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Really interesting article! On a related note, one oddity I often see online (and, once, in person) are the die-hard groups of westerners who insist that North

Really interesting article! On a related note, one oddity I often see online (and, once, in person) are the die-hard groups of westerners who insist that North Korea is actually a paradise on earth and any claim to the contrary is some kind of evil capitalist propaganda. Utterly baffling, when there are so many sources like this article indicating otherwise.

decafninja 5y ago
I've seen this too. Their mantra is usually something along the lines of "don't believe everything you see in the corrupt Western/South Korean media". What gives? I can understand different countries have different pros and cons, different people value different things, and something an American might find unpalatable might not be considered so bad somewhere else. But North Korea seems to stand out as being one of very few countries that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Odd that anyone who wasn't born there would willingly and voluntarily pledge their allegiance to such a regime.
- lisper 5y ago
  My guess is that most of the people who profess to believe that everything in the DPRK is hunky dory are on the extreme political left. The right does not have a monopoly on crazy people.
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    I can't imagine these people are on a left-right scale. They seem to be perpendicular.
    - lisper 5y ago
      I've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S. standards.)
      - MiroF 5y ago
        I'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba, and that if we were serious about our opposition to authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like Saudi Arabia. This is very different from the DPRK.
        lisper 5y ago
        I did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with respect to the arguments that are advanced for them, which in both cases are based on the premise that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on the political left. The political right has their own version of this argument, except that they focus their skepticism on "the mainstream media" rather than "Western sources" (but IMHO both of these phrases are clearly dog whistles without an actual referent other than, "any source that disagrees with my position.")
        MiroF 5y ago
        I feel like the "West" [0] is a pretty clear referent and is not synonymous with "any source that disagrees with my position." What is it a dog whistle for? > conventional wisdom Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues like these. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
        lisper 5y ago
        Yes, I don't disagree with that. But I will point out that the literature of the groups that advocate these positions could objectively be called "Western sources" since they originate in the West, but obviously those are not what the people who produce those sources mean when they say that e.g. "Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba." It is actually very hard to characterize a reliable source in a way that does not exhibit any sort of cultural or political bias.
    - simplestats 5y ago
      In South Korea, the most pro-north political parties are on the left. With the most extremely-pro-north being the extreme left.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      I have a 10% rule. ~10-20% of any group is gonna be a little nutty about something. 10-20% of the population doesn't believe in the moon landing. Similar with the flat earth. They've always existed, just have microphones now.
  - trasz 5y ago
    How is North Korea left? It's an absolute monarchy, pretty much exactly the other side of the political compass.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - decafninja 5y ago
      They declare themselves to be a socialist utopia. If you believe what they say at face value, and also believe that anything negative said about the DPRK by the Western media, etc. to be total lies like some of these people being discussed here do, then I guess you could think North Korea is a leftist paradise.
    - lisper 5y ago
      That is, empirically, where forms of government commonly labelled as "left" ends up when taken to extremes. North Korea is just the most extreme example.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Yeah, bullshit. What other "left" government ended up with a hereditary monarchy?
        lisper 5y ago
        You're right, left-wing dictatorships tend not to be hereditary. NK is unique in this regard.
        bernawil 5y ago
        NK is really the odd one there with the hereditary thing and all. Almost all other communist "dictatorships" are really not that different from US style corporations. Basically, organizations staffed by common people jockeying for position. Sometimes climbing the ladder on merit, sometimes politicking but you get the point. Being family with the CEO helps proably as much as being family with the head of the politburo. And if you think about it, how much of American culture in the 20th century was a result of things that came out of corporate boards?
- germandiago 5y ago
  People tend to value different things. If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal (NK in this case). Or you have to be treated like an animal in the customs to even make medicines or food in. I have seen this elsewhere, believe me. Those people that live from that deserve... I will not say what they deserve, but nothing good. In the meantime, what happens is that the market is not and invention, but it "is". That is why there are black markets. And they are illegal. So what now? Easy: you have to brive all the public workers to get what you want. This is not only sad, this is attacking the dignity of the normal people who deserve a life.
  - MiroF 5y ago
    > If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. Lumping Cuba and North Korea together is silly & misguided.
    - germandiago 5y ago
      > Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. That is plainly false. There are lots of cheating in how they count that, for example, if a kid is going to have any kind of problem, they suggest and try to abort it and it does not appear in the count, to give you just one single example about how they count life expectation. There is lots more that is only make up, such as the health care myth and others. They do have lots of doctors they send abroad and the regime gets 70% of their income. When you land abroad, if you work like that, they take away your passport so that you cannot escape. They do campaigns to donate blood and they sell that blood (over 21 million dollars in sales for blood that was supposed to be, most of it, an altruist action by cuban people in one year). They are literally treated as slaves. Did you see what happened last July? There were riots in the streets. They did not have even medicines or food and they (the regime and its propaganda) started to talk about the embargo (incorrectly called blockage) as the problem, when the problem is that those people in that odious regime do not let even the food or medicines go through without taking a part. I mean, they take advantage of the anguish of relatives that are outside and they smash them. After that I saw president Diaz Canel promoting violence against people for the protests from his very own words, not a translation or similar (I can speak spanish).
germandiago 5y ago
I have lived in Vietnam for almost a decade. North Korea seems to be the equivalent of Vietnam before it started to open its economy in the 90s. I can tell you, that is a hell, but what really makes me more angry about all this is how a leading class spoils people mercilessly and treat them as animals with no dignity. I am talking about North Korea for what I see in articles lately. But in Cuba there are similar patterns where everything is forbidden and corruption reigns with people trying to survive because some others decided they have to live like animals. Vietnam is way waaaay better than NK and Cuba, even if it has its downsides, since its economy has been steadily opened to investment.
- vmception 5y ago
  I think Vietnam is interesting since it is the same single party Communist country that we lost to, graduated to state capital system like they all do, has authoritative control over all facets of life and especially dissidents, but doesnt trigger anyone in my circles, doesnt appear in my news negatively, and is seen as a travel destination. Kinda funny is that it really just means they are irrelevant as a competitor or market, and that none of us really care about governing systems or really care about imagining everyone is a victim because they lack self determination for their country, only competitors.
  - germandiago 5y ago
    Vietnam has in many aspects economy market, but yes, it is a single party country and we all know what that can mean. However, it has been developing steadily. I am not american, btw. (I say so bc you say "we lost to").
MiroF 5y ago
I definitely lean skeptical of Western sources on things like this, but life in NK is obviously pretty awful. That said, there is essentially no information in this article that makes me believe that they actually talked to this person as opposed to making up a caricature of how they imagine life in NK to be.
- jimhi 5y ago
  I talked to several people (not just 1) and am still friends with some to this day. This was an event held by LINK (https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/ https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/) which I already wrote in both the article and this thread. You can go to their site or the several talks I linked in this thread to hear their stories directly.
carabiner 5y ago
Not paradise, but not a prison state like the US describes. Just a really poor country like other poor countries. My cousin (Korean-Canadian) went on one of those hokey tours in the DPRK before they were banned and actually talked to the locals. She said they had normal lives of jobs, friends, relationships, hobbies, like we all do, just with less material wealth.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Those people were not speaking candidly due to being observed or fear of being reported. Also, they are not allowed to leave the country and can, along with their extended family, receive harsh punishments for things that would be considered unjust in much of the world. Prison is a fair description.
drekk 5y ago
One thing I find more odd is how American audiences treat the DPRK while also supporting the continued military puppet state that is the ROK. There were also a "lot of sources" supporting WMDs in Iraq. When what you're saying is the state department narrative it's not going to receive pushback. The US killed 20% of Koreans on the peninsula and reduced it all to rubble. Forgive my skepticism at the "humanitarian intentions". Especially when there are financial incentives to become a defector [0] There are also documentaries produced locally [1] and you can very well go on Weibo yourself and speak to North Koreans. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39170614 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39170614 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  You may find it odd because Americans for the most part don't actually have a problem with "military puppet states", if certain aspects of freedom and human rights are agreeable and pass their muster. Feel free to look at the differences in health and life outcomes for North vs South Koreans, while entirely obscuring the systems of government, and you will see why the North Koreans are reviled throughout most of the rational/non-psychopathic world.
- warning26 5y ago
  Looks like we've found another one!
- chernevik 5y ago
  South Korea - has elections - has a free press - allows people to leave etc
  - malermeister 5y ago
    It does now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising >South Korean universities were shut down, newspaper offices were closed, and any political activity that went against the policies of General Chun Doo-hwan were strictly banned. In further details, all public gatherings that included more than three party were forbidden with an only exception for funerals. With the Korean news media muzzled by martial law, only the handful of foreign correspondents present could publish reports on what was happening in Gwangju — no easy task, given the army cordon. Telephone lines had been cut by the military; some reporters walked miles to villages to line up at the nearest phones still working. Soon after, General Chun Doo-hwan broadened the terms of martial law into the entire country of South Korea and rigorously kept in check with suspicious activities that seemed to be promoting democracy. Thus all pro-democracy leaders including students were considered as traitors or anti-government criminals. In consequence, the charges that met those of who were considered as convicts were in reality as cruel as any major prisoners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_of_May_Seventeenth#Martial_law_of_1980s_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_of_May_Seve...

decafninja 5y ago

I've seen this too. Their mantra is usually something along the lines of "don't believe everything you see in the corrupt Western/South Korean media". What gives? I can understand different countries have different pros and cons, different people value different things, and something an American might find unpalatable might not be considered so bad somewhere else. But North Korea seems to stand out as being one of very few countries that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Odd that anyone who wasn't born there would willingly and voluntarily pledge their allegiance to such a regime.

lisper 5y ago
My guess is that most of the people who profess to believe that everything in the DPRK is hunky dory are on the extreme political left. The right does not have a monopoly on crazy people.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  I can't imagine these people are on a left-right scale. They seem to be perpendicular.
  - lisper 5y ago
    I've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S. standards.)
    - MiroF 5y ago
      I'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba, and that if we were serious about our opposition to authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like Saudi Arabia. This is very different from the DPRK.
      - lisper 5y ago
        I did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with respect to the arguments that are advanced for them, which in both cases are based on the premise that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on the political left. The political right has their own version of this argument, except that they focus their skepticism on "the mainstream media" rather than "Western sources" (but IMHO both of these phrases are clearly dog whistles without an actual referent other than, "any source that disagrees with my position.")
        MiroF 5y ago
        I feel like the "West" [0] is a pretty clear referent and is not synonymous with "any source that disagrees with my position." What is it a dog whistle for? > conventional wisdom Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues like these. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
        lisper 5y ago
        Yes, I don't disagree with that. But I will point out that the literature of the groups that advocate these positions could objectively be called "Western sources" since they originate in the West, but obviously those are not what the people who produce those sources mean when they say that e.g. "Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba." It is actually very hard to characterize a reliable source in a way that does not exhibit any sort of cultural or political bias.
  - simplestats 5y ago
    In South Korea, the most pro-north political parties are on the left. With the most extremely-pro-north being the extreme left.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    I have a 10% rule. ~10-20% of any group is gonna be a little nutty about something. 10-20% of the population doesn't believe in the moon landing. Similar with the flat earth. They've always existed, just have microphones now.
- trasz 5y ago
  How is North Korea left? It's an absolute monarchy, pretty much exactly the other side of the political compass.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - decafninja 5y ago
    They declare themselves to be a socialist utopia. If you believe what they say at face value, and also believe that anything negative said about the DPRK by the Western media, etc. to be total lies like some of these people being discussed here do, then I guess you could think North Korea is a leftist paradise.
  - lisper 5y ago
    That is, empirically, where forms of government commonly labelled as "left" ends up when taken to extremes. North Korea is just the most extreme example.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Yeah, bullshit. What other "left" government ended up with a hereditary monarchy?
      - lisper 5y ago
        You're right, left-wing dictatorships tend not to be hereditary. NK is unique in this regard.
        bernawil 5y ago
        NK is really the odd one there with the hereditary thing and all. Almost all other communist "dictatorships" are really not that different from US style corporations. Basically, organizations staffed by common people jockeying for position. Sometimes climbing the ladder on merit, sometimes politicking but you get the point. Being family with the CEO helps proably as much as being family with the head of the politburo. And if you think about it, how much of American culture in the 20th century was a result of things that came out of corporate boards?
germandiago 5y ago
People tend to value different things. If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal (NK in this case). Or you have to be treated like an animal in the customs to even make medicines or food in. I have seen this elsewhere, believe me. Those people that live from that deserve... I will not say what they deserve, but nothing good. In the meantime, what happens is that the market is not and invention, but it "is". That is why there are black markets. And they are illegal. So what now? Easy: you have to brive all the public workers to get what you want. This is not only sad, this is attacking the dignity of the normal people who deserve a life.
- MiroF 5y ago
  > If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. Lumping Cuba and North Korea together is silly & misguided.
  - germandiago 5y ago
    > Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. That is plainly false. There are lots of cheating in how they count that, for example, if a kid is going to have any kind of problem, they suggest and try to abort it and it does not appear in the count, to give you just one single example about how they count life expectation. There is lots more that is only make up, such as the health care myth and others. They do have lots of doctors they send abroad and the regime gets 70% of their income. When you land abroad, if you work like that, they take away your passport so that you cannot escape. They do campaigns to donate blood and they sell that blood (over 21 million dollars in sales for blood that was supposed to be, most of it, an altruist action by cuban people in one year). They are literally treated as slaves. Did you see what happened last July? There were riots in the streets. They did not have even medicines or food and they (the regime and its propaganda) started to talk about the embargo (incorrectly called blockage) as the problem, when the problem is that those people in that odious regime do not let even the food or medicines go through without taking a part. I mean, they take advantage of the anguish of relatives that are outside and they smash them. After that I saw president Diaz Canel promoting violence against people for the protests from his very own words, not a translation or similar (I can speak spanish).

germandiago 5y ago

I have lived in Vietnam for almost a decade. North Korea seems to be the equivalent of Vietnam before it started to open its economy in the 90s. I can tell you, that is a hell, but what really makes me more angry about all this is how a leading class spoils people mercilessly and treat them as animals with no dignity. I am talking about North Korea for what I see in articles lately. But in Cuba there are similar patterns where everything is forbidden and corruption reigns with people trying to survive because some others decided they have to live like animals. Vietnam is way waaaay better than NK and Cuba, even if it has its downsides, since its economy has been steadily opened to investment.

vmception 5y ago
I think Vietnam is interesting since it is the same single party Communist country that we lost to, graduated to state capital system like they all do, has authoritative control over all facets of life and especially dissidents, but doesnt trigger anyone in my circles, doesnt appear in my news negatively, and is seen as a travel destination. Kinda funny is that it really just means they are irrelevant as a competitor or market, and that none of us really care about governing systems or really care about imagining everyone is a victim because they lack self determination for their country, only competitors.
- germandiago 5y ago
  Vietnam has in many aspects economy market, but yes, it is a single party country and we all know what that can mean. However, it has been developing steadily. I am not american, btw. (I say so bc you say "we lost to").

MiroF 5y ago

I definitely lean skeptical of Western sources on things like this, but life in NK is obviously pretty awful. That said, there is essentially no information in this article that makes me believe that they actually talked to this person as opposed to making up a caricature of how they imagine life in NK to be.

jimhi 5y ago
I talked to several people (not just 1) and am still friends with some to this day. This was an event held by LINK (https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/ https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/) which I already wrote in both the article and this thread. You can go to their site or the several talks I linked in this thread to hear their stories directly.

carabiner 5y ago

Not paradise, but not a prison state like the US describes. Just a really poor country like other poor countries. My cousin (Korean-Canadian) went on one of those hokey tours in the DPRK before they were banned and actually talked to the locals. She said they had normal lives of jobs, friends, relationships, hobbies, like we all do, just with less material wealth.

1123581321 5y ago
Those people were not speaking candidly due to being observed or fear of being reported. Also, they are not allowed to leave the country and can, along with their extended family, receive harsh punishments for things that would be considered unjust in much of the world. Prison is a fair description.

drekk 5y ago

One thing I find more odd is how American audiences treat the DPRK while also supporting the continued military puppet state that is the ROK. There were also a "lot of sources" supporting WMDs in Iraq. When what you're saying is the state department narrative it's not going to receive pushback. The US killed 20% of Koreans on the peninsula and reduced it all to rubble. Forgive my skepticism at the "humanitarian intentions". Especially when there are financial incentives to become a defector [0] There are also documentaries produced locally [1] and you can very well go on Weibo yourself and speak to North Koreans. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39170614 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39170614 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0

oh_sigh 5y ago
You may find it odd because Americans for the most part don't actually have a problem with "military puppet states", if certain aspects of freedom and human rights are agreeable and pass their muster. Feel free to look at the differences in health and life outcomes for North vs South Koreans, while entirely obscuring the systems of government, and you will see why the North Koreans are reviled throughout most of the rational/non-psychopathic world.
warning26 5y ago
Looks like we've found another one!
chernevik 5y ago
South Korea - has elections - has a free press - allows people to leave etc
- malermeister 5y ago
  It does now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising >South Korean universities were shut down, newspaper offices were closed, and any political activity that went against the policies of General Chun Doo-hwan were strictly banned. In further details, all public gatherings that included more than three party were forbidden with an only exception for funerals. With the Korean news media muzzled by martial law, only the handful of foreign correspondents present could publish reports on what was happening in Gwangju — no easy task, given the army cordon. Telephone lines had been cut by the military; some reporters walked miles to villages to line up at the nearest phones still working. Soon after, General Chun Doo-hwan broadened the terms of martial law into the entire country of South Korea and rigorously kept in check with suspicious activities that seemed to be promoting democracy. Thus all pro-democracy leaders including students were considered as traitors or anti-government criminals. In consequence, the charges that met those of who were considered as convicts were in reality as cruel as any major prisoners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_of_May_Seventeenth#Martial_law_of_1980s_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_of_May_Seve...