I don't know, the West is also preoccupied with content moderation, restriction of movement of people, restriction of ideas, abolishment of the democracy and the laws so "right things can be done" and there are people calling for executions.
It's not even the oppressors VS the freedom fighters, the fight going on is over who is going to be the oppressor and what exactly should be restricted.
I'm also worried that the online spaces have no accountability and that has become the norm. People and content is removed from public spaces all the time by all powerful people and algorithms, what happens if the that thinking expands beyond online forums? The existence of the individual has been forgotten and people are virtually executed at whim and I'm not sure that with the proliferation of killer drones people are not simply going to push a button and clean up the real world annoyances without thinking about the moral implications of the action.
Unfortunately the digitalisation has enabled that being done at scale. Before everything going always online and recorded, the tendency to restrict freedoms was unfeasible for the most part. Not anymore.
wrt interventionism and avoiding past mistakes: Keep in mind a big part of what has kept the north korean regime so stable is the memory of plentiful massacres that occurred during the war. Villages that were killed due to suspicion of collaboration and a south Korean dictatorship till 88 or so.
As others pointed out by others as well: Much of what ends up reported about NK ends up being fake. I have no doubt that NK is a brutal authoritarian regime but after all the fake stories i kind of tune out to news like this.
Everytime topics like this are mentionned, with the totalitarian regimes in North Korea, Iran or elsewhere, it's funny to see how free access to resources, VPNs, open internet, etc... is treated differently. Good when it comes to dictatorships, but evil when in the west.
You haven't noticed those shiny banners on Tweets or Youtube videos, shadow-banning articles for your own good or warning you that it is "disputed" ?
Twitter recently has been a good example of desire to control information, with half of the political class and even head of states (Macron) saying that it should be "controlled" to restrict "fake news", by fake news they of course mean someone talking about H.Biden's laptop, or someone saying that there are only two genders.
Hey, one of France's neighbours here: Nobody gives a damn about you talking about dumb shit, as long as it doesn't endanger one or many people. What we actually care about, is a bunch of people - who coincidentally seem to come from the same political spectrum - using a public space, to artificially push unfounded conspiracy theories, and trying to rile up society, so they can seize power and abolish democracy as a whole. All by using fake accounts, bots and apparently Russian money to destabilize society, and also gathering weapons for their great "liberation" from the deep state or some shit. At the same time they keep on whining about "freedom of speech", every time their bullshit is getting called out.
Just recently, a bunch of conspiracy freaks in my country were raided by police, since they were found out to be preparing for a coup. Funnily enough, it was once again people from right-wing parties, Qanons and one descendant of former royalty in Germany.
"unfounded conspiracy theories, and trying to rile up society, so they can seize power and abolish democracy as a whole"
>> Yeah yeah i know. That's pretty much copy-paste what any totalitarian regimes says when they shutdown the internet, cf. Iran lately. And no thanks, I don't need you to decide for me if a content is rubbish or not, I can work it out for myself...
By the way, you wanna talk about how "unfounded" the "conspiracy theory" on H.Biden's laptop was ?
I’m reluctant to use “luxury” to describe these rights, and even more reluctant to suggest the west shares them well.
The former sets up an argument that these rights are superfluous, and the latter fails to recognize areas where the west does poorly at upholding rights, especially the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments.
> former sets up an argument that these rights are superfluous
Luxury has more than one meaning [1]. If you prefer the language of counting blessings, so be it, though I could also pedantically quibble it implies a divine underwriting of our fundamental rights.
> the latter fails to recognize areas where the west does poorly at upholding rights, especially the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments
This crosses from pedantic quibbling to missing the forest for the trees.
Then go. The quality of your comment is extremely poor and is the exact kind of talk that will eventually turn this place into reddit, echo chamber devoid of actual discussion and difficult ideas. Here, the goal is to say something meaningful and extend the conversation, not stop discussion with vague appeal to emotions about frustrations with the "wrong opinion". I'd've actually been on your side in a discussion if it had continued rather than being stonewalled by attempting to set up a barrier between who's allowed to post and who's not. By commenting that you're implicitly pushing this place towards a culture that throws its hands up and plugs its ears whenever a "difficult" idea is presented. If you cannot handle that, then this isn't the place for you.
But who knows, maybe if you'd genuinely asked and heard them out instead of going all, "we don't like your kind here", you might've found yourself agreeing with them. Who knows, but this is about the genuine and free discussion of ideas, not baiting flame wars.
Edit: this is a long comment. It's the first one I've posted after seeing growing number of anti-discussion, reddit-like behavior. It's personally frustrating to me because this is where I go to get away from stuff like this. I hope this isn't too angry or judgy, and I hope everyone's doing okay.
To be fair, while I wouldn’t generally be in favor of a comment like the one you're replying to, I did feel empathy for it in this case. It's not about avoiding a difficult topic; it's exhaustion with this extremely tiresome tendency to try to bring bad-faith arguments about social media moderation into literally every topic. It reminds me of the scene in The Big Lebowski:
"Excuse me, sir. Please keep your voices down. This is a family restaurant."
"Oh please, dear. For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!"
Is social media moderation worth discussing? Sure! Is, "Teens may or may not have been executed for distributing movies, but on the other hand they deleted my tweet" a conversation worth having? Debatable.
The list of people who care about you being here is empty while people concerned about the trajectory of free expression is a significant portion of several democracies. Good luck on Reddit or Slashdot or whatever is next for you.
OP was making the point that we shouldn't take our rights in the West for granted, because there are people in the world who have it demonstrably worse. Not every statement needs to account for all variables.
The luxury and call to arms fails to reach all ears considering out government routinely does the same thing to teenagers in the states, but because they are poor and black, it's largely considered acceptable in our culture.
I'm mostly referring to the cases where the teenager or child was killed by the police for no reason at all. There's no movie involved, but the execution happens nonetheless
- Every citizen must use the same haircut as Kim Jong-un
- NK government announced that they found a "unicorn"
- NK official was executed for bad posture
- Kim Jong-un's uncle was eaten alive by starving dogs
- Kim Jong-un labels DOG MEAT a 'superfood'
- North Korea tells parents to give kids patriotic name like 'bomb', 'gun' and 'satellite'
- North Korea bans sarcasm because Kim Jong-un fears people only agree with him ‘ironically’
It's not like North Korea is paradise. It's certainly not. It's another poor third world nation, not unlike many of the ones currently on the western side of things where the same sort of life happens. But, of course, you won't hear a word of (unless it's Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, that is).
OP is suggesting that the source is repeatedly coming out with either comically or disturbingly exaggerated stories from NK. It's a pretty shitty place to live, but you don't need to unquestioningly swallow every wild story you've heard or read about the place on that grounds that "it sucks"
I consider exit visas to be not a good sign, confiscation of passports to be another (the US IRS), and a new tool of the UK that is extrajudicially sanctioning their own citizens (see Graham Phillips) for yet another. Not to say these countries are close to equal but they are more alike than we might realize and increasingly more so in worrying ways.
‘The safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people’ - US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
> It's another poor third world nation, not unlike many of the ones currently on the western side of things
But the "not unlike" comment strikes me as lacking evidence, given the confirmed differences between the DPRK and other poor nation. At least when comparing the content of their refugee testimonials.
Note, this is not a disagreement nor an agreement with your comment, only an observation of what appears to be a hollow spot in the reasoning.
"Over the past six years, the Special Rapporteur has examined and raised concerns about the coercive system of governance that deprives the fundamental freedoms of people in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This includes arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, restrictions on freedom of expression, religion and thought, access to information, freedom of movement and the practice of forced labour."
"Draconian measures have further strengthened the State’s control over the population, such as the policy of shooting individuals who attempt to enter or leave the country and the Law on the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture, enacted in December 2020, containing grossly disproportionate punishments, including the death penalty for accessing information, particularly of foreign content."
North Korea has had thousands of foreign workers, mostly aid workers, in its borders, and businessmen from neutral countries that have not signed up to sanctions are given privileged access to the country. They are more reliable sources on how the country operates than any "unnamed source".
The big name I can think of is Felix Abt, who wrote about life in Pyongyang. Bad, but much safer than most of the other comparable capitals he did business in. He's biased in favour of ending sanctions and sanitizes some of what he said, but "A Capitalist in North Korea" confirms some of the negative assumptions about the country while criticising the more extreme claims.
People here are quick to say these news are Western propaganda, but believe all those foreigners can be trusted. Why the same skepticism isn’t applied?
I never heard of Felix Abt, what are the reasons he should be trusted? It’s well known that foreigners aren’t allowed to move around freely, even if he has the best intention we can only say what he described are true only for the circles he interact with.
This also show some double standards and bias in social networks. Twitter, Facebook, and several others always mark Chinese media as "news financed (or controlled) by the Chinese government", and the same is true for any media financed entirely or in part by governments not aligned with the west. But what about Radio Free Asia? It is a source of propaganda financed by US government. It is not a credible source, it always publish accusations with no proofs against countries seen as enemies. However, no social media ever put the label "this media is financed/controlled entirely or in part by the US government" in Radio Free Asia accounts.
That appears to be a different source, so of course it should be left off a list of things that RFA has reported. (If indeed RFA reported those things.)
for some reason, I do believe the part about patriotic names. In early USSR there used to be all kinds of weird names. E.g. Vladlen (a name after the glorious Vladimir Lenin)
And the editorial board that crafts that news also knows it, so they are counting on it for that to have an extra pull that way as well
It is common for the general public to name their kids after what's in vogue it happens in all societies and the degree to which they are compelled to do so varies ofc, ergo all the little girls named Elsa that can be seen nowdays
> It's not like North Korea is paradise. It's certainly not. It's another poor third world nation, not unlike many of the ones currently on the western side of things where the same sort of life happens.
There's pointing out propaganda (which I agree Radio Free Asia is), and there's boiling down a country well-documented as a known human rights violator[1] to "just another poor third world nation"
No; the apology is in the last paragraph where the poster attempts to suggest that the DPRK is not really any worse than many other countries in the rest of the world.
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
The problem with extremist takes like yours, is they remove any nuance, to the point of covering for other equally "anti-human" acts that eventually pop up.
Take the falun gong cult, or Scientology of the east for instance.
They were protected and given special status in New York and now spend a large amount of their time spreading nonsense propaganda about not just China but supporting extremists right wing parties globally.
No one in the US even bothered to cover them until they were banned for trying to spend 20millon on pro-trump ads in 2020.
And guess what they own most of the leading YouTube channels about China and are the gateway to anyone curious about how China functions.
I'll know, since I was watching one of their channels since 2010 and only found how how much fake made up stuff they made up only much later.
Same thing happened with how ISIS was formed due to the sheer ignorance of the decision makers.
Do you want named source in North Korea? The very fact that nobody can step forward to confirm or deny, or someone can go there to verify this information, show how evil NK is.
As for the list you cited as bad reports, maybe include links? But again, unless you know with certainty they are fake, how can you be so sure? As nobody collaborated for or against them.
> won’t hear a word of
Which Western friendly country would you like to highlight that we haven’t heard about? Which North Korea-like policies of those countries that you think nobody has talked about?
It’s ironic that you complain about fake news but hide behind a throwaway account, throwing around whataboutism with weasel words.
You will hear more than a word of any foreign entity when the US has started plans to invade them while their enemies will be called stunning and brave... eg Taliban, Kurds, vietnamese, Ukrainians....
The irony of you commenting on a brainwashed article proves my point. in NK you can publish nothing, in US almost everything published is deceptive. See my point?
I meant they are enemies of states that the US wants to attack. Once they are used up, US will throw them out to the dogs. Like how US greenlighted turkey to attack kurds this week.
It’s a news agency funded by the US government via the US Agency for Global Media, which is an independent agency of the US government. The Secretary of State used to be on the board of directors by rule but that changed in 2017.
HN is a wild place where there are plenty of credulous Americans who will swear blind that the BBC is propaganda along the same lines as KCNA is in North Korea and Pravda was in the USSR ... while declaring that Radio Free Asia is just an independent news agency.
Radio Free Asia has repeatedly put out exaggerated or sensational claims about North Korea, at least some of which have turned out to be false. Nobody is endorsing NK, executions, etc.
If you were to believe them, Kim ate too much cheese and it forced him to disappear, and he died several times. Also he killed an uncle with an anti-aircraft gun, and he reappeared, so he fed him to dogs, then he reappeared again. (These are things they literally reported)
Anyone who enjoys their reporting may also have an interest in Weekly World News.
A lot of these comments are really disgusting. Kudos to the few trying to call then out.
There have been many firsthand accounts of those that have escaped North Korea and shared what it’s like to live there. Concentration camps, starving, torture, chemical warfare experiments on prisoners, famine.
A firsthand account from a female that escaped from North Korea shared that the North Korea government will shutdown the power grid without notice and then raid homes looking for DVDs stuck in players (because no power to eject) and will kill those people responsible.
Those that escape North Korea across the river to China are caught and put into sex trafficking. China is complicit in supporting the horrible treatment of the North Korean people.
At some point we have to accept that this is the People of North Koreas fault. They are very aware that their country is massively worse off than the rest of the world, yet they don't murder their kings.
>That's not necessarily true. They don't have access to the internet or foreign media. Only propaganda.
That's wildly inaccurate, read "Nothing to Envy" then educate yourself on advancements in censorship circumvention since then -- they regularly get movies and films on USB paired with broadcasts into border regions.
There are currently people in Russia with near-unlimited access to internet (and until quite recently with near-unlimited access to travel) who sincerely believe that the West is hell on Earth.
You greatly underestimate the power of propaganda.
Russia is hell on earth within some respects and that doesn’t mean the US isn’t when it comes to others. It’s subjective what it means hell on earth but neither the US nor Russia take the medal for worst place in the world to be.
Speaking as an American... they can stay in Russia then, more power to them.
I remember seeing a video of two guys just walking holding hands and the entire town basically ready to jump them, not knowing there was a camera going.
If they want to live like victims, fine, that's a choice you can make, I just don't want them exporting their insanity.
Go and read what's happening now in Iran. Random people are being killed in streets. Teenager girls are kidnapped and then when they're released many days later they're raped many many times. People have no media. The government uses military equipment against people.
It seems that many seem to love their king. Why shouldn't they? All information they have received for multiple generations says their king is the greatest.
The US has sent large quantities of food and fuel. Specifically during famine periods (when uprisings would otherwise have been likely) but also at other times. The US gave these goods specifically to the regime allowing them to control the food supply AND keep their forces mobile when otherwise they would have faced a starving population with very limited military capacity.
It's been a very weird thing to watch for 20 years: when it looks like the North Korean system might fail, the US leads assistance to it. Then when it recovers and returns to it's weapons program the US does nothing. That's how we got into a place where North Korea has functional nuclear weapons and will soon have the missiles to deliver them to the whole USA. At that point the US will just have to keep subsidising the regime. It's been decades of mismanagement of the situation over at least 4 administrations.