[ornornor]

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.

[mitt_romney_12]

The media has a propensity to basically report anything people say about North Korea, no matter how ridiculous [1]. For example back in 2014 a bunch of news sources reported that Kim Jong Un fed his uncle to a pack of dogs, the only source for the story was a random blog that turned out to be a Chinese satirist but the media ran with it because it fit the narrative of "the crazy hermit kingdom". In fact even golf story you cited here is completely invented [3]. There are a lot of problems with North Korea, but at the same time there is a lot of misinformation being willfully spread by the media.

[1]: https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-sides-is...

[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324

[3]: https://www.youngpioneertours.com/top-five-best-fake-north-k...

Other sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea#...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-false-...

[severino]

> 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

Doesn't sound too much different from countries where the people are indoctrinated to believe their leader was born from a virgin, doesn't it? You'll say the difference is 2000 years into the history, so, we just need to give NK ~1925 more years.

[mensetmanusman]

Double rainbow leader also blasts family away with giant cannons point blank.

[bitsage]

The situation is drastically different. When considering your example, the source isn’t the leader himself nor are you imprisoned or killed for going against the narrative surrounding the leader.

Not a day goes past where I don’t see someone try to minimize commie atrocities…

[fndex]

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.

[peppermint_gum]

The reason why we learn about North Korea almost exclusively from the Western sources is because it's a totalitarian dictatorship that suppresses information. You can check out their media online and see for yourself that it's full of propaganda.

We don't get tourists from North Korea because they aren't allowed to leave the country. We don't talk with North Korean people on the internet, because their access to the internet is tightly controlled.

There's no grand western conspiracy to suppress information about NK. It's North Korea itself that does that.

I know that on HN many consider blind contrarianism to be synonymous with rationalism, but seriously...

[p_j_w]

None of what you've just said justifies believing what the media or government say about North Korea, though, does it?

[fiso64]

Apparently, "blind contrarianism" is when you don't take random blogs and news articles spouting ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims as gospel.

[CWuestefeld]

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.

[nullandvoid]

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 something made up by US / South Korea..

[fndex]

"A big thanks to Yeonmi Park for sharing her story with us"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims

[ornornor]

Oh come on

[fndex]

Now that's a good argument.

[mopenstein]

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?

[fndex]

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?

[FormerBandmate]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/story-of-a-former...

Yoyre like someone who thinks gravity doesn’t exist. Literally everyone knows this, they’re not stupid, they’re lied to their entire lives. There are tons of defectors who will back this up and you can’t talk to anyone in North Korea outside of carefully guided tours set up by the state

[CWuestefeld]

I suspect that it's not that they really believe Kim has never pooped, but that doesn't mean that North Koreans don't tell each other these stories. I think it might be closer to "Chuck Norris Facts" that we tell ourselves. Obviously nobody believes any of those things about Chuck Norris, but we continue to do so, and in so doing confer to Norris some degree of reverence.

Or maybe even more mundanely, it's like Santa Claus. Adults don't believe that he lives at the north pole with flying reindeer. But we continue to teach children that he does - not because it's literally true, but because we seem to feel that having children believe this somehow makes our culture better.

I imagine that similarly, Kim is getting this reverence - but since it's channeled into a framework of him being their supreme leader, it reinforces his hold on the nation.