Paywall less link? Happy to pay $1 for article but absolutely won’t get into a subscription. Unsubscribing from NY times is a nightmare.
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Defecting from North Korea is now harder
121–130 of 201 posts
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that's a good argument.
The US isn't the only country in the world. Find sources from European or British agencies, unless the U.S. has them under control too?
I'm not the one insinuating that North Koreans are indoctrinated into thinking the great leader has magic powers. You should be the ones to present the sources to such bizarre claims.
Jesus, the guy is saying people are indoctrinated into thinking the great leader "didn’t defecate ever". Do you really think North Koreans are that stupid and have zero biology knowledge? Or maybe, uh, this is just fake? Pure propaganda? Are you really that dumb to believe something like that?
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Contact tracing (contact investigation, etc.) is a standard practice in public health. In tuberculosis control where I got my start, it's what we do for any active case of TB we identify - we find the people who may have been exposed and widen the circle as necessary. It's also critical for STDs. The only difference with COVID was the scale, not the methodology. There is an argument that if the disease is everywhere,…
I agree but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis and STDs? And agreed also that my point is probably more true for COVID than anything else. The scale of COVID is such that it automatically requires mass tracking to even consider contact tracing, but I guess my argument was that even then we should have evidence that such massive tracking improves contact tracing for very infectious viruses like COVID.…
> but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis and STDs?
My understanding (my mother is a doctor) is that we do try to do contact tracing for STDs, but this relies on patients' self-report of who they've been in contact with recently.
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#124North Korea exists because 5 years after the US liberated China from Japanese oppression, the communist Chinese declared war against the US lead UN forces in South Korea. Fairly wild, in retrospect.
+ PRC sending back escapees back to NK
PRC should give the escapees the right to travel, instead of deporting.
I expect a lot of wumaos to resort to whataboutisms completely unrelated to the right-to-travel / right-to-asylum / right-to-immigration / etc
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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-... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621…
How dare you presenting facts that the media has lied multiple times about North Korea in the past? Be prepared to be downvoted and flagged.
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#126I really wish that bill Clinton could have brokered a deal with china (right before NK got nukes) which would have done a two-pronged invasion with the assurances that China would control all of NK as a direct puppet state. A Chinese direct puppet state would be far superior to the current situation.
Clinton planned to have a kind of thaw with NK (before they had nuke), maybe using Vietnam thaw model. Post 94 GOP killed the plan.
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. The article briefly discusses the impact of COVID, highlighting China's implementation of supplementary measures and limitations during this period. It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. However, as the article states it can also be used for malicious exploitation. 2. If your question is about why they go to Thailand instead of…
>It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it hel…
> Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it helps for pandemics like COVID.
> Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass surveillance, that requiring very very thorough proof that it actually helps is the bare minimum. This story is proof of that.
I guess it depends on the type of technologies used. For example, Google's and Apple's Exposure Notifications API that many of the contact tracing application used didn't actually allow accessing locations directly: https://developers.google.com/android/exposure-notifications...
> Your app must have the BLUETOOTH and INTERNET permission in its manifest, but your app doesn't require and can't include ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, nor BLUETOOTH_ADMIN. For more information about restrictions on your app, see the API’s Terms of Service.
In particular, in the section 3c:
> i. Your App may not request the Location, Bluetooth_Admin, Special Access, Privileged, or Signature permissions, or collect any device information to identify or track the precise location of end users
How it worked was that you gathered more or less randomly generated identifiers through Bluetooth of devices that were nearby and whose users had also turned on the app functionality. When you were less than 2 meters or so away for around 15 minutes, a contact would be registered.
If that person later got sick, the identifier (without PII) would be published and your app could alert you, along the lines of: "Hey, you were in contact with a person that was infected. You probably should self-isolate."
Source: worked on the Apturi Covid project in my country as a volunteer, though mostly developed the webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20230530141239/https://apturicov... (was nice to see ~100 volunteers coming together to make it happen in my country, personally got a notification about possible exposure as well and self-isolated for a bit, though didn't get sick)
Actually wrote a blog post ages ago about how one might actually try to aggregate GPS data while preserving privacy, though obviously that sort of approach is a ticking time bomb because of the nature of the information: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/covid-19-contact-tracing-wi...
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'm not the most educated in this area, however this episode of darknet diaries (which seems to be well researched of the many I have listened to) paints a similar picture to OP https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DsGyzP9fYQ9LM6YiT5NS7?si=L... and includes interviews from several defectors. It seems disingenuous to try and brush off the well documented brutality that is the way of life in North Korea, as being somethin…
"A big thanks to Yeonmi Park for sharing her story with us"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#129That was harrowing. There were a couple things I didn't understand: 1. What changed about China's surveillance systems or procedures to make them ~20x more effective at catching refugees in a couple years? 2. There's a bit about how North Korean refugees can apply for asylum in South Korea. I was under the impression (from Barbara Demick's book Nothing to Envy ) that all North Koreans are more or less granted asylum…
I don't think the surveillance system got much more sophisticated but for anyone wondering what china's surveillance system was like before the pandemic, I stayed in China three times for a total of about a month and a half in the 6 months before the pandemic. When you get to the airport, you will likely notice the abundance of cameras, including paths which take you right under overhead cameras. Your photo will be t…
Your bit about taxis seems hard to believe. I haven't been in China in around 15 years, but there are still tons of foreigners visiting China for business reasons, and they need to get around. Requiring them to jump through these sorts of hoops to merely ride in a taxi seems a bit unbelievable.
Granted, sometimes the business we were visiting would send a car to our hotel, but not always, and not when we were going out on our own. Is cash still accepted by taxi drivers? That's how we usually paid when visiting for work.
I haven't traveled to China as a tourist since around that same time, when we (again) paid cash when taking taxis. China presumably (at least, pre-pandemic) still gets a lot of tourists, and it again seems unlikely that the only way a tourist can take a taxi is to get a random local to vouch for them, and/or an ability to open a local bank account.
Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it hel…
I think monkey pox was mostly contained through contact tracing and then vaccinating those who were potentially exposed.
It's more meaningful for monkey pox too because vaccination up to 2 weeks _after_ exposure still reduces the chances of getting symptomatic disease