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I think the podcast was designed to shock you. The person interviewed in the podcast has a name, which you can google. He seems to have made a career out of sho

by dpwm 9y ago

I think the podcast was designed to shock you. The person interviewed in the podcast has a name, which you can google. He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. There are some truly horrible accounts, I think we can agree on that. However, we must accept that we do not know the motives of the defectors. If they are paid for defecting with a story, then it is in the defector's interest to produce a story. Most residents of the DPRK do not defect. Defectors are not necessarily a representative sample of the DPRK. We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Incidentally, we were both led to that podcast by an account that is 48 days old, has at the time of writing contributed not one comment in this community and is one of many accounts that only posts links to only this domain. Before you dismiss this as ad-hominem, the point I am making is that this is part of an agenda. The agenda is ostensibly not about making money, but promoting an ideology. This is quite overt, yet it seems that source evaluation is not entering into critical thinking any more.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
> He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. OK, but this podcast was primarily based on a personal visit to NK, plus a bunch of the NK's own propaganda. (Yes, they did discuss at least one NK defector, but that wasn't the primary topic of discussion.)
Cyberdog 9y ago
Okay, to you and others questioning the motives of defectors on fiduciary grounds, remember that defecting is a high crime in North Korea, and a difficult task. Most defectors don't attempt to simply rush the North-South border, because it is highly patrolled and likely to get you shot at by the North side. Instead they take an arduous trip through China, avoiding Chinese authorities who will deport them back to North Korea if caught. The families of defectors become social pariahs back home, if not worse. Defection is literally a life-risking act, and not only for the defectors. So defectors have to be extremely motivated to take the risks they do, and such people tend to have a story, yes; perhaps they make parts of them up, but I don't think most of them would really need to. At any rate, avoiding the country becoming like North Korea, or avoiding normalized relations or acceptance of the Nork regime, isn't really a goal of most libertarians, in the sense that such things are already far from happening in the first place.
FabHK 9y ago
> Most residents of the DPRK do not defect [...] We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Not sure you're seriously proposing that there is some sort of epistemic uncertainty about the quality of life in the DPRK; so let's just be clear: there isn't. Yes, the Cato institute is part of the Koch-funded right wing propaganda machine, and yes, they have an agenda. Still, there's no doubt that the DPRK is a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record.

by dpwm 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

> He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. OK, but this podcast was primarily based on a personal visit to NK, plus a bunch of the NK's own propaganda. (Yes, they did discuss at least one NK defector, but that wasn't the primary topic of discussion.)

Cyberdog 9y ago

Okay, to you and others questioning the motives of defectors on fiduciary grounds, remember that defecting is a high crime in North Korea, and a difficult task. Most defectors don't attempt to simply rush the North-South border, because it is highly patrolled and likely to get you shot at by the North side. Instead they take an arduous trip through China, avoiding Chinese authorities who will deport them back to North Korea if caught. The families of defectors become social pariahs back home, if not worse. Defection is literally a life-risking act, and not only for the defectors. So defectors have to be extremely motivated to take the risks they do, and such people tend to have a story, yes; perhaps they make parts of them up, but I don't think most of them would really need to. At any rate, avoiding the country becoming like North Korea, or avoiding normalized relations or acceptance of the Nork regime, isn't really a goal of most libertarians, in the sense that such things are already far from happening in the first place.

FabHK 9y ago

> Most residents of the DPRK do not defect [...] We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Not sure you're seriously proposing that there is some sort of epistemic uncertainty about the quality of life in the DPRK; so let's just be clear: there isn't. Yes, the Cato institute is part of the Koch-funded right wing propaganda machine, and yes, they have an agenda. Still, there's no doubt that the DPRK is a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record.