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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 giv

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.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      There are massive amounts of Cuba supporters outside of the Western world. From our point of view Cuba sucks, but for a lot of people the basic guarantees that Cuba gives and the lifestyle is actually not so bad at all. Their government also isn't much more corrupt than in the rest of the world. I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and left-leaning. If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?
      - bernawil 5y ago
        > If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense? I met a Cuban like that. Simply put, to make more money. He knew the nuances of their system and was thankful for the good parts and the opportunities he had, but at the end of the day knew that for him individually it was more convenient to leave when he had the chance. It's just something that doesn't work for everybody by necessity. I think he had a relative abroad that sponsored some sort of student visa, and he just never went back.
  - 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).

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.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    There are massive amounts of Cuba supporters outside of the Western world. From our point of view Cuba sucks, but for a lot of people the basic guarantees that Cuba gives and the lifestyle is actually not so bad at all. Their government also isn't much more corrupt than in the rest of the world. I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and left-leaning. If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?
    - bernawil 5y ago
      > If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense? I met a Cuban like that. Simply put, to make more money. He knew the nuances of their system and was thankful for the good parts and the opportunities he had, but at the end of the day knew that for him individually it was more convenient to leave when he had the chance. It's just something that doesn't work for everybody by necessity. I think he had a relative abroad that sponsored some sort of student visa, and he just never went back.
- 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).