[keybored]

> Numerous different documentaries and individual travel videos. Like all things there is a bias but I am also not sure what your point is? Are you suggesting North Koreans are not subject to massive amounts of propaganda and indoctrination into this idea of the supreme leader?

North Korea is famously one of the most closed-off countries in the world. Its Western-aligned neighbor is officially still at war with it. But at the same time people will make assertions with certainty about what North Korea is.

North Korea is an unreliable narrator. So are South Korea and America because they are hostile to NK. And people in the West don’t trust whatever countries are aligned with North Korea.

That’s the discrepancy—speaking boldly about the most closed off country in the world. Like documentaries and travel videos? Travel videos will be cherry-picked because of the government’s[1] policy of stalking and sheepherding all their tourists. That’s just one example from the NK side. We can also get into Western outlets making up NK fairytales based on no NK sources at all.

> This is starting to feel like a flat earth discussion.

Asking what level of information you have on a very closed-off country is comparable to denying a scientific fact that has been hypothesized for millenia, empirically proven probably for centuries, and can probably be empirically proven by an amateur scientist mountaineer?

Oh yeah? Have you got any more tired cliches up your sleeve?[2] “Oh hush” to quote a HN user.

[1] Or the regime if you prefer

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43618619

[infecto]

You spent a lot of words saying “nobody knows anything” while conveniently ignoring the mountains of defectors’ testimonies, satellite imagery, and reports from human rights orgs that paint a bleak but consistent picture. But sure, let’s pretend the real problem is me not being epistemologically pure enough about the world’s most repressive regime.

Your entire comment boils down to: “We can’t trust any sources, so how dare you have an opinion.” That’s not skepticism, that’s intellectual paralysis dressed up as nuance.

And yes, invoking Flat Earth was apt—because entertaining every counter-narrative, no matter how unmoored from reality, in the name of balance is exactly how we ended up with people thinking the Earth is a disk.

But by all means, tell me more about the utopia behind the DMZ, if not hush too. You have said a lot of nothing.

What a world we live in. You cannot even call NK a repressive regime without folks jumping to point out how wrong you are. Maybe you need to go through the test your self and denounce the supreme leader.

[keybored]

I should gather my thoughts and focus my statement now that I recalled why I made it to begin with. I was really mostly curious specifically why you were so certain about the “lifetime of propaganda” and what it can do to the mind. Being a closed society we don’t have access to North Koreans to just talk to. You have defectors who are outliers. Secondly, taking the statement about the propaganda at face value, the next problem is what it does to the mind. Because we can’t point to people praising “the dear leader” or whatever in public as proof of the inner life of someone. If they live in such an authoritarian hellhole then they will have to say that just to survive. So is it a lifetime of propaganda? Or are they just getting by?

The next point would be juxtapose the lifetime of propaganda with your complete and unwavering certainty about the state of mind in the hermit kingdom, but you don’t seem quite ready for that.

Now to your reply here. There’s too many muddied points, too many strawmen to go into in detail without boring you in turn. So I won’t. But notice that I haven’t even defended North Korea. In fact one of the points I made was how they will sheepherd tourists. My comment was 80% epistemological, as you say. And your response? Talking about “the Utopia” of the DMZ? Oh wait, that’s exactly the phrase you brought up to someone else[1] and they too never ever said that North Korea was a great place to live (only that the narrative was “racist”).

So why go into these epistemological sleep study sessions? Because as evidenced by the conversation in [2], you (but also serving as an example because this is far from unique) will dismiss people who question the narrative of the OP, namely “The FBI reported the money funds nuclear weapons and operations”. This is perfectly germane to the topic: is this a thing of concern or is it a convenient narrative? You dismiss that as a “conspiracy” in your reply and waffle on about “sure, other countries do bad things, but NK worse”. Your dismissal has got nothing to do with the topic, though. The topic is not if NK is a fantastic place to live, a “utopia” or whatever. The topic is if they did something that other countries don’t do.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43618677

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43618503

[infecto]

You write a novel to say “we can’t really know,” then act like that’s some brave intellectual stance. It’s not. It’s just a way to dodge moral clarity.

Defectors are “outliers”? Of course they are—it’s a police state. That’s how tyranny works. You don’t get a representative sample when dissent gets you killed.

You’re not offering insight. You’re drowning basic truths in a flood of words to avoid saying anything with weight. At some point, skepticism becomes cowardice.

Say less. Mean more.

[keybored]

You’re going on about moral clarity and cowardice, dodging any real arguments that could be had. This is just obfuscation and relativism (but NK is worse than X). There have been concrete counter-arguments to the narrative in the OP. It doesn’t matter if the head of state of NK has killed more people than Genghis Khan.

There’s also no point in fretting about cowardice. Critiquing a poor Asian country from an apartment in Europe/America/South America won’t get you harmed.