Not about to defend NK regime, but to make it fair, and not to play "they are bad guys, thus we're good guys".
First, doubts of people not right away believing any news about NK are justified, given how many lies about NK, like executing by feeding to dogs, were spread. So don't take them as NK defenders, it may be just a healthy skepticism.
Second, note that NK kills their citizens for what is illegal in their country, which is gross, but in 2019 Americans killed North Koreans for what was pretty legal, and got away with it [1].
Third, it looks hypocritic to read how horrible is that people got prosecuted for just watching videos. We all know that in so called civilized democracies, people's life can be ruined (luckily not taken) for possessing illegal video materials, it's just legality differs by jurisdictions.
West's true advantage is that we're much more shy in capital punishments, however we're still far from humanistic ideals, and I believe concentrating only on NK regime crimes lets the mindset "they being so bad, then we're not so bad after all".
I believe the logic is simple, the same as with advertising illegal drugs: lies can be seductive and do harm. HK officials make people consider any outer information as lies-filled propaganda, and thus justify the prohibition.
Foreign influence in social media and news media is a publicly admitted concern by American government, EU, China, and that’s just the ones I read about. So you logic doesn’t make sense.
The amount of NK "defenders" (propaganda shills of some stripe or another) on even this small thread about the regime's well documented, evidence-abundant brutality is pretty impressive. I had no idea so many secret NK IT workers were fans of HN too! Welcome comrades... We'll water you down into defection yet.
hahaha. Good point. But seriously, a quick browse of the comments below is full of absurdities: Claims that the BBC is a shill of imperialism (It may very well be to an extent, but that doesn't mean it isn't laying out deep reporting with plenty of real information about well documented barbarities by the Kim regime), claims that the majority of NK defectors are mainly liars (thousands of them, all coordinating their lies across multiple decades well enough to mostly match in their details, really?) and what-aboutist nonsense implying that no country with its own border controls or occasional attempts to stifle free expression is much different from what NK does; Degrees of difference do exist, and can eventually mount enough until a difference becomes fundamentally qualitative. North Korea is well beyond the pale for mounting degrees of repression.
Then there's the idea that it's just too unbelievable to conceive that the regime would execute people simply for watching foreign movies. The Stalin regime executed or GULAG-starved many hundreds of thousands for the 1930s versions of the same thing, or for having any contact and even just suspected contact with foreigners. The Nazi regime killed millions simply for existing under a certain invented category of threat, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge would mass execute hundreds of thousands for being "bourgeoisie" because they.... had university educations, or maybe wore glasses, or spoke a second language (yes, the condemnations were really that murderously banal and never mind that many Khmer leaders themselves could tick off these same classifications for their own lives). I see nothing at all unbelievable about a youthful dictator in a closed country protected by its nuclear arsenal further absolutizing his own power by showing ever more of his already well-demonstrated indifference to human life whenever it suits him.
the former Ugoslaviain police were infamous for dragging youth of "to beat the Zappa out of them", but on.the fall of communism uncle Frank was greeted in Ugodlavia by thousands at the airport was given special honours and a very strong offer to be part of there government, they very much wanted to keep him
perhaps something similar is taking shape in.NK
As I grow older, one thing that I've learned is that power won't stop.
One day they ask people to stop disrespect the leader, everyone obeys, then maybe the next day they'll start force people to praise the leader or be executed.
The world is a Tug Of War, your interest against other's. If either side gave up, then the otherside may just come in crushing.
Some foreigner came into their country and tried to 'illuminate' the 'unwashed' masses via tearing down propaganda and was promptly thrown into some hellhole of a jail.
Seems to me like a normal thing to have happened. By the standards of the Global North, that is.
Doesn't seem meaningfully different from today's USA.
The way I read it is he was taking a poster home as a souvenir. An incredibly stupid thing to do, but I feel like being tortured to death for the amusement of people (presumably?) is somewhat excessive.
I guess so, given that we'll never know what he actually did. The punishment was sort of excessive, I agree.
I'm mostly trying to make light on the fact that trying to validate outlandish propaganda by using an event which actually happened as some kind of 'gotcha' falls flat when the event you're talking about is something that happens routinely in the USA and, more generally, in the Global North.
If I went to the USA and took down a MAGA poster, my ass would be in Alligator Alcatraz 2.0 within the day and nobody would ever find me again.
At least until I land in South Sudan or some shit.
Being sent to an active war zone like South Sudan after being stripped of all my belongings and goods with no way to get home or communicate with anyone doesn't seem like much of a functional improvement to me.
The most plausible explanation that those people who escaped NK were sentenced for something else and use excuse of watching foreign films to look good to Western researchers.
I believe that media landscape is restricted in NK, but getting a death sentence for a watching movie? No way it is possible.
Why do you think that is the 'most plausible explanation'? NK meets the simple test for evil dictatorships: do they need to use fences to stop citizens from leaving? Yes, NK does exactly that.
I wonder why NK doesn't pay "fake" defectors to create counter-propaganda.
Well, that's a silly joke. Yet, the fact is that regime has implemented new laws to strictly regulate citizens' access to SK/Western TV shows.
Nor does it make any effort to present its own narrative to the world by allowing people to freely share some TikTok clips showing them enjoying domestic content about their supreme commander over shitty foreign Netflix videos. Why? Because no way it is possible.
Look at the Soviet Union at the height of Stalinist oppression in the 1930s. Having the wrong book (not even necessarily a Western book but even a Soviet book that is no longer in good graces) could be a trip to the Gulag which for many was a death sentence.
A lot of it was driven by quotas that the police had to meet.
I know it's controversial to say here, but Korean people are human too. They are not stupid insects groomed to follow some great leader as if it were the queen of the hive. Most of what you assume to know about Koreans and likely Chinese or Vietnamese people is false. It's pure propaganda.
Also lol for linking the BBC. To me it's like linking Radio Free Asia or the New York Times and pretend those are freedom fighters.
Oh yes ofc, if all imperial newspapers are saying it has happened, then it must have happened. A bit like when all imperial newspapers said there were WMD in Irak and that's why America had to destroy this country.
I really don't like entertaining discussions that are in bad faith, but the Iraq WMDs comment has bothered me. The UN themselves said it was unlikely Iraq had them. So while you clearly have your biases, at least double check them before trying to make a point. More people might take you seriously and have a meaningful discussion.
It's funny seeing how the same people who scream and whine about the media being 'biased' whenever they report on some awful shit that Trump did (even when it actually indirectly paints him positively) will unquestionably believe absolutely everything the media reports about North Korea.
Oh, sure, they're not directly state-owned news (except NPR and the BBC etc. etc.).
I don't see a controversy on HN where the problem with North Korea is supposed to be the people must not be human. You, me, North Koreans, South Koreans, and anybody else are obviously all people. These are regions of people, not species listings. As such, we obviously all fall for silly beliefs - that's one thing humans do.
Sometimes that bites us in the ass real bad, sometimes it's less severe, but humans aren't defined as being perfect. Believing being human makes you immune to the same kinds of belief problems as other humans have gotten themselves into results in bite-you-in-the-ass results more often, among other problems.
This sounds very soviet, I see them all the time showing some traveling guide to NK and claiming is a paradise like USSR was, but then you ask why do this regimes have walls and kill the people that try to escape the paradise? why do people want to escape the paradise risking their lives ?
And to have the balls to claim you can't trust people that lived in NK and escaped and you should better trust who? those NK propaganda images the soviets are spreading around ?
I call soviets the home sovieticus, the imperialists bastards that excuse that criminal regime and want it back, like the Zeds and their friends.
>Now do the same for the country you are very fond of. It wouldn't be so hard, right?
Super easy, I can exit Romania to EU just with my identity card, I can go to Moldova just as easy , for other countries depends on their rules like I might need to have family there if I am visiting them or to have paid for hotels and have some money to prove I am a tourist. So I can exit Romania unless I am under some investigation by the police and a judge asked me not to run away.
this was not true during communist times, the communist had walls and they killed people attempting to leave the paradise, even if you had a passport because you were some important person your passport was kept by the police not by you.
Hard question for you now,
If NK won't let the population go and visit some evil, corrupt, dangerous country why are teh citizens also blocked to freely travel to China or RuZZia ? Also why is that country starving when they are neighboring those big countries that soviets claim they are very kind.
There is just a lot of bs being spread about NK. Westerners, for example, genuindely believed all koreans had to get a haircut that is approved by the government.
I'm not even saying this country is not paranoid, but its nearly not as bad as everyone is imaging, and frankly, considering what Americans have inflicted unto the korean people, its fairly understandable.
North Korean defectors are well known for being unreliable sources. They rarely have skills nor social connections and thus are massively incentivized to join the existing markets for anti-NK propaganda in both the West and India.
The kind of obvious propaganda like "it's a crime to have the same haircut as Kim Jong-Un" (or to not have it, depending on the source). No one is saying life there is great, but there is a track record of fantastically untrue stories.
If they rarely have skills or social connections, how were they able to achieve the feat of escaping from the Hermit Kingdom in the first place? It seems to me that this high bar selects for people who can thrive in adverse circumstances.
Not about to defend NK regime, but to make it fair, and not to play "they are bad guys, thus we're good guys".
First, doubts of people not right away believing any news about NK are justified, given how many lies about NK, like executing by feeding to dogs, were spread. So don't take them as NK defenders, it may be just a healthy skepticism.
Second, note that NK kills their citizens for what is illegal in their country, which is gross, but in 2019 Americans killed North Koreans for what was pretty legal, and got away with it [1].
Third, it looks hypocritic to read how horrible is that people got prosecuted for just watching videos. We all know that in so called civilized democracies, people's life can be ruined (luckily not taken) for possessing illegal video materials, it's just legality differs by jurisdictions.
West's true advantage is that we're much more shy in capital punishments, however we're still far from humanistic ideals, and I believe concentrating only on NK regime crimes lets the mindset "they being so bad, then we're not so bad after all".
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/navy-seal-north-korea-...
what I don't get about some of these regimes, is if your 'system' is so great then you shouldn't be threatened by foreign influences at all.
ultimately it shows - your system is built on 'sinking' sand.
I believe the logic is simple, the same as with advertising illegal drugs: lies can be seductive and do harm. HK officials make people consider any outer information as lies-filled propaganda, and thus justify the prohibition.
Foreign influence in social media and news media is a publicly admitted concern by American government, EU, China, and that’s just the ones I read about. So you logic doesn’t make sense.
There was a big black market for foreign films, I learned from videos smuggled out. Imported from China or recorded with satellite dishes.
I'm sure the current leader saw that also.
The amount of NK "defenders" (propaganda shills of some stripe or another) on even this small thread about the regime's well documented, evidence-abundant brutality is pretty impressive. I had no idea so many secret NK IT workers were fans of HN too! Welcome comrades... We'll water you down into defection yet.
Given that NK hackers have probably much more incentives to do their work well than western ones, you shouldn't wonder that they do.
hahaha. Good point. But seriously, a quick browse of the comments below is full of absurdities: Claims that the BBC is a shill of imperialism (It may very well be to an extent, but that doesn't mean it isn't laying out deep reporting with plenty of real information about well documented barbarities by the Kim regime), claims that the majority of NK defectors are mainly liars (thousands of them, all coordinating their lies across multiple decades well enough to mostly match in their details, really?) and what-aboutist nonsense implying that no country with its own border controls or occasional attempts to stifle free expression is much different from what NK does; Degrees of difference do exist, and can eventually mount enough until a difference becomes fundamentally qualitative. North Korea is well beyond the pale for mounting degrees of repression.
Then there's the idea that it's just too unbelievable to conceive that the regime would execute people simply for watching foreign movies. The Stalin regime executed or GULAG-starved many hundreds of thousands for the 1930s versions of the same thing, or for having any contact and even just suspected contact with foreigners. The Nazi regime killed millions simply for existing under a certain invented category of threat, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge would mass execute hundreds of thousands for being "bourgeoisie" because they.... had university educations, or maybe wore glasses, or spoke a second language (yes, the condemnations were really that murderously banal and never mind that many Khmer leaders themselves could tick off these same classifications for their own lives). I see nothing at all unbelievable about a youthful dictator in a closed country protected by its nuclear arsenal further absolutizing his own power by showing ever more of his already well-demonstrated indifference to human life whenever it suits him.
the former Ugoslaviain police were infamous for dragging youth of "to beat the Zappa out of them", but on.the fall of communism uncle Frank was greeted in Ugodlavia by thousands at the airport was given special honours and a very strong offer to be part of there government, they very much wanted to keep him perhaps something similar is taking shape in.NK
Communism is evil, and so is everyone who believes in it.
You should also mention that capitalism is evil (so is everyone who believes to it), otherwise it's lie by omission.
[flagged]
As I grow older, one thing that I've learned is that power won't stop.
One day they ask people to stop disrespect the leader, everyone obeys, then maybe the next day they'll start force people to praise the leader or be executed.
The world is a Tug Of War, your interest against other's. If either side gave up, then the otherside may just come in crushing.
Right? It's like killing people for what they believe in. North Korea is cra-... wait a second...
Low tier comment but I genuinely believe we might be less than a decade away from this situation in the US.
Kim Jong-Un, too, while they're at it.
I find some of the claims made about North Korea rather fanciful and unbelievable.
I am sure the parents of Otto Warmbier [0] could disinfect your disbelief in the harsh light of their reality.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier
Ok, so let me get this straight.
Some foreigner came into their country and tried to 'illuminate' the 'unwashed' masses via tearing down propaganda and was promptly thrown into some hellhole of a jail.
Seems to me like a normal thing to have happened. By the standards of the Global North, that is.
Doesn't seem meaningfully different from today's USA.
The way I read it is he was taking a poster home as a souvenir. An incredibly stupid thing to do, but I feel like being tortured to death for the amusement of people (presumably?) is somewhat excessive.
I guess so, given that we'll never know what he actually did. The punishment was sort of excessive, I agree.
I'm mostly trying to make light on the fact that trying to validate outlandish propaganda by using an event which actually happened as some kind of 'gotcha' falls flat when the event you're talking about is something that happens routinely in the USA and, more generally, in the Global North.
If I went to the USA and took down a MAGA poster, my ass would be in Alligator Alcatraz 2.0 within the day and nobody would ever find me again. At least until I land in South Sudan or some shit.
> The way I read it is he was taking a poster home as a souvenir. An incredibly stupid thing to do
Sounds like the most innocuous thing in the world
The USA would never have a foreign national executed over a sign...
Being sent to an active war zone like South Sudan after being stripped of all my belongings and goods with no way to get home or communicate with anyone doesn't seem like much of a functional improvement to me.
The most plausible explanation that those people who escaped NK were sentenced for something else and use excuse of watching foreign films to look good to Western researchers. I believe that media landscape is restricted in NK, but getting a death sentence for a watching movie? No way it is possible.
Why do you think that is the 'most plausible explanation'? NK meets the simple test for evil dictatorships: do they need to use fences to stop citizens from leaving? Yes, NK does exactly that.
[dead]
I wonder why NK doesn't pay "fake" defectors to create counter-propaganda. Well, that's a silly joke. Yet, the fact is that regime has implemented new laws to strictly regulate citizens' access to SK/Western TV shows. Nor does it make any effort to present its own narrative to the world by allowing people to freely share some TikTok clips showing them enjoying domestic content about their supreme commander over shitty foreign Netflix videos. Why? Because no way it is possible.
Look at the Soviet Union at the height of Stalinist oppression in the 1930s. Having the wrong book (not even necessarily a Western book but even a Soviet book that is no longer in good graces) could be a trip to the Gulag which for many was a death sentence.
A lot of it was driven by quotas that the police had to meet.
You find them to be, do you have any insight that would help us understand your point ?
[flagged]
how many NK defectors support the narrative of the NK government? How many corroborate the western reports?
I grew up in Eastern Europe.
Yes, in the height of terror - that is what communists would do. Having a wrong book would mark you as an enemy of state.
Or look, even Cambodia - even if how much they were communist first, or nationalist first is debatable - mere glasses would mark you for death.
[flagged]
I know it's controversial to say here, but Korean people are human too. They are not stupid insects groomed to follow some great leader as if it were the queen of the hive. Most of what you assume to know about Koreans and likely Chinese or Vietnamese people is false. It's pure propaganda.
Also lol for linking the BBC. To me it's like linking Radio Free Asia or the New York Times and pretend those are freedom fighters.
> Also lol for linking the BBC. To me it's like linking Radio Free Asia or the New York Times and pretend those are freedom fighters.
It's not really when the reporting is reporting what was done. But here's some more articles saying the same thing ?
> Most of what you assume to know about Koreans and likely Chinese or Vietnamese people is false.
You are assuming I am making assumptions. But I can see this discussion isn't going anywhere fast.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/asia-pacific/north-kor...
https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-issues-rare...
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/foreignaffairs/northkorea/20200...
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/25/916807251/kim-jong-un-apologi...
Oh yes ofc, if all imperial newspapers are saying it has happened, then it must have happened. A bit like when all imperial newspapers said there were WMD in Irak and that's why America had to destroy this country.
I really don't like entertaining discussions that are in bad faith, but the Iraq WMDs comment has bothered me. The UN themselves said it was unlikely Iraq had them. So while you clearly have your biases, at least double check them before trying to make a point. More people might take you seriously and have a meaningful discussion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq
It's funny seeing how the same people who scream and whine about the media being 'biased' whenever they report on some awful shit that Trump did (even when it actually indirectly paints him positively) will unquestionably believe absolutely everything the media reports about North Korea.
Oh, sure, they're not directly state-owned news (except NPR and the BBC etc. etc.).
They're just owned by the owners of the state.
I don't see a controversy on HN where the problem with North Korea is supposed to be the people must not be human. You, me, North Koreans, South Koreans, and anybody else are obviously all people. These are regions of people, not species listings. As such, we obviously all fall for silly beliefs - that's one thing humans do.
Sometimes that bites us in the ass real bad, sometimes it's less severe, but humans aren't defined as being perfect. Believing being human makes you immune to the same kinds of belief problems as other humans have gotten themselves into results in bite-you-in-the-ass results more often, among other problems.
This sounds very soviet, I see them all the time showing some traveling guide to NK and claiming is a paradise like USSR was, but then you ask why do this regimes have walls and kill the people that try to escape the paradise? why do people want to escape the paradise risking their lives ?
And to have the balls to claim you can't trust people that lived in NK and escaped and you should better trust who? those NK propaganda images the soviets are spreading around ?
I call soviets the home sovieticus, the imperialists bastards that excuse that criminal regime and want it back, like the Zeds and their friends.
> but then you ask why do this regimes have walls and kill the people that try to escape the paradise?
Now do the same for the country you are very fond of. It wouldn't be so hard, right?
>Now do the same for the country you are very fond of. It wouldn't be so hard, right?
Super easy, I can exit Romania to EU just with my identity card, I can go to Moldova just as easy , for other countries depends on their rules like I might need to have family there if I am visiting them or to have paid for hotels and have some money to prove I am a tourist. So I can exit Romania unless I am under some investigation by the police and a judge asked me not to run away.
this was not true during communist times, the communist had walls and they killed people attempting to leave the paradise, even if you had a passport because you were some important person your passport was kept by the police not by you.
Hard question for you now, If NK won't let the population go and visit some evil, corrupt, dangerous country why are teh citizens also blocked to freely travel to China or RuZZia ? Also why is that country starving when they are neighboring those big countries that soviets claim they are very kind.
Oh, feigning ignorance?
Okay, now do the same for the Ukraine.
I will answer about Ukraine after you answer the questions about NK
There is just a lot of bs being spread about NK. Westerners, for example, genuindely believed all koreans had to get a haircut that is approved by the government.
I'm not even saying this country is not paranoid, but its nearly not as bad as everyone is imaging, and frankly, considering what Americans have inflicted unto the korean people, its fairly understandable.
Oh I'll take the firsthand reports of escapees over your thoughts on the matter, any day.
North Korean defectors are well known for being unreliable sources. They rarely have skills nor social connections and thus are massively incentivized to join the existing markets for anti-NK propaganda in both the West and India.
The kind of obvious propaganda like "it's a crime to have the same haircut as Kim Jong-Un" (or to not have it, depending on the source). No one is saying life there is great, but there is a track record of fantastically untrue stories.
If they rarely have skills or social connections, how were they able to achieve the feat of escaping from the Hermit Kingdom in the first place? It seems to me that this high bar selects for people who can thrive in adverse circumstances.
[dead]
That’s honestly just an embarrassing way to get to the truth. Those defectors are known grifters.
Me too. I don't think they need a reason to execute a person...
It certainly serves a purpose to have a reason, to make people fearful.
People are more fearful when there is no reason, when it is arbitrary or capricious.
Fearful of watching videos.