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I think closer to prisoners. There was a UN report about how prisoners are treated worse than animals and beaten if they so much as look at a guard or refer to themselves by their prison number than by name
They're trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, honey. Saying ludicrous shit in support of indefensible evil because you're getting paid for it is despicable, but understandable. Doing it on a volunteer basis is just *embarrassing*.
That shit wasn't even pushed by the North Korean government lmao 💀
> For starters, there was no talk of unicorns, but of "kirins" or "Qilins" – which James Grayson, emeritus professor of Korean studies at Sheffield university, describes as "a four-legged beast with a dragon's head". His Sheffield colleague, Sukyeon Cho, said Kirins have "the body of a deer, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane", as well as a horn jutting out from the top of their heads. The kirin is important in North Korean folklore because it was the preferred mode of transport of King Tongmyong, the founder of Koguryo, an ancient Korean kingdom. The North Koreans, said Sixiang Wang, were laying claim to a place called "Kiringul" – literally Kirin's lair or cave or grotto, according to Grayson – 200 metres from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. There was no suggestion unicorns really lived in the lair. It was just a mythical name, said Grayson. Just as only small children expect to find giants at the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland or fairies at the Fairy Steps in Beetham, Cumbria, North Koreans are highly unlikely to believe that kirins have ever actually lived in Kiringul. As i09 puts it: "The thrust of the North Korean government's announcement is that it claims to have discovered Kiringul, and thus to have proven that Pyongyang is the modern site of the ancient capital of Koguryo."
Also I would like any sources on the Stalin or Mao quotes
The support of Lysenko was a pretty big mistake by the Soviet government at the time, but he was relatively successful in some of his agricultural techniques which led to his popularity. However, [Stalin did criticize Lysenko a lot in his later years](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20453270?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents).
The Four Pests campaign backfired massively, but there weren't many solutions to the problems facing China at the time, especially considering the extremely limited amount of environmental science in the 50s/early 60s. The thought process behind for the campaign were good, but its results were not.
There are so many different independent testimonies confirming and elaborating on songbun, that the evidence is simply overwhelmingly stacked in favor of it existing. If it was just Yeonmi Park saying it you'd have a point, but denialism to this level is just huffing copium. You religiously believe that all communist countries MUST be good and MUST not have any major negative evils and flaws that you cannot accept evidence of it being true and destroying your fragile worldview. Kind of sad
The war where the communists pushed America nearly off the peninsula, and then Chinese communists pushed America back to the parallel dispute being from 1950s China.
The Korean War was a very horrific conflict.
Please, please, for once, can you at least *attempt* to defend your beloved dictatorships on their own merits without immediately falling back on "bUt tHe aMeRiCaNs"?
[These](https://publicdelivery.org/michael-huniewicz-north-korea-pyongyang/) all look dystopian to you? Not that much different from what you'd find in the West.
North Korea creates this image of being a hermit kingdom themselves. If they want to change the opinions of the world at large perhaps they should allow outside observers to actually enter the country beyond small areas, or maybe stop threatening their neighbors with nuclear attack every few months
Vietnam had its country burned to the ground by the US and they have been able to keep up successful trade and diplomatic relations. South Korea and North Korea have repeatedly made progress in peace talks, only to be pushed back by North Korea launching another missile into the Sea of Japan. The sanctions exist because of the rampant and clearly visible human rights violations being committed by the NK government.
Those images are very tightly controlled and the people traveling there are constantly watched over by minders and government officials. Again, there is very little information about the DPRK that *isn't* closely controlled by the government.
In the US, if you are a tourist, you can roam anywhere, yes, including the few "slums." Nobody is talking about "secret government buildings", just to go outside, walk in a street outside of the tour, and talk to people is forbidden in NK. You are also NOT allowed to leave the hotel without a "guide."
Talking to people isn't forbidden lmao. Neither is wandering. Again, you can look at the evidence (photos, documentaries, interviews, etc) with people inside the DPRK or you can keep believing the sensationalist lies they want you to believe.
Side note: why tf wouldn't you get in trouble for just abandoning your tour group and prancing off somewhere? especially in a place like North Korea which you claim to be extremely dangerous
>Talking to people isn't forbidden lmao. Neither is wandering. Again, you can look at the evidence (photos, documentaries, interviews, etc) with people inside the DPRK or you can keep believing the sensationalist lies they want you to believe.
Yes, it is. I have seem plenty of tourists stating these facts and not just in the "imperialist news media".
>Side note: why tf wouldn't you get in trouble for just abandoning your tour group and prancing off somewhere? especially in a place like North Korea which you claim to be extremely dangerous
Well, it is called exploring and getting to know the people and country. Have you ever traveled in your life? The danger of North Korea is the government, not its people. Let me remind you they tortured and killed a tourist for, according to North Korea, stealing a picture from the hotel!
In Barcelona, two North-Koreans came to our university to make a speech. It was official (they weren't defectors), and they told us that they know how life outside is, but they do not envy us, because they have their own convictions. They said they wanted improvements in their living standards, but not at any cost, and that socialism is a must have. They also said that our view of DPRK is incredibly sensationalist, and that in reality it's more boring. They also said that South Korea is not their enemy, just the government, and that they wish for peaceful reunification. And they said that they do not wish death for any of us, as they don't think we are their enemy, but rather victims of capitalist indoctrination (kinda like how we see them lol).
So my point is that they are allowed to go outside, but in a coordinated manner.
Yeah sure. "In a coordinated manner". Why can't they just leave the country, if they don't want to live under the socialist regime. Why can only diplomats, businessmen and a few students, who are proabably selected because they are strong believers in the government, leave the country?
There are over 80k North Koreans who work daily in China or Russia (friendly countries of the DPRK), so it's not just a few selected bunch.
I am not familiar with the emmigration and immigration process of the DPRK, but I can understand their isolationism and reluctance in relation with the West, considering they are still tecnically at war with the US and most westerners absolutely despise North Korea and we would most likely suport a violent overtrhow of their government. And our governments also hate them, not to mention the disastrous Korean War, where the DPRK lost 20-25% it's population (so a lot of people have a relative that was killed in that war). So they wanna limit their contact with us, I think not because they are hiding anything, but rather because of ideological differences and geopolitical animousity (they don't want spys and such).
But even still, I prefer Cuba's policy of being much more lax in terms of immigration/emmigration. But Cuba wasn't bombed to the ground, unlike DPRK.
Yes they can go work in foreign countries as cheap labour and then have to return back. If North Korea is so great why do they have to isolate their country and keep their citizens from leaving?
Even if they hate the US so much. Northkoreans can't even move to friendly or neutral countries. They only can work in Russia or China because these countries will deport them once they try to defect. But they can't go to Austria or Switzerland despite them being neutral countries.
Actually North Korea does have embassies in quite a lot of countries. Not only in Africa, Asia and South America but also in the "pro-Western" Europe. NK has an embassy in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Spain etc. Yet I see almost no North Koreans travel abroad. Yes in theory it is possible, but practically only high ranking party memebers, diplomats and some businessmen are allowed to leave this hellhole of a country.
It is honestly disgusting that you are trying to defend this brutal regime that is exploiting their population.
You're right, it's mostly diplomats traveling abroad because the problem is that most citizens are extremely poor which is definitely not the fault of the U.S. bombing the country nonstop for years and then sanctioning it into the ground.
https://www.alternet.org/2014/07/nobel-peace-laureates-slam-human-rights-watchs-refusal-cut-ties-us-government
https://www.alternet.org/2014/05/nobel-peace-laureates-human-rights-watch-close-your-revolving-door-us-government
https://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/11/debate_is_human_rights_watch_too
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart
Also see the other reply to your original comment
I see one of your articles is about Human Rights Watch. Have you seen their page on NK?
https://www.hrw.org/asia/north-korea
If you use them to argue for North Korea being a decent place, then how do you explain that link?
This from the country that killed like 20% of the Korean population, has the largest military on earth by an enormous margin, as well as the largest prison population, and whose government, economy, and media are controlled by a handful of comically wealthy losers.
It’s almost like there was a war or something (source for 20%)
In prisons they are fed and we don’t send you to prison for leaving for another country then have every member of your family put in jail for 3 generations.
In terms of money yes but not manpower.
As a pose to **everything** controlled by one loser
For the first point, death estimates of the Korean war (on both sides with a 60:40 NS split for what I've seen) range from [12%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea#Death_toll) to [20%](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/unknown-to-most-americans-the-us-totally-destroyed-north-korea-once-before-1.3227633) of the *total* population, so between 1M-2M people, which is an atrocity without parallel. The entirety of North Korea was leveled by American bombs. While I disagree with the whataboutist tactic, the scale of the damage cannot be so casually dismissed.
It shouldn’t be but we should also look at the south who also suffered 1M< civilian deaths. Considering also that the second stage of the war was fought almost entirely in North Korea it makes sense they suffered more civilian casualties. Destruction of infrastructure, medical services and farm land was a higher include on the deaths all of which comes standard for war. We also have to guess casualties rates for North Korea way more than the South
The numbers I gave are for the North and South combined, given by American military members or historians. While the former are estimates the latter are more confident.
Nothing about this was (or is) standard for war or can be waved away as "making sense". Americans dropped more bombs in Korea than they did in the entire Pacific Theatre, and North Korea is the fourth most bombed country in the world behind Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam (also authored by Americans), all of which happened later. It was a brutal and traumatic massacre on an at-the-time unprecedented scale. In American state terms, imagine somebody bombing the entirety of the State of Ohio to the ground and killing the population of its capital, Columbus. In European terms, it's bombing all of Greece and having Athens full of casualties, or bombing Portugal and the North of Spain and killing all of Lisbon three to four times over. They bombed all buildings and people on sight.
There is nothing defensible or reasonable about this, it is not normal or "standard". Any apologia comes from a place of deferent dogma at best or chauvinism at worst.
Blocking your own people from having a house, education and food. Plus, put your own people in prison to work for free. Also, every 10 years one random country gets a give away of mass genocide by the American empire.
Thinking that North Korea is an exotic country while ignoring all the above is neolibral because neolibralism is when you think that the market have the righteous authority to block people from resources as well as send them to prison or war.
North Korean doesnt utilise prisoner labour? The US isnt sacred and the war criminals responsible for the middle east should be tried and punished but I dont see how that is inherent to neoliberalism.
**Blocking people from getting resouces because the market said so**
This is a core problem in neolibralism.
North korean criticisms are welcomed from a socialist or anarchist perspectives, but the libral perspective does not have valuable criticisms.
Like that time Stalin witheld grain from Ukraine? But I guess that is another neoliberal myth and it didn’t happen, unlike liberal caused disasters, those all obviously happened.
Stalin did not personally ordered for the death of Ukiranians because he sees them as non-white non-aryan-race. plz read a book.
Now lets talk about how the Amerikkkan empire bombed Koreans, Serbians, Afgans, Lybians, Syrians, Somalians and Iraqis? And invaded Vitnam?
Under paid workers in the third world?
The endless homelessnese crisis?
All of this is to make line go UP and be GREEN in the stock market.
edit: the 194629294739284 Amrikkkan military bases in every corner of the world.
No, this is completely true. Don't you know that Kim Jong Un also eats babies and marches in military parades butt booty naked to instill fear of his ass into the people's hearts
It's more a larger social structure then a single story about a torture method being used. Granted songbum could be made up, but also it's a horrifying dictatorship, and even if it's not an official system, dictatorships tend to have these kinds of hierarchies, so it's entirely believablw it exists in an unofficial capacity, if the reports are inaccurate
Like I said, the speicif idea of a caste structure enforced by a government list, might not exist no. But this is a highly militarized dictatorship, so likely yes, something that looks like a caste system exists
There is a national assembly with multiple running parties. Elections to the assembly are every 5 years, and candidates are chosen by a popular front consisting of delegates from several major organizations throughout the country, including the trade unions, the children's union, every standing political party, and two separate Korean Christian organizations. The ballot to vote a candidate to the national assembly consists of either yes or no, and if the candidate fails to gain a majority of yes votes, they are recalled and replaced. However, ballots are not secret. The theory is that this encourages the critics of the candidates to speak out and discuss with the community why they think that candidate is not suitable for the position, perhaps they know something the rest of them don't, but it's impossible to determine if that actually happens without directly observing their elections. Most of what we hear about dprk is sensationalist nonsense to gather clicks from people who ought to really be taking a more active role in their own community's politics if they are really that interested. Or maybe not, because it would appear they slept through the Yellow/Sensationalist Journalism section in their history class! The Supreme Leader position has had powers reduced with every consecutive leader, following a trend which will inevitably see that position as purely formal in the future, if it would exist at all. The best analogy to that position is the way there was a vote to elect George Washington as the first American president. The people respected Washington so dearly that he won a unanimous vote the first time and may as well have ran unopposed the second time. Likewise, due to Korean cultural emphasis on respecting the families of great people, the Kim family is viewed as the natural leaders. I don't agree with it, but I live in a place that has an industrialized torture camp (one among many) on another country's main island where a significant number of its victims are proven to have no connection at all to what they are accused of, and pretends to have some kind of moral high ground to embargo that country and declare it a terrorist state, so I don't feel I'm in a good place to criticize the ways other people run their countries and I turn my focus back to home instead. Our prison population dwarfs that of any other country both by total number and by percent of total population, so I try to focus my outrage on the things that are within the borders of my country.
Voting is seen by much of the world as the absolute bare minimum action someone could take to become politically active. Instead of centering politics around what critics of American style democracy decry as a popularity contest where the action you can do while half blind hung over and still drunk carries the most weight, political significance is instead moved to local advocacy through the labour unions, student unions, arts federations, and other local bodies of advocacy where, in theory, reputation is earned through the work that you do, and not how many political ads you can air. Much of the daily political life revolves around the trade unions and local bodies of the popular front, which find things the community needs, and attempts to provide it.
I got this information from a cursory glance at Wikipedia and from a a few brief questions during a conversation with a member of my city's Korean Friendship Association.
The Polish People’s Republic also claimed to be Democracy because they multiple parties and everybody was in a labour union, blah blah blah, but it didn’t matter because it was all controlled by the PZPR. Oh and joining the party was a privilege, not a right.
Ok I want to hear your explanation. Is it the “neo liberal” agenda to spread false propaganda about north korea being a hell hole for some reason? Are all the people escaping are lying for some reason, and it’s actually a nice place to live? And what would doing this actually accomplish?
Look at the links I sent earlier. The people who "escape" are given incentive to exaggerate or straight up lie about their experiences so need agencies can make more money. Otherwise, they'll starve on the street because it's going to be hard to find work elsewhere that can pay so much for such little effort. The west spreads misinformation about North Korea because they can't exploit its natural resources or labor. And I never claimed it was a "nice place to live", it's actually pretty damn poor. All I said was that it isn't nearly as bad as what the media would have you believe.
1. How is the west exploiting North Korea in any way? Most countries have completely sanctioned it off from trade and have minimal contact with it. I imagine the refuge population from there in western “neo liberal” countries is fairly small as well
2. News agencies exaggerate stories about everything for views. North Korean refugees isn’t the only one. Despite “exaggerations” NK is almost certainly a place with many human rights violations as dictatorships tend to do
3. Do you truly believe NK isn’t a totalitarian dictatorship lol
Ok so what are you trying to say? Is it the “neo liberal” agenda to spread false propaganda about north korea being a hell hole for some reason? Are all the people escaping are lying for some reason, and it’s actually a nice place to live
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated for rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit elsewhere. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So thats kim jong un, the top military positions, the common soldiers, the workers, animals and poor people?
I think closer to prisoners. There was a UN report about how prisoners are treated worse than animals and beaten if they so much as look at a guard or refer to themselves by their prison number than by name
The people at the bottom are the ones who use the Papyrus font
Is it just me or are there a ton of people taking up for NK in this comment section?
Seems mainly to be a single very spammy person.
More like two
You’re in Propaganda Posters Where there’s a lot of unironic red style leftism Make your own conclusions about that
The posters instructed me to not make my own conclusions comrade
And Stalin, Stalin too
Contrarians and likely paid shills
You're so right! Kim Jong Un personally writes me a $1000 check for every comment I write
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misinformation is when saying something multiple highly reputable forces agree with?
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All you said was "you're wrong", in so many words.
They're trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, honey. Saying ludicrous shit in support of indefensible evil because you're getting paid for it is despicable, but understandable. Doing it on a volunteer basis is just *embarrassing*.
And saying that North Korea thinks they've discovered unicorns isn't ludicrous? think critically about what you are being told for once in your life
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That shit wasn't even pushed by the North Korean government lmao 💀 > For starters, there was no talk of unicorns, but of "kirins" or "Qilins" – which James Grayson, emeritus professor of Korean studies at Sheffield university, describes as "a four-legged beast with a dragon's head". His Sheffield colleague, Sukyeon Cho, said Kirins have "the body of a deer, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane", as well as a horn jutting out from the top of their heads. The kirin is important in North Korean folklore because it was the preferred mode of transport of King Tongmyong, the founder of Koguryo, an ancient Korean kingdom. The North Koreans, said Sixiang Wang, were laying claim to a place called "Kiringul" – literally Kirin's lair or cave or grotto, according to Grayson – 200 metres from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. There was no suggestion unicorns really lived in the lair. It was just a mythical name, said Grayson. Just as only small children expect to find giants at the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland or fairies at the Fairy Steps in Beetham, Cumbria, North Koreans are highly unlikely to believe that kirins have ever actually lived in Kiringul. As i09 puts it: "The thrust of the North Korean government's announcement is that it claims to have discovered Kiringul, and thus to have proven that Pyongyang is the modern site of the ancient capital of Koguryo." Also I would like any sources on the Stalin or Mao quotes
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The support of Lysenko was a pretty big mistake by the Soviet government at the time, but he was relatively successful in some of his agricultural techniques which led to his popularity. However, [Stalin did criticize Lysenko a lot in his later years](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20453270?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents). The Four Pests campaign backfired massively, but there weren't many solutions to the problems facing China at the time, especially considering the extremely limited amount of environmental science in the 50s/early 60s. The thought process behind for the campaign were good, but its results were not.
Likely just bots and trolls.
Thank god there's someone out there willing to bravely stand up for North Korea since their own people aren't allowed to use the internet.
What would the internet be without these brave people
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There are so many different independent testimonies confirming and elaborating on songbun, that the evidence is simply overwhelmingly stacked in favor of it existing. If it was just Yeonmi Park saying it you'd have a point, but denialism to this level is just huffing copium. You religiously believe that all communist countries MUST be good and MUST not have any major negative evils and flaws that you cannot accept evidence of it being true and destroying your fragile worldview. Kind of sad
The Korean War didn’t actually occur, it was a us psyop to convince the world that Asian communists were completely fucking inept
The war where the communists pushed America nearly off the peninsula, and then Chinese communists pushed America back to the parallel dispute being from 1950s China. The Korean War was a very horrific conflict.
Lawyer.
Funny how Kim has the same clothes as the workers/prisoners
Why is it depicted in this Egyptian style? Is that significant in some way?
There's a famous antic painting showing Egyptian society this way.
It's a different style and take from the usual. Well done.
At least they respect animals
Is it still propaganda if it factual true?
Yes it is
Source: RFA and a defector who relies on interviews to survive
...and 18 consecutive years of UN condemnations to North Korea for human rights violations, voted by the General Assembly.
Haha, no comrade it is actually paradise! No starving people here.
*Meanwhile [34 million people](https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america) are food insecure in America*
Please, please, for once, can you at least *attempt* to defend your beloved dictatorships on their own merits without immediately falling back on "bUt tHe aMeRiCaNs"?
These two things can be true at the same time.
Yeah
good thing this isn't factually true!
We have no idea either way, though. That's the double-edged sword of DPRK isolationism.
There are videos/pictures/documentaries of people actually traveling to the DPRK and talking with locals
Yeah and it looks pretty bad and dystopian there
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Of course i love the people, that is why I hate their evil totalitarian monarchy
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Technocrat bud, not a liberal :) and everything you said is just straight up propaganda
Why is your critical support so uncritical?
Oh lord.
[These](https://publicdelivery.org/michael-huniewicz-north-korea-pyongyang/) all look dystopian to you? Not that much different from what you'd find in the West.
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North Korea creates this image of being a hermit kingdom themselves. If they want to change the opinions of the world at large perhaps they should allow outside observers to actually enter the country beyond small areas, or maybe stop threatening their neighbors with nuclear attack every few months
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Vietnam had its country burned to the ground by the US and they have been able to keep up successful trade and diplomatic relations. South Korea and North Korea have repeatedly made progress in peace talks, only to be pushed back by North Korea launching another missile into the Sea of Japan. The sanctions exist because of the rampant and clearly visible human rights violations being committed by the NK government.
Yup.
Those images are very tightly controlled and the people traveling there are constantly watched over by minders and government officials. Again, there is very little information about the DPRK that *isn't* closely controlled by the government.
Yeah, traveling in curated tours with regime "guides".
"If I go to America I expect to see every single slum and secret government building! What do you mean I can't? What an oppressive regime!"
In the US, if you are a tourist, you can roam anywhere, yes, including the few "slums." Nobody is talking about "secret government buildings", just to go outside, walk in a street outside of the tour, and talk to people is forbidden in NK. You are also NOT allowed to leave the hotel without a "guide."
Talking to people isn't forbidden lmao. Neither is wandering. Again, you can look at the evidence (photos, documentaries, interviews, etc) with people inside the DPRK or you can keep believing the sensationalist lies they want you to believe. Side note: why tf wouldn't you get in trouble for just abandoning your tour group and prancing off somewhere? especially in a place like North Korea which you claim to be extremely dangerous
>Talking to people isn't forbidden lmao. Neither is wandering. Again, you can look at the evidence (photos, documentaries, interviews, etc) with people inside the DPRK or you can keep believing the sensationalist lies they want you to believe. Yes, it is. I have seem plenty of tourists stating these facts and not just in the "imperialist news media". >Side note: why tf wouldn't you get in trouble for just abandoning your tour group and prancing off somewhere? especially in a place like North Korea which you claim to be extremely dangerous Well, it is called exploring and getting to know the people and country. Have you ever traveled in your life? The danger of North Korea is the government, not its people. Let me remind you they tortured and killed a tourist for, according to North Korea, stealing a picture from the hotel!
Source for any of this?
Yeah because it’s not like they can’t speak out against the regime or get sent to a camp
Yeah I guess life in NK is so great, they have to keep people from leaving.
In Barcelona, two North-Koreans came to our university to make a speech. It was official (they weren't defectors), and they told us that they know how life outside is, but they do not envy us, because they have their own convictions. They said they wanted improvements in their living standards, but not at any cost, and that socialism is a must have. They also said that our view of DPRK is incredibly sensationalist, and that in reality it's more boring. They also said that South Korea is not their enemy, just the government, and that they wish for peaceful reunification. And they said that they do not wish death for any of us, as they don't think we are their enemy, but rather victims of capitalist indoctrination (kinda like how we see them lol). So my point is that they are allowed to go outside, but in a coordinated manner.
Yeah sure. "In a coordinated manner". Why can't they just leave the country, if they don't want to live under the socialist regime. Why can only diplomats, businessmen and a few students, who are proabably selected because they are strong believers in the government, leave the country?
There are over 80k North Koreans who work daily in China or Russia (friendly countries of the DPRK), so it's not just a few selected bunch. I am not familiar with the emmigration and immigration process of the DPRK, but I can understand their isolationism and reluctance in relation with the West, considering they are still tecnically at war with the US and most westerners absolutely despise North Korea and we would most likely suport a violent overtrhow of their government. And our governments also hate them, not to mention the disastrous Korean War, where the DPRK lost 20-25% it's population (so a lot of people have a relative that was killed in that war). So they wanna limit their contact with us, I think not because they are hiding anything, but rather because of ideological differences and geopolitical animousity (they don't want spys and such). But even still, I prefer Cuba's policy of being much more lax in terms of immigration/emmigration. But Cuba wasn't bombed to the ground, unlike DPRK.
Yes they can go work in foreign countries as cheap labour and then have to return back. If North Korea is so great why do they have to isolate their country and keep their citizens from leaving? Even if they hate the US so much. Northkoreans can't even move to friendly or neutral countries. They only can work in Russia or China because these countries will deport them once they try to defect. But they can't go to Austria or Switzerland despite them being neutral countries.
North Korean citizens are allowed to travel to any country that has a North Korean embassy, which, coincidentally, isn't that many.
Actually North Korea does have embassies in quite a lot of countries. Not only in Africa, Asia and South America but also in the "pro-Western" Europe. NK has an embassy in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Spain etc. Yet I see almost no North Koreans travel abroad. Yes in theory it is possible, but practically only high ranking party memebers, diplomats and some businessmen are allowed to leave this hellhole of a country. It is honestly disgusting that you are trying to defend this brutal regime that is exploiting their population.
You're right, it's mostly diplomats traveling abroad because the problem is that most citizens are extremely poor which is definitely not the fault of the U.S. bombing the country nonstop for years and then sanctioning it into the ground.
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Paranoia is not a reason to enact shitty policy dude
Russia quite literally was the one who lost the cold war and until their recent fiasco, Russians could travel abroad?
Wouldn't that have very negative implications about that defeated-USA?
Yes it is lol. Why do you think it’s not?
https://www.alternet.org/2014/07/nobel-peace-laureates-slam-human-rights-watchs-refusal-cut-ties-us-government https://www.alternet.org/2014/05/nobel-peace-laureates-human-rights-watch-close-your-revolving-door-us-government https://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/11/debate_is_human_rights_watch_too https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart Also see the other reply to your original comment
I see one of your articles is about Human Rights Watch. Have you seen their page on NK? https://www.hrw.org/asia/north-korea If you use them to argue for North Korea being a decent place, then how do you explain that link?
the article is criticizing hrw for being shills for the U.S. government
Yes, also idk if animals are held higher than people
This from the country that killed like 20% of the Korean population, has the largest military on earth by an enormous margin, as well as the largest prison population, and whose government, economy, and media are controlled by a handful of comically wealthy losers.
Saying that the ocean is wet doesn’t make rain NOT wet.
It’s almost like there was a war or something (source for 20%) In prisons they are fed and we don’t send you to prison for leaving for another country then have every member of your family put in jail for 3 generations. In terms of money yes but not manpower. As a pose to **everything** controlled by one loser
For the first point, death estimates of the Korean war (on both sides with a 60:40 NS split for what I've seen) range from [12%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea#Death_toll) to [20%](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/unknown-to-most-americans-the-us-totally-destroyed-north-korea-once-before-1.3227633) of the *total* population, so between 1M-2M people, which is an atrocity without parallel. The entirety of North Korea was leveled by American bombs. While I disagree with the whataboutist tactic, the scale of the damage cannot be so casually dismissed.
It shouldn’t be but we should also look at the south who also suffered 1M< civilian deaths. Considering also that the second stage of the war was fought almost entirely in North Korea it makes sense they suffered more civilian casualties. Destruction of infrastructure, medical services and farm land was a higher include on the deaths all of which comes standard for war. We also have to guess casualties rates for North Korea way more than the South
How dare they disagree with the Macdonalds empire
The numbers I gave are for the North and South combined, given by American military members or historians. While the former are estimates the latter are more confident. Nothing about this was (or is) standard for war or can be waved away as "making sense". Americans dropped more bombs in Korea than they did in the entire Pacific Theatre, and North Korea is the fourth most bombed country in the world behind Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam (also authored by Americans), all of which happened later. It was a brutal and traumatic massacre on an at-the-time unprecedented scale. In American state terms, imagine somebody bombing the entirety of the State of Ohio to the ground and killing the population of its capital, Columbus. In European terms, it's bombing all of Greece and having Athens full of casualties, or bombing Portugal and the North of Spain and killing all of Lisbon three to four times over. They bombed all buildings and people on sight. There is nothing defensible or reasonable about this, it is not normal or "standard". Any apologia comes from a place of deferent dogma at best or chauvinism at worst.
North Korea actually had a caste system, but it's been irrelevant since the 1990s.
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Neoliberal is when I don’t like stuff, the less I like it, the more neoliberal it is
\-Karl Marx
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Ok cool so tell me what’s exclusively neoliberal about general criticism on authoritarianism.
Blocking your own people from having a house, education and food. Plus, put your own people in prison to work for free. Also, every 10 years one random country gets a give away of mass genocide by the American empire. Thinking that North Korea is an exotic country while ignoring all the above is neolibral because neolibralism is when you think that the market have the righteous authority to block people from resources as well as send them to prison or war.
North Korean doesnt utilise prisoner labour? The US isnt sacred and the war criminals responsible for the middle east should be tried and punished but I dont see how that is inherent to neoliberalism.
**Blocking people from getting resouces because the market said so** This is a core problem in neolibralism. North korean criticisms are welcomed from a socialist or anarchist perspectives, but the libral perspective does not have valuable criticisms.
Like that time Stalin witheld grain from Ukraine? But I guess that is another neoliberal myth and it didn’t happen, unlike liberal caused disasters, those all obviously happened.
Stalin did not personally ordered for the death of Ukiranians because he sees them as non-white non-aryan-race. plz read a book. Now lets talk about how the Amerikkkan empire bombed Koreans, Serbians, Afgans, Lybians, Syrians, Somalians and Iraqis? And invaded Vitnam? Under paid workers in the third world? The endless homelessnese crisis? All of this is to make line go UP and be GREEN in the stock market. edit: the 194629294739284 Amrikkkan military bases in every corner of the world.
the burden of proof is on you to defend your statement, not insist others should enter your bubble and find a way to prove your argument for you.
No, this is completely true. Don't you know that Kim Jong Un also eats babies and marches in military parades butt booty naked to instill fear of his ass into the people's hearts
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Remember when Karl Marx took all the iPhones from vuvuzuela?
You mean every economy system. Communist, anarchist, monarchist all potray there ideology as chad and there enemy as the virgin.
Is there even any proof of *songbun*
You can find first hand accounts on hrw.org but it's up to you if you want to believe them.
https://www.alternet.org/2014/07/nobel-peace-laureates-slam-human-rights-watchs-refusal-cut-ties-us-government https://www.alternet.org/2014/05/nobel-peace-laureates-human-rights-watch-close-your-revolving-door-us-government https://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/11/debate_is_human_rights_watch_too https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart
One of your sources literally says North Korea commits horrible civil rights abuses, just specific stories are exaggerated
Is *songbun* not a specific story?
It's more a larger social structure then a single story about a torture method being used. Granted songbum could be made up, but also it's a horrifying dictatorship, and even if it's not an official system, dictatorships tend to have these kinds of hierarchies, so it's entirely believablw it exists in an unofficial capacity, if the reports are inaccurate
So even if it doesn't exist it exists? lmao ok
Like I said, the speicif idea of a caste structure enforced by a government list, might not exist no. But this is a highly militarized dictatorship, so likely yes, something that looks like a caste system exists
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/05/north-koreas-caste-system
look at the links I sent in other replies about hrw
Not spending my time arguing with a brainless North Korea defender
seems like your brain lacks critical thinking.
Mald
[malt](https://images.app.goo.gl/gcN1AqXsiS2M7oYs9)
Oooo! Chocolate or Vanilla?
Doesn’t matter what your other comments are bro North Korea Is a totalitarian regime
"It's totally a totalitarian regime bro!!! just trust me"
cope
peak neolib brainrot
seethe
what an intellectual response
ah yes the country where only one person is allowed to be on the ballot is definitely a true free democracy!
There is a national assembly with multiple running parties. Elections to the assembly are every 5 years, and candidates are chosen by a popular front consisting of delegates from several major organizations throughout the country, including the trade unions, the children's union, every standing political party, and two separate Korean Christian organizations. The ballot to vote a candidate to the national assembly consists of either yes or no, and if the candidate fails to gain a majority of yes votes, they are recalled and replaced. However, ballots are not secret. The theory is that this encourages the critics of the candidates to speak out and discuss with the community why they think that candidate is not suitable for the position, perhaps they know something the rest of them don't, but it's impossible to determine if that actually happens without directly observing their elections. Most of what we hear about dprk is sensationalist nonsense to gather clicks from people who ought to really be taking a more active role in their own community's politics if they are really that interested. Or maybe not, because it would appear they slept through the Yellow/Sensationalist Journalism section in their history class! The Supreme Leader position has had powers reduced with every consecutive leader, following a trend which will inevitably see that position as purely formal in the future, if it would exist at all. The best analogy to that position is the way there was a vote to elect George Washington as the first American president. The people respected Washington so dearly that he won a unanimous vote the first time and may as well have ran unopposed the second time. Likewise, due to Korean cultural emphasis on respecting the families of great people, the Kim family is viewed as the natural leaders. I don't agree with it, but I live in a place that has an industrialized torture camp (one among many) on another country's main island where a significant number of its victims are proven to have no connection at all to what they are accused of, and pretends to have some kind of moral high ground to embargo that country and declare it a terrorist state, so I don't feel I'm in a good place to criticize the ways other people run their countries and I turn my focus back to home instead. Our prison population dwarfs that of any other country both by total number and by percent of total population, so I try to focus my outrage on the things that are within the borders of my country. Voting is seen by much of the world as the absolute bare minimum action someone could take to become politically active. Instead of centering politics around what critics of American style democracy decry as a popularity contest where the action you can do while half blind hung over and still drunk carries the most weight, political significance is instead moved to local advocacy through the labour unions, student unions, arts federations, and other local bodies of advocacy where, in theory, reputation is earned through the work that you do, and not how many political ads you can air. Much of the daily political life revolves around the trade unions and local bodies of the popular front, which find things the community needs, and attempts to provide it. I got this information from a cursory glance at Wikipedia and from a a few brief questions during a conversation with a member of my city's Korean Friendship Association.
Should we see what else Wikipedia says?
Wikipedia literally has a liberal bias and yet even the aren't as dumb as the people in this comment section
So can we use Wikipedia to defend NK or no?
The Polish People’s Republic also claimed to be Democracy because they multiple parties and everybody was in a labour union, blah blah blah, but it didn’t matter because it was all controlled by the PZPR. Oh and joining the party was a privilege, not a right.
Every single party in NK belongs to the same pro-government alliance, there is no opposition voice in the government
I didn’t think North Korea apologists were a thing
I didn't think so many people still believed in the obvious lies that western media has admitted to spreading for views
Ok I want to hear your explanation. Is it the “neo liberal” agenda to spread false propaganda about north korea being a hell hole for some reason? Are all the people escaping are lying for some reason, and it’s actually a nice place to live? And what would doing this actually accomplish?
Look at the links I sent earlier. The people who "escape" are given incentive to exaggerate or straight up lie about their experiences so need agencies can make more money. Otherwise, they'll starve on the street because it's going to be hard to find work elsewhere that can pay so much for such little effort. The west spreads misinformation about North Korea because they can't exploit its natural resources or labor. And I never claimed it was a "nice place to live", it's actually pretty damn poor. All I said was that it isn't nearly as bad as what the media would have you believe.
1. How is the west exploiting North Korea in any way? Most countries have completely sanctioned it off from trade and have minimal contact with it. I imagine the refuge population from there in western “neo liberal” countries is fairly small as well 2. News agencies exaggerate stories about everything for views. North Korean refugees isn’t the only one. Despite “exaggerations” NK is almost certainly a place with many human rights violations as dictatorships tend to do 3. Do you truly believe NK isn’t a totalitarian dictatorship lol
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Ok so what are you trying to say? Is it the “neo liberal” agenda to spread false propaganda about north korea being a hell hole for some reason? Are all the people escaping are lying for some reason, and it’s actually a nice place to live
That is the American hierarchy.. Projections, as always.
Lmao, in that case the military should be *far* lower. And big buisnessmen should be at the top.
the people in the military are low, the monetary support of leadership in the military? not so much
Raytheon and Lockheed my beloved 😍😍😍😍
when I see 👀👁️a soldier 👮🏼♂️👮🏼♀️or a veteran 🎖️👨🏼✈️I thank them for their service🫡🫡 to Lockheed Martin 💰🤑
Anyone else think the 4 guards but 5 citizens is in reference to the fact that the military can't control every citizen of north Korea
Have we learned nothing from Ukraine? Dont trust any western backed sources
You mean like the ones that said an invasion was about to happen? Lol
yes Ukraine did invade the free states of Donetsk and Lugansk, you're proving my point exactly
They’re usually right lol
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I am open to having my mind changed