6 ms·

I'm not saying North Korea is a paradise or anything, but the country is technically still at war with the South Korea, which is heavily backed by the US. I won

by fndex 3y ago

I'm not saying North Korea is a paradise or anything, but the country is technically still at war with the South Korea, which is heavily backed by the US. I wonder how much can be trusted from a NY Times(a US media company) article written by the "Seoul bureau chief for The New York Times".

sharikous 3y ago
You are perfectly right. Still "not a paradise" is an exaggerated euphemism once you look at available data (not only American).
- fndex 3y ago
  Absolutely. I would definitely not like to live or even visit there. I just think that every story has 2 sides, and we don't hear the other side very often.
  - tensor 3y ago
    I absolutely despise this "every story has two sides" quip. No, every story doesn't have two sides. Yes, every story has multiple versions full of complete bullshit, but when we talk about a "side" we mean a reputable reliable side, and it is not the case that every story has two equally debatable and reputable sides. Sometimes a spade is a spade.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      Reputable, reliable (tm) American sources also led to a million deaths in Iraq based on what turned out to be false premises. Yet your very own logic would've called "a spade a spade" and would've meant actually believing Iraq had usable WMDs because I mean, that's just the hard truth! Every reliable source on your side said so! Who would even believe Iraqi/arabic media that shouted for a year that Iraq didn't have them, over prestigious and western institutions like the NYT! I have absolutely no doubt that North Korea is hell in earth, but there is a very very very good reason to say that every story has two sides. But maybe you just haven't experienced being the victim of "the reputable side" lying without any consequences. As a Muslim that grew up during the war on terror, I can't really say the same.
      - metabagel 3y ago
        To be fair, it’s important to point out that the Bush administration politicized the intelligence apparatus. Specifically, Darth Cheney pressured the CIA into supporting his pet theories. I bitterly told people before the second war with Iraq that there were no WMDs. Any well read, educated, intelligent person should have been able to confidently say the same.
      - metabagel 3y ago
        An even more bitter pill - a lot of Americans still apparently believe there were WMDs found in Iraq.
        mariuolo 3y ago
        Doubling down is a well known ego protection mechanism.
      - tensor 3y ago
        There is no reason to say "every story has two sides." Some may, and you can call that out, but no, not every story has two sides. For example, a report about a new science result, the science is "one side." The "other side" is not the crystal healing quack that believes in magic. Two, you have video evidence of something along with multiple eye-witnesses. That is one side. The other side is not "oh but maybe all the witnesses are really part of a huge conspiracy and the video is fake!" Some claims are not strong, and if a specific claim is not strong then you can explain why. But you cannot just flippantly say every story has two sides, that's bullshit. You need to say why a particular claim should be doubted.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        fndex 3y ago
        There are multiple links in this thread showing how the media lied multiple times in the past, a whole documentary interviewing defectors who want to go back and telling how the South Korean Intelligence Service coerce and pay people to speak against the NK regime, but you probably didn't bother to open a single link and read about it. You talk about science, yet, every anti-NK article sent in this thread are extremely poorly written and lack evidence to their claims. How is that "science"? Unless you are claiming that "science is when it matches my beliefs".
    - fndex 3y ago
      I see where you are coming from, and I'm not saying that North Korean media or propaganda is reliable or the absolute truth. But does that mean the US "side" is reliable? Is the US really on the "right side" of the history of the world? For exemple, did you know the US launched 3 bombs for every person in Laos? There are VILLAGES in Laos built with unexploded bomb left overs from the Vietnam War. Did you know that there are children being born with life threatening health problems in Vietnam due to the amount of orange gas the US dropped there 40 years ago? And quoting from a recent speech from Trump this year: "How about we are buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it up, would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door" Is this the reliable country we should blindly believe? Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect their interests?
      - More-nitors 3y ago
        > Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect their interests? regardless of that, shouldn't you also truly believe on "let North Koreans travel freely"?
        fndex 3y ago
        Sorry, I'm not following. Could you rephrase your question? Are you asking me if I believe North Koreans should have the right to travel freely? If so, yes, I do believe that.
ornornor 3y ago
It’s also a country where the people are indoctrinated to believe their great leader is born under a double rainbow and descended straight from heaven, didn’t defecate ever, learnt to walk aged 3 weeks (yup) and to speak 5 weeks later at 8 weeks (yup), wrote 1500 books over 3 years, along with 6 operas (the bestest in the history of music, no less), and scored a 38 under par with 11 holes in one on the one and only North Korea golf course the first time he ever picked up a golf club before retiring from the sport for ever. Oh and also if your family is deemed a dissident, the next 3–4 generations (including unborn children) will be imprisoned and raised in prison labor camps where children get killed by bashing their skulls open for stealing one (yes a single) grain of rice. Not a paradise indeed. I’m not convinced the sanctions have much to do with any of the above though.
- fndex 3y ago
  I'm sure you learned all that from other US/South Korean articles like this one, right? I watched a documentary about North Korean defectors that wanted to go back to North Korea, one of the many reasons was to be with their families. They never mentioned their family were imprisioned. And it wouldn't make much sense to want to go back if their family was imprisioned. Again, I'm no North Korean supporter or whatever, I just think there is a LOT of propaganda and misinformation about NK, and I think we should take everything with a grain of salt... Unless you think the US is a saint and would never lie about enemy countries. And about the sanctions, I dind't mention any sanctions, you are just assuming that I support X or Y, when I never said such thing.
  - CWuestefeld 3y ago
    Unless you think the US is a saint and would never lie about enemy countries. You seem to think the USA is just a monolith, and as such can be modeled as what the face of our government says. This is silly. While it's true that business and especially the media is "in bed with" our government quite a lot of the time, it remains true that all have distinct interests.
  - ornornor 3y ago
    Oh come on
npteljes 3y ago
As with any news, you take it with a pinch of salt. Nothing new here. Are there particular things in this report which you don't agree with, or consider suspicious, or know that it's an outright lie?
- fndex 3y ago
  This article could have come straight from a fiction book. There is no evidence for anything that is being presented. It might be true, it might not be. I'm not arguing they are lying or not, I'm just saying that we shouldn't blindly believe it. But watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM made me a little bit skeptical about those defector stories. It's a very good watch, and I guess it doesn't hurt to hear a different perspective.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I think understand where you're coming from - people can tell whatever they want, and the media definitely loves to run stories like this. These stories are both popular and the diplomatic risk is also low. And we also have the accounts of Yeonmi Park. On the other hand, there's no reason to doubt the story too much. NyT's stories are generally highly factual, even though their primary bias is left-center. And we know that NK is a hellhole, not just from defectors, as the "Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul" video states, but from a myriad of other, independent sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims
    - enterprise_cog 3y ago
      The NYT regularly lies for US intelligence agencies. Or just publishes garbage from them as truth without verifying. There is every reason to doubt this story.
- mitt_romney_12 3y ago
  News about North Korea should be taken with a very large grain of slat given the medias history of reporting fake news about them [1][2][3][4] (note: I am definitely not pro-North Korea and this story is obviously very bad, but I think people should be a little more skeptical about North Korea news) [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-kooky-north-korea-stories https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324 [3] https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is-the-norm/a-49042595 https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is... [4] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/fake-news-north-korea-fact-checking-752006 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/fake-news-north-k...
resolutebat 3y ago
[flagged]
twelve40 3y ago
but in this case what would they lie about? i don't think anyone would deny existence of defectors or how hard it is for them to move around. It's more like a poor quality article though, they start off by claiming massive new difficulties for these people in the last couple of years but don't tell you anything about why that happened. Mass surveillance and greedy traffickers who ended up stealing the money and ratting everyone out existed years ago as well, so they didn't really add any new information here, or at least didn't explain it very well.
freddyfred 3y ago
More trusted than you, mate!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fndex 3y ago
  LOL. Alright then, Mr New York Times.

by fndex 3y ago

sharikous 3y ago

You are perfectly right. Still "not a paradise" is an exaggerated euphemism once you look at available data (not only American).

fndex 3y ago
Absolutely. I would definitely not like to live or even visit there. I just think that every story has 2 sides, and we don't hear the other side very often.
- tensor 3y ago
  I absolutely despise this "every story has two sides" quip. No, every story doesn't have two sides. Yes, every story has multiple versions full of complete bullshit, but when we talk about a "side" we mean a reputable reliable side, and it is not the case that every story has two equally debatable and reputable sides. Sometimes a spade is a spade.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Reputable, reliable (tm) American sources also led to a million deaths in Iraq based on what turned out to be false premises. Yet your very own logic would've called "a spade a spade" and would've meant actually believing Iraq had usable WMDs because I mean, that's just the hard truth! Every reliable source on your side said so! Who would even believe Iraqi/arabic media that shouted for a year that Iraq didn't have them, over prestigious and western institutions like the NYT! I have absolutely no doubt that North Korea is hell in earth, but there is a very very very good reason to say that every story has two sides. But maybe you just haven't experienced being the victim of "the reputable side" lying without any consequences. As a Muslim that grew up during the war on terror, I can't really say the same.
    - metabagel 3y ago
      To be fair, it’s important to point out that the Bush administration politicized the intelligence apparatus. Specifically, Darth Cheney pressured the CIA into supporting his pet theories. I bitterly told people before the second war with Iraq that there were no WMDs. Any well read, educated, intelligent person should have been able to confidently say the same.
    - metabagel 3y ago
      An even more bitter pill - a lot of Americans still apparently believe there were WMDs found in Iraq.
      - mariuolo 3y ago
        Doubling down is a well known ego protection mechanism.
    - tensor 3y ago
      There is no reason to say "every story has two sides." Some may, and you can call that out, but no, not every story has two sides. For example, a report about a new science result, the science is "one side." The "other side" is not the crystal healing quack that believes in magic. Two, you have video evidence of something along with multiple eye-witnesses. That is one side. The other side is not "oh but maybe all the witnesses are really part of a huge conspiracy and the video is fake!" Some claims are not strong, and if a specific claim is not strong then you can explain why. But you cannot just flippantly say every story has two sides, that's bullshit. You need to say why a particular claim should be doubted.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - fndex 3y ago
        There are multiple links in this thread showing how the media lied multiple times in the past, a whole documentary interviewing defectors who want to go back and telling how the South Korean Intelligence Service coerce and pay people to speak against the NK regime, but you probably didn't bother to open a single link and read about it. You talk about science, yet, every anti-NK article sent in this thread are extremely poorly written and lack evidence to their claims. How is that "science"? Unless you are claiming that "science is when it matches my beliefs".
  - fndex 3y ago
    I see where you are coming from, and I'm not saying that North Korean media or propaganda is reliable or the absolute truth. But does that mean the US "side" is reliable? Is the US really on the "right side" of the history of the world? For exemple, did you know the US launched 3 bombs for every person in Laos? There are VILLAGES in Laos built with unexploded bomb left overs from the Vietnam War. Did you know that there are children being born with life threatening health problems in Vietnam due to the amount of orange gas the US dropped there 40 years ago? And quoting from a recent speech from Trump this year: "How about we are buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it up, would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door" Is this the reliable country we should blindly believe? Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect their interests?
    - More-nitors 3y ago
      > Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect their interests? regardless of that, shouldn't you also truly believe on "let North Koreans travel freely"?
      - fndex 3y ago
        Sorry, I'm not following. Could you rephrase your question? Are you asking me if I believe North Koreans should have the right to travel freely? If so, yes, I do believe that.

ornornor 3y ago

It’s also a country where the people are indoctrinated to believe their great leader is born under a double rainbow and descended straight from heaven, didn’t defecate ever, learnt to walk aged 3 weeks (yup) and to speak 5 weeks later at 8 weeks (yup), wrote 1500 books over 3 years, along with 6 operas (the bestest in the history of music, no less), and scored a 38 under par with 11 holes in one on the one and only North Korea golf course the first time he ever picked up a golf club before retiring from the sport for ever. Oh and also if your family is deemed a dissident, the next 3–4 generations (including unborn children) will be imprisoned and raised in prison labor camps where children get killed by bashing their skulls open for stealing one (yes a single) grain of rice. Not a paradise indeed. I’m not convinced the sanctions have much to do with any of the above though.

fndex 3y ago
I'm sure you learned all that from other US/South Korean articles like this one, right? I watched a documentary about North Korean defectors that wanted to go back to North Korea, one of the many reasons was to be with their families. They never mentioned their family were imprisioned. And it wouldn't make much sense to want to go back if their family was imprisioned. Again, I'm no North Korean supporter or whatever, I just think there is a LOT of propaganda and misinformation about NK, and I think we should take everything with a grain of salt... Unless you think the US is a saint and would never lie about enemy countries. And about the sanctions, I dind't mention any sanctions, you are just assuming that I support X or Y, when I never said such thing.
- CWuestefeld 3y ago
  Unless you think the US is a saint and would never lie about enemy countries. You seem to think the USA is just a monolith, and as such can be modeled as what the face of our government says. This is silly. While it's true that business and especially the media is "in bed with" our government quite a lot of the time, it remains true that all have distinct interests.
- ornornor 3y ago
  Oh come on

npteljes 3y ago

As with any news, you take it with a pinch of salt. Nothing new here. Are there particular things in this report which you don't agree with, or consider suspicious, or know that it's an outright lie?

fndex 3y ago
This article could have come straight from a fiction book. There is no evidence for anything that is being presented. It might be true, it might not be. I'm not arguing they are lying or not, I'm just saying that we shouldn't blindly believe it. But watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM made me a little bit skeptical about those defector stories. It's a very good watch, and I guess it doesn't hurt to hear a different perspective.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I think understand where you're coming from - people can tell whatever they want, and the media definitely loves to run stories like this. These stories are both popular and the diplomatic risk is also low. And we also have the accounts of Yeonmi Park. On the other hand, there's no reason to doubt the story too much. NyT's stories are generally highly factual, even though their primary bias is left-center. And we know that NK is a hellhole, not just from defectors, as the "Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul" video states, but from a myriad of other, independent sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims
  - enterprise_cog 3y ago
    The NYT regularly lies for US intelligence agencies. Or just publishes garbage from them as truth without verifying. There is every reason to doubt this story.
mitt_romney_12 3y ago
News about North Korea should be taken with a very large grain of slat given the medias history of reporting fake news about them [1][2][3][4] (note: I am definitely not pro-North Korea and this story is obviously very bad, but I think people should be a little more skeptical about North Korea news) [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-kooky-north-korea-stories https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324 [3] https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is-the-norm/a-49042595 https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is... [4] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/fake-news-north-korea-fact-checking-752006 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/fake-news-north-k...

resolutebat 3y ago

[flagged]

twelve40 3y ago

but in this case what would they lie about? i don't think anyone would deny existence of defectors or how hard it is for them to move around. It's more like a poor quality article though, they start off by claiming massive new difficulties for these people in the last couple of years but don't tell you anything about why that happened. Mass surveillance and greedy traffickers who ended up stealing the money and ratting everyone out existed years ago as well, so they didn't really add any new information here, or at least didn't explain it very well.

freddyfred 3y ago

More trusted than you, mate!

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fndex 3y ago
LOL. Alright then, Mr New York Times.