by the Koreans, feel free to substantiate, please. And let me laugh at the idea of Korean conquering Japan/China. Where in the world can they even dream to do so ?
You seriously have no idea what you are talking about.
Why didn't South Korea start, decades ago, relocating its capital to somewhere out of artillery fire, i.e. end all development in Seoul and build a new city in the south. It seems to be a bit thoughtless to build a major city where it is a hostage to the brutal and aggressive dictatorship next door.
They took traditions seriously and traditionally it's THE capital. Even North Korea considered Seoul the capital for decades, calling Pyongyang "the capital of revolution" or something like that.
Also, it was a very poor and unstable country post-war and didn't feature much strategic thinking. And obviously USA wanted their military bases near the border, i.e. in Seoul.
However, even if all of Seoul was evacuated it wouldn't necessarily make things so much better as North Korea has missiles with enough range even to hit Japan or the US, and potentially nuclear weapons to go with them. Potentially one could imagine banking on anti-missile systems to nullify that threat but that's a pretty big gamble.
Also, an attempt to move people out of the capital would have been a provocative act to North Korea, at any time. Because it would have been seen as an obvious prelude to an invasion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._in_the_America...
Despite being the nation's capital, Washington remained a small city of a few thousand residents, virtually deserted during the torrid summertime, until the outbreak of the Civil War.
"Of all the detestable places Washington is first. Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fair [fare], bad smells, mosquitos, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience... Beelzebub surely reigns here, and Willard's Hotel is his temple."
At the outset the U.S. Civil War, Washington D.C. wasn't just a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater; it was a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater bordered on the south by the most powerful bastion of Confederate sentiment and on the north by a state experiencing a crisis of North/South identity. So why didn't Lincoln pack up and move the capital to Philadelphia or New York? This question isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious. Was it national pride? Would moving the capital have been viewed as an act of implicit defeat? Whatever the reason, perhaps the South Koreans felt the same.
It is easy to find lots of information on Washington DC's civil war defenses - some ~70 forts, 400 emplacements for field guns, and unmatched transportation/communication infrastructure. The resources devoted to protecting the capital instead of campaigning were a regular source of contention for Lincoln, his generals, and public opinion - many opportunities were missed by Army of the Potomac commanders who feared leaving DC vulnerable.
On the other side, the Confederate capital was originally in Montgomery, Alabama, and moved to Richmond, Virginia when Virginia seceded following Fort Sumter. Like Washington, this put the capital remarkably close to the front lines, but the existing industry, infrastructure, political weight, and defensibility seemed to make the position worth the risk.
Hoping someone with knowledge chimes in :).
During the war construction costs for the new dome [for the Capitol building] other parts of the building drew unfavorable remarks. Lincoln, however, stressed the importance of continuing the work, saying, "If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on."
The same reasoning would explain keeping the capital in DC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18670195
I don't follow Korean politics, so I don't know if the motivations were to escape NK artillery or some other reason, but it seems like organizing a massive move is just one of those things democracy is bad at.
Maybe submit this to xkcd's 'what-if'?
It's prohibitively expensive to move a city, especially if the justification is "if we get really f-d, then we'll be a little less f-d".
The U.S.'s defense against an attack on D.C. was the assumption of a rational enemy, nuclear hardened command and control bunkers very far from shore, nuclear hardened ICBM silos very far from shore, continuously airborne nuclear bombers, and very stealthy SSBNs.
Really, South Korea's strongest defense is that an invasion by the North would instantly kill enough US troops to guarantee massive US retaliation against all military bases in NK, and would instantly kill enough civilians that China wouldn't retaliate as long as no US troops crossed the DMZ. Hopefully this is a big enough threat that a significant number of high-level and mid-level military leaders would stage a coup d'etat rather than follow orders to invade SK.
Edit: one would hope that the U.S. and China already have negotiated how much retaliation China will tolerate in response to various acts of war by NK. One would also hope that these details have been leaked to NK.
That seems somewhat similar to the logic that the US used to decide that Vietnam was strategically important; some sort of minor variation on the domino theory.
Interesting to consider it like that.
From my own reading, it seemed that China's involvement was largely due to the Russian, and Chinese push for more "Red States" (which is why they were also involved in Vietnam). There was the notion that Capitalism would fall by the hand of "Global Revolution"...
The Soviets had no warm water ports on the Pacific, and Vietnam was smack the the middle of key US allies and strategic trade routes for rubber and oil. It was a strategic place.
That said. This isn't an excuse for the insanity of US policy in Vietnam from 1945 onwards.
Does this change if the attackers are allowed to use nuclear weapons?
(This is a strictly academic question. Nuking North Korea seems like a move that'll likely start a war that will end civilization.)
It's entirely possible that the US and its allies have mapped the endpoints of these tunnels and _could_ simultaneously bombard them all, but if even 10% were missed Seoul could be absolutely decimated. (There are reports that South Korean and US special forces make incursions into the North to discover and map tunnels, so I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of unknowns is much higher than 10%.)
Interestingly, if Seoul and other populated areas were to be moved--that is, its 15 million citizens collectively abandoned the city and rebuilt, say, 100 miles away from the DMZ--this strategic advantage of the DPRK would be voided. Ignoring the staggering cost of this, it's probable that the North would view such action as provocation to war and act accordingly.
From the field of possible responses to North Korea it's entirely possible that waiting for it to burn itself out may well be the least costly tactic, measured by unnatural human deaths. That means, of course, that the DPRK's concentration camps and system of repression must be tolerated until such horrors lead to the destruction of the government from internal forces. Personally, I find this morally repugnant and I pity any world leaders that must choose the waiting game.
The south spent $500 million dollars building the Peace Dam downstream in an attempt to defend against flooding, but it is still a very credible threat.
General consensus of American boots on the ground in South Korea is that the North Koreans will be in Seoul (or what is left of it) within 48 hours. Everyone drills for rapid evac. The picture we like to paint is that they are inept starving fools, but they have been planning and drilling non-stop longer than some other countries have even existed.
1. There could be some confusion as to what is left undestroyed by 10%. I intended that figure to refer to the DPRK's tunnels, but especially the artillery capable tunnel mouths, not Seoul itself.
2. You may be employing a single definition of 'decimate', namely 'to take a tenth part of, tithe'. I doubt you mean the historical Roman practice of killing every tenth man, chosen by lot, of a legion. I kindly note that 'to destroy a large percentage of' is a a commonly accepted English usage of 'decimate'. It may be the most common usage, especially as knowledge of latin roots is not widespread.
Are there really not enough words for destroy/crush/obliterate/etc, that another one needs to be created?
If Seoul installs an Iron Dome-like system similar to Israel(but on a much larger scale) it would render any remaining artillery bombardment from the North mostly ineffective(as SK and US forces would likely hit the majority of their installations very quickly):
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=10007...
"Lift the US embargo or we'll kill 15 million South Korean civilians."
"Give us $10 billion a year or we'll kill 15 million people."
"Give us an aircraft carrier or we'll kill 15 million people."
"Give us some better technology or we'll kill 15 million people."
"Give us 10,000 South Koreans to us as slaves every year or we'll kill 15 million of them."
What's stopping North Korea from making these demands?
That they are an actual country, and not some comic book villain's brotherhood?
I mean, WTF? People in the West really believe those kind of things can be demands or that those kind of BS passes through North Korean people's minds?
But they did use the "give us a hundred thousand tons of grain or 100,000 people will starve" tactic pretty effectively thru all the 90-s
Consider: why is that when we talk about P != NP, everybody needs a super-strong proof on 200 pages, but when it comes to pushing and killing people, it is enough to believe a word of a bunch of random people regarding ethics, democracies, laws etc.
If only.
The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rowanda, North Korea... History is replete with examples were the current generation know the consequences of inaction of the prior generation, yet did nothing to stop genocide in their generation.
I don't know what would change things, but I have little hope for future generations being motivated by condemning our inaction.
There are approximately 20 million brainwashed individuals, a lot of whom have absolutely no idea what the rest of the world is like. They will defend NK to the death if they think they'll be killed not doing it.
If you go there and start a war, which is the only likely way to stop the oppression, do you think we can actually win it?
Incremental political change is the only way to go and the current leadership realise that, but if they change it suddenly, they'll all hang as well.
Don't forget the last Korean war killed a LOT of people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Den...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Denisovich-Penguin-Modern-Class...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kolyma_Tales
http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-ebo...
http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/
Please consider a small donation of money or even time (the "Get Involved" menu).
Or even just re-tweet, re-blog, and talk to your friends about this story.
[0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716763
[1]: Going through my list of saved articles shocked me with how many I remember.
I suspect that, if reunification occurs, NK will be held apart as a special zone for a generation or two in order to educate a following generation for real reunification.
I know that donating some money won't fix everything, but I would have felt very bad if later in life someone asked me what I had done to help out people who lived lives like on the one described in the story and my response had been "nothing".
Everyone who has the ability to read HN is very blessed. It is so easy to forget how so many of this world's inhabitants are forced to live their daily lives. Human's don't seem to be very good at empathizing with more than a small group of people. If we could literally feel the suffering of our brothers and sister's world wide that live under such oppressive forces, I believe that the suffering would end swiftly as nobody could resist the call to arms that would ensue.
They need job skills training, housing, clothes, everything. These organizations can use donations of all sizes, enough to buy socks to enough to bribe border guards, buy plane tickets or put down a cheonsae [1].
Here's some information on the typical escape path for many of the refugees. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVOrUMWaJ0
It does help to educate them about the world around them but not much else.
It's true that some families do have televisions; but they're only issued to the most trusted families as gifts from the State and are tuned to only government broadcasts which are heavily censored and controlled.
Regarding increased smuggling from China, you really cannot extrapolate widespread proliferation from the western press published regarding the crackdowns on the smuggling by the government.
Punishment for possessing smuggled devices is so draconian that most people privileged enough to live in Pyongyang (only ~10% of the population) wouldn't risk their lives or that of their families. Electricity is also tenuous in Pyongyang so I think it's reasonable to assume that the situation is orders of magnitude worse throughout the rest of the country where the government invests much less in infrastructure.
The punishment may be draconian but I guess you can reliably evade it by the means of a small bribe.
Pyongyang is kind of special but also nothern regions usually have some niceties due to their proximity to Chinese border (and therefore trade/smuggled goods).
I'm basically parrotting a blogger that writes a lot about both Koreas so I might be not entirely accurate. http://tttkkk.lj.ru/
Radios are still way cheaper.
Imagine being trapped somewhere you have no Internet. Then a fellow traveler lets you borrow something like a Kindle, which has a color screen and the ability to search for subscribe to any RSS feed. Now imagine what it would like to be a native who never had real Internet access and then get such a device.
There's still much more bang for buck for Radio and The Voice of America.
And anyway (s)he's at the cultural stage where one (moving) picture is worth a thousand words. Consider South Korean news feed (North Koreans don't know any other language) - 95% of topics would seem abstract and arcane.
Reduces your point almost to straw an level right there. You don't try to reach him. You go for the young people. You don't sell such devices, you make sure they wash up on the shore or get smuggled in through China. It's the (mid) 21st century equivalent to propaganda pamphlets.
> For him, Internet is a very abstract thing and RSS means nothing.
Of course it doesn't. Just show him the screen. Hell, the things would be heavily used for porn anyhow.
> And you won't be able to supply a reliable connectivity.
Remember I said satellite. Or are you saying that the North Koreans would jam the signal? This could be worked around. For one thing, it would be very hard to jam a spread spectrum signal. Also, you can have the device figure out the jamming has happened and have it listen on a separate channel for information on how switch to the next signal. All of this could be reverse engineered, but the state of the art has it possible to delay the reversing might of the whole internet for an entire year. The NK government would probably take two years, by which time, you're distributing the next version.
> And anyway (s)he's at the cultural stage where one (moving) picture is worth a thousand words.
E-ink screens are capable of video, though this would kill the battery.
> Consider South Korean news feed (North Koreans don't know any other language) - 95% of topics would seem abstract and arcane.
For many, especially the young, that would be an attraction.
(mid) - But like I said earlier, you still get much better bang for the buck with radio. However, you can take the time when price point of such technology becoming inexpensive enough to be practical to manufacture and fling these as propaganda or marketing tools as the time limit for oppressive regimes.
http://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet-Freedom/dp/...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/09/net-delusion-mor...
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/books/review/Siegel-t.htm...
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag [by Chol-hwan Kang]
http://www.amazon.com/Aquariums-Pyongyang-Years-North-Korean...
Author was nine years old when imprisoned at the Yodok camp in 1977. Inexplicably released in 1987, he states that the only lesson his imprisonment had "pounded into me was about man's limitless capacity to be vicious."
This article is written by the unification church - right up in the same bat shit crazy neighborhood as LR Hubbard and his pals...
And the discussion - Korea is crazy and belligerent?
The country known as the hermit kingdom. Did not open to the west until ~ 1870s. The last time it was involved in trying to invade another country was as a vassal state of Kublai Khan. And yet such assertions go unchecked.
Korea is not belligerent and has much riding upon regional stability. We are talking about an economy that is roughly the scale of Italy's and a standard of living that is in many ways better than the US.
The biggest impediment to North South reunification is the immense disparity. The difference between East and West Germany was minute in comparison.
I am not Korean but love Korea. Have had the chance to work there (3 yrs) and know a slight bit of the history, language and culture.
There are many better sources of information on North Korea - don't give the Unification Church any more publicity. The Netflix documentary mentioned is a good one.
And stop with the misinformed ideas of Korea. It is not like China and Japan even though it is stuck in the middle. Korean language and culture compared to Chinese is roughly analogous to English with Latin. The base is completely different but Koreans borrowed Chinese philosophy and science.
Linguistically Korean has more in common with Mongolian and Hungarian than it does to Mandarin.
Also, there are 2 Koreas, you talk as if there is only 1. No one is suggesting that South Korea is crazy or belligerent. I didn't even see that assertion with North korea... What are you referring to?
Also I'm quite sure the standard of living is not better in North Korea (than in the US), or are you referring to the south? if so, why?
And the piece is cited in the Unification Church alumni website - not the Guardian, so i do not know what you are talking about.
Reread this whole discussion and tell me that is is an accurate portrayal of Korea or the current state of relation s. It is not.
There are a few intelligent comments about East Germany but then a bunch of drivel about North Korea as a buffer for China against an imperialistic Korea.
There is not really one comment to attack here for factual wrongheadedness. Start from a Unification church review and spirals off from there. The discussion is completely off the rails.
The content is unfortunately no longer available, but a quick Google search reveals several places in addition to the OP's link you can find this text. I don't have time to do so but you should definitely review the text posted by the OP against other sources printing the same text, or even from the book itself.
Any corroboration for this story? Because "escaped" people are known to say anything, especially since it can be very profitable outside their country.
For one, people like and buys survival stories (the harder the better), second, if they are nicely crafted they can serve as diplomatic pressure and propaganda (which is not the sole province of North Korea).
So, any actual evidence, outside what just one man says that we are supposed to take for granted?
Eric Schmidt owes this man a visit (if he hasn't already). If he can fly halfway around the world to pay his respects to the architects of this abomination, buttressing their hateful regime, then he can use his powers of publicity to call attention to the plight of those like Shin.
I believe it was his brother and his mother who were executed. I believe his brother was named Shin as well, with the rest of his name different.
I think this is a family name / given name issue.
I still remember it vividly from that day.
The protagonist, Thorby, is a freed slave, and most of the people he encounters in the story are skeptical that slavery still exists.
Have not seen it yet, but I saw the cover browsing around on Netflix.