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Well, we could obviously just ask the North Korean emigres who work in our countries. Surely they will tell us the truth? Or the many North Korean tourists who
by colinb 5y ago
Well, we could obviously just ask the North Korean emigres who work in our countries. Surely they will tell us the truth? Or the many North Korean tourists who visit Europe and North America? Or indeed the vast numbers of North Korean folks visiting around the world for work purposes?
Oh, wait. We can't ask any of those people, because they seem not to exist. Is that because North Korea is so wealthy that no one wants to leave to work elsewhere? Because North Korea is such a utopia that they don't even want to travel overseas? Because their industry is so advanced and self-sufficient that they need no trade deals with others?
You don't have to believe everything you read about North Korea, but to dismiss it all as US propaganda without offering a significant countervailing body of evidence is, well, silly.
- Grustaf 5y agoSorry, I was unclear. While I do definitely mistrust US propaganda on North Korea, I don't doubt at all that it's a terrible place to live in every possible way, I have read several books by defectors (and visited numerous communist and post-communist countries). My point was more that the reason we have heard about it is mostly because that suits the Western agenda. Otherwise very few would have any idea about what is going on there. Just like few Americans or even Europeans know much about Transdniestria, a present day communist state in Europe. Or Bhutan, a seemingly very happy little country. Even in the days of Wikipedia and internet news, most people don't know much more about the world than what is convenient for Western media to tell us. All this to say that it's inconceivable that people outside Germany could be pretty ignorant about what was going on in the late 30s.