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Absurd Alhazred posted:Difference is, if I want other coverage of goings on in Mexico, I can read local media, or foreign correspondents of international media, and get a different slant. The North Korean government makes this impossible, so state propaganda and defectors is all we've got. There are some foreigners who are able to get stories in and out of North Korea. The Propaganda Game (available on Netflix) is probably the single most accurate documentary about what North Korea is like to date, but most people assume that simply because the regime cooperated in its creation it must inherently be propaganda of the regime. On the flip side, Under the Sun, because it was made explicitly while deceiving the North Korean regime, is instantly assumed to be credible simply for that reason alone, when it's painfully obvious to anyone with the slightest amount of television production experience that the crew for that documentary was being manipulative as hell in the way they were presenting behind the scenes footage and, intentionally or not, were probably incorrectly describing the film-within-a-film as being a documentary when it was actually an educational film. Honestly, considering how often people try to pull one over on the North Korean government for the sake of getting an expose, I don't blame them for being paranoid. Although that's really a chicken-or-egg question about what caused what there.
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Nov 19, 2017 04:55
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Some Guy TT posted:There are some foreigners who are able to get stories in and out of North Korea. The Propaganda Game (available on Netflix) is probably the single most accurate documentary about what North Korea is like to date, but most people assume that simply because the regime cooperated in its creation it must inherently be propaganda of the regime. On the flip side, Under the Sun, because it was made explicitly while deceiving the North Korean regime, is instantly assumed to be credible simply for that reason alone, when it's painfully obvious to anyone with the slightest amount of television production experience that the crew for that documentary was being manipulative as hell in the way they were presenting behind the scenes footage and, intentionally or not, were probably incorrectly describing the film-within-a-film as being a documentary when it was actually an educational film. Or they could open the country up to a variety of independent media outlets of various sorts which could allow an outsider to form a better picture based on multiple sources. That would, of course, involve not being a totalitarian regime, it's hard to do all that and still keep immaculate control over your population. 
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Nov 19, 2017 04:58
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I don't know that this is the most practical environment to do that, considering that lately most independent media outlets are regularly accused of being Russian stooges for printing anything the Washington Post disagrees with. The North Korean regime is also unlikely to be convinced of the efficacy of such actions considering that allowing foreign access didn't do Saddam or Gaddhafi any favors.
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Nov 19, 2017 05:04
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Yes I also think that totalitarian regimes are unfairly maligned by the lying press.
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Nov 19, 2017 06:21
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Literally every defector account of North Korea's internal living situation could be discounted and you would still have considerable evidence of the state being an exceptionally brutal totalitarian police state that commits mass atrocities and imprisons nearly the entire population. That said, do not discount them. it's rather tasteless of westerners, especially white westerners enamored with anti-imperialist communist aesthetic, to refuse the validity of actual North Korean refugees when they provide an otherwise consistent story of misery and inhuman government practices. I have former North Koreans in my family. They are not paid. They will describe, fairly, an astoundingly cruel government and an immensely brutalized populace.
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Nov 19, 2017 09:02
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I don't dispute that and I find it legitimately weird that everyone assumes I am when all of my posts literally state "I think what they're saying is mostly true but there's an obvious slant at work here in the presentation when you apply any kind of lateral thinking to the situation". Again, every horrible story we ever hear about North Korea could be 100% true, but it still wouldn't be relevant to our foreign policy which officially doesn't even treat the human rights abuses as a relevant bargaining chip and would, if the hawks got there way, probably result in even worse conditions somehow since they don't actually care about the human rights abuses either, they're just mad that the guys in charge of these specific human rights abuse aren't on Team America.
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Nov 19, 2017 09:21
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Or they could open the country up to a variety of independent media outlets of various sorts which could allow an outsider to form a better picture based on multiple sources. That would, of course, involve not being a totalitarian regime, it's hard to do all that and still keep immaculate control over your population. Kilroy fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Nov 19, 2017 |
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Nov 19, 2017 09:29
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I'm not going to jump on board with that assumption, and an always welcome to varied assessment of the often incorrect takes on North Korea. I also feel that the Democratic South Korean government should ultimately get the largest say by far in terms of official sanctions or protective measures against the North. Most conversations about sanctions will probably have to grapple with that the North Korean government is, in its current form, a valid target for sanctions and international censure on account of their human rights abuses, and (since it inevitably comes up) international forms of tu quoque can only impact that fact to a limited degree.
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Nov 19, 2017 09:35
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Whether sanctions can be ethically justified and whether they're actually useful to the situation at hand are completely different questions. Look at Venezuela. This was a country primed to hate its current leadership in the context of an actual functioning democratic system- and the incumbent government managed to win re-election handily on account of the fact that sanctions were a massively unpopular issue, to the point that people were willing to vote against the pro-sanctions party solely as a "gently caress you" to the United States for trying to use the ongoing economic crisis to install a government friendly to American interests. I've no doubt that the typical North Korean citizen views our use of sanctions as a cudgel in the exact same way, to the point that even people critical of the North Korean government are more likely to side with them rather than the rear end in a top hat foreigners.
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Nov 19, 2017 10:26
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Honestly, I think there is actually a relative comparison to be made between both Stalin Russia and North Korea beyond the typical totalitarian argument. In both cases, I do think a combination of the outcome of a devastating civil war, paranoia over inflation (occasionally backed up by fact), and relative economic isolation ultimately led to many of the same results. If we look at Stalinist Russia as a guide though, we can see actually a society that was hard to pigeon-hole, and which many people likely still support of their own volition even if massive human rights abuses happen otherwise. That said, I do think North Korea probably has reason to more fearful than the Soviets. That said, if that parallel is there, you could see also how dangerous it would be to actually galvanize the country against a common enemy.
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Nov 19, 2017 13:22
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Also, I wonder if there is currently a "price surge" as far as agricultural prices go especially in poorer provinces. This wouldn't necessarily be ahistorical.
Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Nov 19, 2017 |
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Nov 19, 2017 13:42
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Ardennes posted:Also, I wonder if there is currently a "price surge" as far as agricultural prices go especially in poorer provinces. This wouldn't necessarily be ahistorical. According to the data that's available, no.
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Nov 19, 2017 14:22
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Btw, thanks for some actual data, usually it is as far as crow's teeth regarding NK. That said, even if prices aren't increasing (or at least not dramatically), but food insecurity is, it may be a situational issue where certain individuals/families have fallen through the cracks of both the market/public distribution system. That said, if the data is to be believed, there isn't a large scale crisis although lower yields from previous years may have an effect on the most marginal members of those northern provinces. Granted, I think the DailyNK article shows the problem with reporting with North Korea, it may be true that a body was found but that isn't necessarily enough on its own to go on. (Granted, I think it is a cop-out to say, that the secretive nature of North Korea gives us free reign. Yet again, the same thing was done about the Soviet Union and there is a whole body of historiography since the 1990s that has been trying to repair the damage.) More cynically, maybe it really doesn't matter if it is true or not, but DPPK is a sworn enemy of the United States and every means necessary should be taken to "bring it down" and drat the consequences. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Nov 19, 2017 |
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Nov 19, 2017 14:57
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https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/932657280264359937
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Nov 20, 2017 18:30
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A year ago I would say North Korea doesn't fit the bill but I think that changed this year after the WannaCry attack, which could be fairly convincingly argued constituted terrorism.
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Nov 20, 2017 22:36
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Has any evidence ever actually been released proving North Korea was behind that? Because all I've ever heard is that WannaCry and the SonyHacks (along with other hacks) were probably by the same group of hackers, since they share the same signatures. But no clear evidence was ever released that North Korea was behind the SonyHacks either, and we're long past the point where national security is a plausible excuse for intelligence agencies to keep holding their cards so close to the vest. Even ignoring the extent to which intelligence services have lied to us in the past, North Korea is such an obviously good target for hypernormalisation that's really the first thought that should pop into our minds whenever they're accused of something this exotic. Hypothetically they might be able to pull it off, but there's probably a dozen independent hacker groups in China alone that would be better qualified, more obvious suspects.
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Nov 21, 2017 02:07
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Some Guy TT posted:Has any evidence ever actually been released proving North Korea was behind that? Because all I've ever heard is that WannaCry and the SonyHacks (along with other hacks) were probably by the same group of hackers, since they share the same signatures. But no clear evidence was ever released that North Korea was behind the SonyHacks either, and we're long past the point where national security is a plausible excuse for intelligence agencies to keep holding their cards so close to the vest. Generally this sort of cyber-stuff falls within the purview of intelligence agencies like the NSA who absolutely do keep their cards so close to their chest even about things that could be considered minor. Anyway various independent cybersecurity companies have verified that it looks like the same guys behind the Sony hacks and the Bangladesh bank heist are behind this in addition to what the NSA and the British say. Whether or not those "same guys" are the North Koreans themselves or Chinese/Russian middlemen under contract is the big question.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:34
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mobby_6kl posted:A NK soldier was shot while defecting at the JSA but made it through and should be able to recover. Thankfully this didn't escalate despite the Northerners firing at least 40 shots at him as he was making his run. It would be interesting to see if there's any video of this - the area would be definitely under surveillance, wouldn't it? Ha, so there is a video, and it's as dramatic as you could imagine. I can see them making a movie about this: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-42075986/north-korea-defection-footage-of-moment-soldier-flees And btw the guy is apparently better now and wants to watch SK movies.
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Nov 22, 2017 07:44
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I'm quite fascinated by this recent defection. He's certainly not the first, but this seems more highly publicized than other attempts.
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Nov 24, 2017 20:24
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It makes me strangely happy seeing the North Korean soldier doing the weird backflip thing into a prone position. I also have vibes of that Star Trek TNG episode with the Romulan defector.
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Nov 24, 2017 20:35
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No way that was intentional, and he then also gets up into the line of fire of his buddy behind him.cash crab posted:I'm quite fascinated by this recent defection. He's certainly not the first, but this seems more highly publicized than other attempts.
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Nov 24, 2017 20:54
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Raenir Salazar posted:It makes me strangely happy seeing the North Korean soldier doing the weird backflip thing into a prone position. It sounds like the defector has no love for his home country, so if it turns out he was given false secrets in some awful loyalty test/ploy to start a war, he'll probably shrug and keep watching movies.
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Nov 24, 2017 22:20
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mobby_6kl posted:Well yeah, he literally ran across the world's most defended border in a hail of gunfire. Nobody gives a poo poo about some peasant sneaking across the Chinese border, but this is a highly visible embarrassment. He's not even the first soldier to defect over the DMZ this year. He's the second. Since 2012, there have been at least four soldiers to defect using the DMZ. The only difference between this guy and the others is that he didn't calmly surrender, he ran across the border like a madman and then sat in a hospital telling people how much he likes CSI: Crime Investigation.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:21
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For a minute there I thought "The only difference between this guy and the others is that he didn't-" was going to end with "-get pronounced DOA."
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Nov 25, 2017 05:36
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cash crab posted:He's not even the first soldier to defect over the DMZ this year. He's the second. Since 2012, there have been at least four soldiers to defect using the DMZ. The only difference between this guy and the others is that he didn't calmly surrender, he ran across the border like a madman and then sat in a hospital telling people how much he likes CSI: Crime Investigation. The big difference isn't just that he had to run across the border, it's that the guards actually fired across the border and even briefly crossed the border attempting to catch/kill him. Plus, you know, getting shot 7 times and nearly dying in the hospital.
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Nov 25, 2017 05:44
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Not be pedantic, but he was shot more than that. Their best guess was that multiple shots hit the same locations multiple times, hence the destruction to his intestines. You know, plus that an the 27cm long parasites in his gut. Anyways, I'm happy he's alive and listening to K-pop in a hospital room.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:17
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I just put it down to lovely manufacturing standards in the DPRK. Like that gun in WW2 that had so many design flaws, poor materials per run and propellant leakage that the bullets would bounce off trenchcoats.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:24
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The tale I got of North Korea is one of 24/7 state controlled media, songs of praise and glory to the leaders, this extremely dated seeming, orchestraic, operatic crooning about harvests and obedience or whatever. Then someone sneaks in a Korean romantic drama from the south, and you watch it, and you can't believe what you're really seeing at first. Entertainment-wise, there's no comparison. Files get traded in secret. This defector is one of the outcomes of stuff like that, presumably.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:32
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Day to day life in North Korea is literally a Looney Tunes cartoon. Waking up, everyone gets hit in the head with a big hammer that pops out of the front panel of their alarm clock. Then, while bullets and artillery shells fly overhead, they go outside and grab some dirt, crudely shape it into an egg with their hands, and crack it over a hot pan to somehow finally produce an omelette. After opening the newspaper they see an obviously doctored picture of a K-pop idol blowing a kiss to Kim Il Sung, and their eyes pop out of their skulls while their heart simultaneously tries to jump out of their chest. They hop in a jalopy and drive away past the horizon to a large building labelled "Propaganda Factory" where they start the second 24 hour shift of the day.
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Nov 25, 2017 07:14
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Odobenidae posted:Day to day life in North Korea is literally a Looney Tunes cartoon. Waking up, everyone gets hit in the head with a big hammer that pops out of the front panel of their alarm clock. Then, while bullets and artillery shells fly overhead, they go outside and grab some dirt, crudely shape it into an egg with their hands, and crack it over a hot pan to somehow finally produce an omelette. After opening the newspaper they see an obviously doctored picture of a K-pop idol blowing a kiss to Kim Il Sung, and their eyes pop out of their skulls while their heart simultaneously tries to jump out of their chest. They hop in a jalopy and drive away past the horizon to a large building labelled "Propaganda Factory" where they start the second 24 hour shift of the day.
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Nov 25, 2017 10:01
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You forgot the part where due to starvation they imagine their friend as a hot dog or hamburger depending on how fat they are. Edit: Kim Jong Un is always a plump roast turkey Dr.Radical fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 12:00
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Good to see that comrade Guyovich is finally waking up to the realities of life in Best Korea.
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Nov 25, 2017 12:02
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Fojar38 posted:A year ago I would say North Korea doesn't fit the bill but I think that changed this year after the WannaCry attack, which could be fairly convincingly argued constituted terrorism. (I mean there's a better argument for the Sony hack, but "terrorism" has been pretty expansive...)
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Nov 27, 2017 00:54
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OneEightHundred posted:Wasn't the bigger argument for that the Kim Jong-nam assassination? Targeted assassinations of political opponents by a state in another country would absolutely constitute an act of aggression but I'm not sure about terrorism. In the case of the Sony attack, it was criminal but targeted. The WannaCry attack was indiscriminate and brought down hospitals and its purpose was to extort money. This is really just my definition of terrorism though, in a practical sense it can mean almost anything.
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Nov 27, 2017 01:02
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Fojar38 posted:In the case of the Sony attack, it was criminal but targeted.
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Nov 27, 2017 02:41
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I had a question regarding the interception system the U.S. has in place to defend against a nuclear attack. From what I've read, some people are worried that if North Korea does launch an attack, and we intercept if, it may be over Russia, and their system would detect the interceptors as ICBM's, and launch a retalitory strike? Not only that, but we apparently wouldn't have time to notify them Would this be possible? There have been a ton of situations during the Cold War where it could have lead to a nuclear exchange, but nothing came from it
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Nov 27, 2017 03:41
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OneEightHundred posted:It was targeted at Sony, but the purpose of it was to intimidate Sony and also intimidate anyone else thinking of making a movie portraying Kim Jong-un in a bad light, and it may very well have succeeded. I'm skeptical of this. Up until cable news started talking up the possibility of North Korea's involvement, the hackers' demands were solely monetary and they expressed no criticism of Sony's creative decisions. After cable news started talking it up, all of a sudden the hackers are talking like North Korean versions of Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle and shoving those same clumsy phrases into Google Translate to create garbled threats in the Korean language. While it's certainly possible this was all an elaborate front to try and think us into thinking they weren't North Korean (which doesn't really make sense on its face if the goal was to threaten Sony), they would need a pretty impressive grasp of American culture to be able to accurately imitate the behavior of a casually ignorantly racist perpetually stoned twenty-something American hacker who's in its for the lols so perfectly. Again, it all ties into hypernormalisation, and how it was to the benefit of all parties involved (even North Korea itself) to pretend like North Korea was behind the hacks even if it wasn't. The criticism leveled by independent cyber-security experts at the time at the veracity of the theory has never been refuted. All we have is super secret classified evidence that the intelligence agencies says totally proves North Korea was behind it. Considering that the NSA director had at that time literally lied to Congress just the previous week about illegal wiretapping programs and the FBI was being run by James Comey, a man we now know to be an incompetent bimbo, these suppositions have not aged well.
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Nov 27, 2017 03:47
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OneEightHundred posted:It was targeted at Sony, but the purpose of it was to intimidate Sony and also intimidate anyone else thinking of making a movie portraying Kim Jong-un in a bad light, and it may very well have succeeded. Whether it was intended to intimidate people from making movies mocking North Korean politicians or not - I sincerely doubt it actually succeeded at that. It's not like the movie industry was clamoring to make movies about specifically mocking North Korea that suddenly died off.
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Nov 27, 2017 05:00
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The main guy Maddox is suing (Dick Masterson) is an alt-light trust fund douche, but their liberal and seemingly actually very nice friends (like asterois) sided with him instead of Maddox in their friend divorce and that probably says a lot about Maddox's personality lol
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Nov 27, 2017 05:17
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Some Guy TT posted:I'm skeptical of this. Up until cable news started talking up the possibility of North Korea's involvement, the hackers' demands were solely monetary and they expressed no criticism of Sony's creative decisions. After cable news started talking it up, all of a sudden the hackers are talking like North Korean versions of Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle and shoving those same clumsy phrases into Google Translate to create garbled threats in the Korean language. While it's certainly possible this was all an elaborate front to try and think us into thinking they weren't North Korean (which doesn't really make sense on its face if the goal was to threaten Sony), they would need a pretty impressive grasp of American culture to be able to accurately imitate the behavior of a casually ignorantly racist perpetually stoned twenty-something American hacker who's in its for the lols so perfectly. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of the few days post-Benghazi when the press kept talking up that ridiculous "spontaneous mass protest against Egyptian anti-Muslim movie made by anonymous Californian crackpots" and everyone Knew It Was True and any other interpretation of the event is ridiculed.
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Nov 27, 2017 05:22
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