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North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

bbc.co.uk

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Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#91

Post by Beached »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #17

North Korea runs contrary to my intuition about dictators. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of regicide, but most dictatorships, even among the most horrific, represent some sort of misguided attempt at benevolance. Killing dissidents? Sure, they're getting in the way of your utopian plan. Failed economic plans that lead to famine? Well, the idea had some justification, better pivot to avoid further harm. Hell…

look up the concept of North Korean juchae and you will understand the leadership

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#92

Post by Beached »

jemmyw wrote: post #22

I remember years ago reading about someone from the north who had defected to South Korea after they were shown an episode of a SK TV show about two women fighting over a car parking space. Seeing a normal person in the country next door being able to argue over something so inconsequential because they already had every basic need met cut through. I'm sure SK tries to send propaganda information to the north. Maybe…

they do, there are organized groups who send media across in many forms. black market South Korean dramas are fairly common

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#93

Post by nazka »

arp242 wrote: post #29
graypegg wrote: post #9

I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…

> I really feel like we’ll look back at how we ignored it for so long shamefully One of the big problems has long been that North-Korea has a large network of artillery within shelling distance of Seoul. Now they also have rockets and nukes and stuff, but even without those any serious threat to NK would come with devastating cost of civilian lives in South-Korea. See e.g. [1], which estimates that "the DPRK could ca…

I was about to say the same thing. It’s not that it was ignored. They are doing their awful things because they have guns pointing at South Korea while being backed by China. And now some quite capable cruse missiles.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#94

Post by pydry »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #86
pydry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>North Korea's leadership doesn't seem to have any interest at all in the wellbeing of the populace. It's a manufactured impression. Western oligarchy controlled media doesnt like to talk about how they pay $0 for college and medical care. They focus exclusively on the prison camps, etc. North Koreans are fed an impression of America that centers around stuff like Guantanamo bay, Abu ghraib, medical bankruptcies and…

Making that argument about, say, Cuba makes plenty of sense to me. Sure, there's a relatively oppressive regime, but they also have made a lot of moves that genuinely have the people's interest at heart, and most people's needs are being met. That claim doesn't work when almost half your populace is starving: literally the second most important human need is being failed.

>That claim doesn't work when almost half your populace is starving: literally

They're not. This is another consistently manufactured impression - that the famine never ended.

They were starving in the 90s but it wasn't like that was deliberate and it ended 25 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine

There's a number of ways the media continues to manufacture this impression, including:

* Interviews with people who fled North Korea a long time ago - closer to the famine.

* Paying North Koreans they can gain access to for good stories - at which point they get some really juicy stories. A small number of these apart under the weight of their own contradictions - the rest, of course, can't ever be verified.

* Looking at satellite photos and drawing dubious conclusions (like if there isn't food being imported from China this month that they don't have food).

* Looking at trailing indicators of the famine like stunted height.

* Comparing everything to South Korea - which has really good metrics even by first world standards - rather than, say, an average middle income or 3rd world country.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#95

Post by foverzar »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #56
arp242 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really feel like we’ll look back at how we ignored it for so long shamefully One of the big problems has long been that North-Korea has a large network of artillery within shelling distance of Seoul. Now they also have rockets and nukes and stuff, but even without those any serious threat to NK would come with devastating cost of civilian lives in South-Korea. See e.g. [1], which estimates that "the DPRK could ca…

That's military industrial complex propaganda. The North Korean air force consists of just 40 MiG 29's. The ROK military outclasses NK in every way that matters, including 167 F16's, 60 F15E's, and 40 F35's. This is in addition to the 160 F16's the US has stationed there.

> air force

It's just a single branch of military, quite useless if there is modern missile-based air defense in place.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#96

Post by foverzar »

graypegg wrote: post #9

I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…

> the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared

Their real "torture" is western sanctions and exclusion from global trade. The reason for the regime to exist has never disappeared and will persist for as long as North Korea is being attacked. Everything about it being "crazy hermit kingdom" stems directly from the dominant political-economical institutions isolating North Korea and by extent all the individuals from the rest of the world.

There is no excuse for treating people like that for generations. Worse than that, this ends up serving as a self-fulfilling prophesy that allows propaganda state media like BBC to push its narratives.

Yeah, for sure people will suffer, but that's not their government who is being tyrannical - everyone is pretty much aware who specifically fuck with their livelihoods.

Even worse, there seem to be lots of people in the west who actually seem to think that this approach is doing something positive and it's ok to be completely fascist as long as it serves some glorious political purpose.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#97

Post by foverzar »

Flagged. Pure propaganda, just as expected from BBC.

The sheer amount of emotive epithets is a dead giveaway.

It's not even a closed country. It's not hard to visit (unless you are the US citizen and your own government forbids you to) and there are lots of North Koreans outside North Korea in other Asian countries. There were much more until 2017 UN sanctions, restricting hire of North Korean workers.

To understand the real reason behind the sorrow state of modern day North Korea, one has to simply acknowledge the fact that North Korea has been pushed into isolation by much more powerful actors for more than half-a-century.

It's as simple as that. "Tyrannical rule of Kim Jong Un" has no tangible effect here.

The only tyrannical actor here is an entity trying to achieve its political goals by making North Korea inhospitable.

Unfortunately people are naive and arrogant enough to be convinced that this is actually a good thing, that it's worth it, and that they are actually helping instead of actually being the tyrant. It really strokes their egos - who cares about collateral! And all you really need is a nice narrative, woven of cherrypicked and properly presented pieces of reality.

We're undermining a tyrant here, can't you see we've been doing this to you for generations for your own good? As long as it's a glorious cause, it's clearly all worth it! At the end of the day, if North Koreans want to live decently, they simply have to collapse their country and that evil regime. And don't worry, we'll totally help you how we helped Libya wink-wink /s

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#98

Post by Strom »

foverzar wrote: post #97

Flagged. Pure propaganda, just as expected from BBC. The sheer amount of emotive epithets is a dead giveaway. It's not even a closed country. It's not hard to visit (unless you are the US citizen and your own government forbids you to) and there are lots of North Koreans outside North Korea in other Asian countries. There were much more until 2017 UN sanctions, restricting hire of North Korean workers. To understand…

> It's not even a closed country. It's not hard to visit

So you're saying I can just go into North Korea as a tourist and I won't need a North Korean tour guide? I would like to learn more about this opportunity.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#99

Post by foverzar »

Strom wrote: post #98
foverzar wrote: post #97

Flagged. Pure propaganda, just as expected from BBC. The sheer amount of emotive epithets is a dead giveaway. It's not even a closed country. It's not hard to visit (unless you are the US citizen and your own government forbids you to) and there are lots of North Koreans outside North Korea in other Asian countries. There were much more until 2017 UN sanctions, restricting hire of North Korean workers. To understand…

> It's not even a closed country. It's not hard to visit So you're saying I can just go into North Korea as a tourist and I won't need a North Korean tour guide? I would like to learn more about this opportunity.

> So you're saying I can just go into North Korea as a tourist and I won't need a North Korean tour guide?

I've said specifically what I wrote and nothing different to that. Moving goalposts?

You'll need a guide to enter the country with a tourist visa, but beyond that it's up to your traveler skills, whether you can ditch the guide or where would they bother to go with you. There are also other kinds of visas, that don't imply a guide.

Though I imagine it could be more challenging for someone faring from a western country. Convincing them that you are not here for some scandal and could be treated with good faith would probably be an issue.

Nevertheless, for most people around the globe visiting Pyongyang is relatively easier than visiting New York. I don't suppose that not being overly tourist friendly equates to being a "closed country", do you?

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#100

Post by Hush5991 »

foverzar wrote: post #97

Flagged. Pure propaganda, just as expected from BBC. The sheer amount of emotive epithets is a dead giveaway. It's not even a closed country. It's not hard to visit (unless you are the US citizen and your own government forbids you to) and there are lots of North Koreans outside North Korea in other Asian countries. There were much more until 2017 UN sanctions, restricting hire of North Korean workers. To understand…

This is ridiculous. All responsibility lies with Kim Jong-Un. If he wanted to, he could call Yoon Suk-Yeol today, and negotiate a deal to transfer the entirety of North Korea to the ROK in exchange for immunity, asylum in Switzerland, and a couple billion dollars for himself and his friends. He could then continue living his luxurious lifestyle while NK is slowly integrated into the rest of Korea through some variation of "one country, two systems for 50 years". The North Korean people would finally become free.
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