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.
The tendency in the West is clearly to suppress content, decide arbitrarily what is good and what is evil, what you should watch and not watch.
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.
“allowed”? Who exactly did we ask permission? The government should live in fear of the governed.
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.
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.
Ok enough I quit hacker news
Every time. And as usual, only unnamed sources.
Other great hits include:
- 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).
‘The safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people’ - US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
You make a great point: this is propoganda.
> 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.
https://reliefweb.int/attachments/838602f4-8043-3da8-85bd-12...
"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."
OK...maybe Kim Jong-un himself? At least we can consider him as an authoritative 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.
Followed by all the most trusted mainstream media outlets repeating the rumor uncritically.
Followed by a rash of "O M G she's still alive????" when, shockingly, appears in the public eye, unmurdered:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/kim-jongun-s-e...
No shit she's still alive, geniuses. You all trusted a single source known for making up fantastical bullshit on a fantastical story.
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
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
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.
Irony of calling north Koreans brainwashed
Also your comment is a counter-example for the US's brainwash, if that holds.
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.
Brb spinning up some blogs about north Korea
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 least one source.
Death to totalitarians.
> They are very aware that their country is massively worse off than the rest of the world
That's not necessarily true. They don't have access to the internet or foreign media. Only propaganda.
> yet they don't murder their kings
If it was that easy, every country would be a democracy.
> If it was that easy, every country would be a democracy.
If it was that easy, every country would be ruled by the group of people that is best at killing kings.
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.
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.
And Iran is nowhere a dictatorship like NK.
