[HN Gopher] Defecting from North Korea is now harder
___________________________________________________________________
Defecting from North Korea is now harder
Author : perihelions
Score : 250 points
Date : 2023-07-09 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| [flagged]
| puchatek wrote:
| I've always been critical of the US, especially their foreign
| policy but if I had to make a choice I also would prefer that
| they be in charge rather than either of the other two. Or
| rather that would have been my answer before trump came along
| and the country entered into a state of hyperpolarization. How
| would I now wish for times like the G.W. Bush era where one
| would rightly get upset about things like the Iraqi war, US
| policing the world etc. As Europeans we were rarely a target of
| these things. The stakes were ultimately low for us. But now
| it's not clear anymore what will become of that country. And if
| the US ends up collapsing under its own weight, then I don't
| think we're headed for a bright future. And the stakes have
| never been higher.
| [deleted]
| ThisIsNowhere wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Could you please not use HN primarily for political and
| ideological battle? Your account is showing a clear pattern
| of that already, and we have to ban such accounts. Lots of
| past explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateR
| ange=all&type=comme....
|
| Also, please don't cross into personal attack. We ban
| accounts that do that as well.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| waffleiron wrote:
| Dang, the post this person is replying to is starting an
| ideological battle.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've replied there too.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| North Korea was never a Soviet pet project. It's a Chinese
| buffer state that the Chinese don't even particularly like, but
| that they keep up because it's either that or have the US
| military, which they previously fought in the Korean War and
| which threatened to blow nukes up and which likely used
| biological weapons*, on their border. Both the USSR and China
| materially supported North Korea, but since the Sino-Soviet
| split, the Kims learnt to play the Chinese and Soviets off each
| other and therefore maintained a very high level of autonomy.
|
| As a fellow African you'll know from France's (and Belgium's)
| involvement in the continent what exactly democratic and
| peaceable world powers do with weaker powers.
|
| * Altought there is no scholarly consensus on either side nor
| ironclad evidence, there is a lot of circumstancial evidence,
| from reporters claiming to have seen odd ordinance dropped onto
| cities which would then have unexplained outbreaks, to American
| POWs admitting they were involved and refusing to recant even
| when they were in the US, until they were coerced to recant or
| be charged with treason - in the end it's sufficiently likely
| this happened for many historians to agree, and to me it does
| seem likely as well.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Building on this, North Korea is not even communist in the
| traditional, political sense of the word.
|
| Most of modern NK's philosophical underpinnings are based on
| _Juche_ , a syncretic philosophy of traditional East Asian
| thought and that of the Kim dynasty. References to Marx,
| Stalin, Lenin, etc, have been excised from this doctrine. NK
| is a very hierarchical society, reflecting traditional Korean
| social order.
|
| And, to the point you made, NK is the way it is because of
| the inextricable psychic damage of the Korean war. Neither
| the South-allied or North-allied forces acted honorably and
| it shows in the distrust to this day. NK's Juche-thought
| reflects a certain degree of psychological damage, like that
| of a child who never had any adult to trust and grows to
| trust no one and rely on no one.
|
| All this to say, I think reducing this to communism == bad is
| an incredibly reductive leap. North Korea did not begin as a
| communist project, it began as an anti-imperialist one
| (against Japan). It's evolution has been a result of the
| intense paranoia associated with a massive, incredibly
| destructive war (imagine if a third of the towns in your
| country disappeared in a decade). This was a war of few
| prisoners between fellow countrymen. Imagine had the South
| pushed the yankees back and then militarized their entire
| border.
|
| I, of course, would rather live in the West than NK. It's
| just far more complicated than a rote line.
| qsort wrote:
| Recent article about this:
| https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coa...
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Great article. Easy to read for a layman yet comprehensive.
| reillyse wrote:
| This is a very good article, makes sense of the current
| organization.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into ideological (or
| nationalistic) battle and especially please don't use HN
| primarily for such purposes. It's not what this site is for,
| and destroys what it is for.
|
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
|
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| " _Please don 't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle. It tramples curiosity._"
| flangola7 wrote:
| [flagged]
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| [flagged]
| flangola7 wrote:
| I mean what I said. I don't care for power structures
| either way and would gladly see the CCP dissolved, but
| these apologetics of US war crimes and direct interference
| in democratic process of other nations is repulsive, and
| I'm not going to entertain the absurd idea that it is
| somehow justified or good.
| fndex wrote:
| I'm not saying North Korea is a paradise or anything, but the
| country is technically still at war with the South Korea, which
| is heavily backed by the US. I wonder how much can be trusted
| from a NY Times(a US media company) article written by the "Seoul
| bureau chief for The New York Times".
| resolutebat wrote:
| Go ahead, drink straight from the sewage pipe of official DPRK
| news and draw your own conclusions:
|
| https://kcnawatch.org/
|
| Spoiler: it's pages and pages and pages of guff like this.
|
| _Chairman Kim Jong Il is a peerlessly brilliant commander of
| Songun and a legendary great man who resolutely frustrated the
| moves of the imperialists and reactionaries to isolate and
| stifle the DPRK under the uplifted banner of Juche and Songun
| for more than half a century to glorify the history and
| tradition of the victorious war generation after generation._
| npteljes wrote:
| As with any news, you take it with a pinch of salt. Nothing new
| here.
|
| Are there particular things in this report which you don't
| agree with, or consider suspicious, or know that it's an
| outright lie?
| mitt_romney_12 wrote:
| News about North Korea should be taken with a very large
| grain of slat given the medias history of reporting fake news
| about them [1][2][3][4] (note: I am definitely not pro-North
| Korea and this story is obviously very bad, but I think
| people should be a little more skeptical about North Korea
| news)
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-
| false-...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324
|
| [3] https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-
| sides-is...
|
| [4] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/fake-news-
| north-k...
| fndex wrote:
| How dare you presenting facts that the media has lied
| multiple times about North Korea in the past? Be prepared
| to be downvoted and flagged.
| fndex wrote:
| This article could have come straight from a fiction book.
| There is no evidence for anything that is being presented. It
| might be true, it might not be.
|
| I'm not arguing they are lying or not, I'm just saying that
| we shouldn't blindly believe it.
|
| But watching this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM made me a little
| bit skeptical about those defector stories. It's a very good
| watch, and I guess it doesn't hurt to hear a different
| perspective.
| npteljes wrote:
| I think understand where you're coming from - people can
| tell whatever they want, and the media definitely loves to
| run stories like this. These stories are both popular and
| the diplomatic risk is also low. And we also have the
| accounts of Yeonmi Park.
|
| On the other hand, there's no reason to doubt the story too
| much. NyT's stories are generally highly factual, even
| though their primary bias is left-center. And we know that
| NK is a hellhole, not just from defectors, as the "Loyal
| Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul" video states, but from a
| myriad of other, independent sources.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claim
| s
| enterprise_cog wrote:
| The NYT regularly lies for US intelligence agencies. Or
| just publishes garbage from them as truth without
| verifying. There is every reason to doubt this story.
| sharikous wrote:
| You are perfectly right. Still "not a paradise" is an
| exaggerated euphemism once you look at available data (not only
| American).
| fndex wrote:
| Absolutely. I would definitely not like to live or even visit
| there. I just think that every story has 2 sides, and we
| don't hear the other side very often.
| tensor wrote:
| I absolutely despise this "every story has two sides" quip.
| No, every story doesn't have two sides. Yes, every story
| has multiple versions full of complete bullshit, but when
| we talk about a "side" we mean a reputable reliable side,
| and it is not the case that every story has two equally
| debatable and reputable sides. Sometimes a spade is a
| spade.
| fndex wrote:
| I see where you are coming from, and I'm not saying that
| North Korean media or propaganda is reliable or the
| absolute truth. But does that mean the US "side" is
| reliable? Is the US really on the "right side" of the
| history of the world?
|
| For exemple, did you know the US launched 3 bombs for
| every person in Laos? There are VILLAGES in Laos built
| with unexploded bomb left overs from the Vietnam War.
|
| Did you know that there are children being born with life
| threatening health problems in Vietnam due to the amount
| of orange gas the US dropped there 40 years ago?
|
| And quoting from a recent speech from Trump this year:
| "How about we are buying oil from Venezuela? When I left,
| Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it
| up, would have gotten all that oil, it would have been
| right next door"
|
| Is this the reliable country we should blindly believe?
| Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or
| are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect
| their interests?
| More-nitors wrote:
| > Are they really insterested in telling us the truth or
| are they just saying/doing whatever is needed to protect
| their interests?
|
| regardless of that, shouldn't you also truly believe on
| "let North Koreans travel freely"?
| fndex wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not following. Could you rephrase your
| question? Are you asking me if I believe North Koreans
| should have the right to travel freely? If so, yes, I do
| believe that.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Reputable, reliable (tm) American sources also led to a
| million deaths in Iraq based on what turned out to be
| false premises. Yet your very own logic would've called
| "a spade a spade" and would've meant actually believing
| Iraq had usable WMDs because I mean, that's just the hard
| truth! Every reliable source on your side said so! Who
| would even believe Iraqi/arabic media that shouted for a
| year that Iraq didn't have them, over prestigious and
| western institutions like the NYT!
|
| I have absolutely no doubt that North Korea is hell in
| earth, but there is a very very very good reason to say
| that every story has two sides. But maybe you just
| haven't experienced being the victim of "the reputable
| side" lying without any consequences. As a Muslim that
| grew up during the war on terror, I can't really say the
| same.
| ornornor wrote:
| It's also a country where the people are indoctrinated to
| believe their great leader is born under a double rainbow and
| descended straight from heaven, didn't defecate ever, learnt to
| walk aged 3 weeks (yup) and to speak 5 weeks later at 8 weeks
| (yup), wrote 1500 books over 3 years, along with 6 operas (the
| bestest in the history of music, no less), and scored a 38
| under par with 11 holes in one on the one and only North Korea
| golf course the first time he ever picked up a golf club before
| retiring from the sport for ever.
|
| Oh and also if your family is deemed a dissident, the next 3-4
| generations (including unborn children) will be imprisoned and
| raised in prison labor camps where children get killed by
| bashing their skulls open for stealing one (yes a single) grain
| of rice.
|
| Not a paradise indeed. I'm not convinced the sanctions have
| much to do with any of the above though.
| severino wrote:
| > It's also a country where the people are indoctrinated to
| believe their great leader is born under a double rainbow and
| descended straight from heaven
|
| Doesn't sound too much different from countries where the
| people are indoctrinated to believe their leader was born
| from a virgin, doesn't it? You'll say the difference is 2000
| years into the history, so, we just need to give NK ~1925
| more years.
| mitt_romney_12 wrote:
| The media has a propensity to basically report anything
| people say about North Korea, no matter how ridiculous [1].
| For example back in 2014 a bunch of news sources reported
| that Kim Jong Un fed his uncle to a pack of dogs, the only
| source for the story was a random blog that turned out to be
| a Chinese satirist but the media ran with it because it fit
| the narrative of "the crazy hermit kingdom". In fact even
| golf story you cited here is completely invented [3]. There
| are a lot of problems with North Korea, but at the same time
| there is a lot of misinformation being willfully spread by
| the media.
|
| [1]: https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-fake-news-on-both-
| sides-is...
|
| [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324
|
| [3]: https://www.youngpioneertours.com/top-five-best-fake-
| north-k...
|
| Other sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_o
| f_North_Korea#...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/true-or-
| false-...
| fndex wrote:
| I'm sure you learned all that from other US/South Korean
| articles like this one, right?
|
| I watched a documentary about North Korean defectors that
| wanted to go back to North Korea, one of the many reasons was
| to be with their families. They never mentioned their family
| were imprisioned. And it wouldn't make much sense to want to
| go back if their family was imprisioned.
|
| Again, I'm no North Korean supporter or whatever, I just
| think there is a LOT of propaganda and misinformation about
| NK, and I think we should take everything with a grain of
| salt... Unless you think the US is a saint and would never
| lie about enemy countries.
|
| And about the sanctions, I dind't mention any sanctions, you
| are just assuming that I support X or Y, when I never said
| such thing.
| peppermint_gum wrote:
| The reason why we learn about North Korea almost
| exclusively from the Western sources is because it's a
| totalitarian dictatorship that suppresses information. You
| can check out their media online and see for yourself that
| it's full of propaganda.
|
| We don't get tourists from North Korea because they aren't
| allowed to leave the country. We don't talk with North
| Korean people on the internet, because their access to the
| internet is tightly controlled.
|
| There's no grand western conspiracy to suppress information
| about NK. It's North Korea itself that does that.
|
| I know that on HN many consider blind contrarianism to be
| synonymous with rationalism, but seriously...
| ornornor wrote:
| Oh come on
| fndex wrote:
| Now that's a good argument.
| mopenstein wrote:
| The US isn't the only country in the world. Find sources
| from European or British agencies, unless the U.S. has
| them under control too?
| fndex wrote:
| I'm not the one insinuating that North Koreans are
| indoctrinated into thinking the great leader has magic
| powers. You should be the ones to present the sources to
| such bizarre claims.
|
| Jesus, the guy is saying people are indoctrinated into
| thinking the great leader "didn't defecate ever". Do you
| really think North Koreans are that stupid and have zero
| biology knowledge? Or maybe, uh, this is just fake? Pure
| propaganda? Are you really that dumb to believe something
| like that?
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/story-of-a-
| former...
|
| Yoyre like someone who thinks gravity doesn't exist.
| Literally everyone knows this, they're not stupid,
| they're lied to their entire lives. There are tons of
| defectors who will back this up and you can't talk to
| anyone in North Korea outside of carefully guided tours
| set up by the state
| fndex wrote:
| And what does this article proof? Again, it has zero
| evidence. If everyone knows, should be easy to back up
| your claims with atual evidence.
| nullandvoid wrote:
| I'm not the most educated in this area, however this
| episode of darknet diaries (which seems to be well
| researched of the many I have listened to) paints a similar
| picture to OP https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DsGyzP9fYQ9
| LM6YiT5NS7?si=L... and includes interviews from several
| defectors.
|
| It seems disingenuous to try and brush off the well
| documented brutality that is the way of life in North
| Korea, as being something made up by US / South Korea..
| fndex wrote:
| "A big thanks to Yeonmi Park for sharing her story with
| us"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_cla
| ims
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _Unless you think the US is a saint and would never lie
| about enemy countries._
|
| You seem to think the USA is just a monolith, and as such
| can be modeled as what the face of our government says.
| This is silly.
|
| While it's true that business and especially the media is
| "in bed with" our government quite a lot of the time, it
| remains true that all have distinct interests.
| twelve40 wrote:
| but in this case what would they lie about? i don't think
| anyone would deny existence of defectors or how hard it is for
| them to move around.
|
| It's more like a poor quality article though, they start off by
| claiming massive new difficulties for these people in the last
| couple of years but don't tell you anything about why that
| happened. Mass surveillance and greedy traffickers who ended up
| stealing the money and ratting everyone out existed years ago
| as well, so they didn't really add any new information here, or
| at least didn't explain it very well.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| Wow, that was absolutely harrowing. Easily the most emotionally
| powerful thing I've read in the NYTimes (or any other major
| newspaper) in a while. It really puts into perspective just how
| horrible the conditions are for these people; it's easy to hear
| about NK in the news, or hear about defectors, and think little
| of it except for "what a shame", but this really puts into
| context the sheer inhumanity of the situation, the complacency of
| the Chinese government, and the depraved acts--like that of the
| North Korean woman and the police officer--that people can do to
| other, vulnerable, people.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| The Chinese government is beyond complicit. It's active policy
| to find and capture these people, then send them back to NK.
| That's why satellite countries are even intimidated into
| sending them back.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The horror of when humans are seen as a renewable natural
| resource.
| YLYvYkHeB2NRNT wrote:
| [flagged]
| yycc9866tfbvxd wrote:
| >"and there was boy in sewer... and he was eating the rat...and
| the rat was eating the dog...and the dog was eating me...but i
| was runned away... and it was so bad..."
|
| >"and then the police shoot the dog...and the dog raped the
| boy...and then the rat shot the police..."
|
| >"and then you have to eated the police...but the dog was eating
| the rat..."
|
| >"and my grandmother ate the police...and the police turned the
| dog into lampshade....but the rat raped the police...and now my
| grandmother is dead inside lampshade dog...."
| lwhalen wrote:
| ...wat
| meghan_rain wrote:
| [flagged]
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| You can turn on "showdead" from your profile page to see
| flagged comments.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Hacker news is great for many reasons and one of them is
| that it hasn't become a place for nazis and other to spread
| their insanity. (No idea what the comment was) Sane
| moderation is good. Thank you Dang for your work.
|
| You're free to go on << uncensored >> forums and see how
| enjoyable it is once they reach thousands of users.
| 4ad wrote:
| Enable showdead in your profile.
| golergka wrote:
| [flagged]
| barneygale wrote:
| North Korea is democratic - it's right there in the "DPRK"
| name. Does it also call itself communist? Then it must be!
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| They're not communist because they call themselves
| communist, they're communist because communists agree
| with what they do. Stealing other people's things,
| censoring opposing opinions, killing people they don't
| like and making it illegal to leave are all very
| communist ideas. Seemingly the only thing communists
| don't like about these "not true communist" countries is
| that they weren't successful.
| mahathu wrote:
| [flagged]
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| They're ideas that communists support. Let's start with
| the first one, do communists support shoplifting? That's
| a yes or no question.
| ThisIsNowhere wrote:
| > communist regimes
|
| The official ideology of North Korea is Juche. Position
| papers in the 1970s said Juche is not communism, and that
| position has if anything become more solid over time.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| That's common?! Please share some examples, it's _so_
| common they must be easy to find I assume.
|
| Leftist ideology promotes social and economic equality;
| it's surprising they "commonly" ridicule people that have
| suffered these things.
| golergka wrote:
| Open twitter, find any tankie account, and read what they
| write about kulaks, for example. It is very, very
| commonplace.
|
| Leftist ideology promotes those things in theory, yes.
| However, in almost all of my personal and internet
| interactions with modern western leftists they were
| arrogant, aggressive and looking for any minuscule reason
| to openly hate somebody, most often one of their own. And
| from talking to a lot of other people, those personal
| experiences of mine are far from unique.
| palata wrote:
| Did you mean "authoritarian" regimes? Communism doesn't
| imply the same things.
| wutheringh wrote:
| [dead]
| czechdeveloper wrote:
| Given that we never saw at scale other than soviet style
| communism, communism and soviet style communism is being
| used interchangeably.
| phatskat wrote:
| "Soviet style communism" quickly became authoritarianism,
| especially under Stalin. He was communist in title only
| imo, with a focus on genocide and foolhardily believing
| that eliminating people with actual education in their
| fields and replacing them with "the commoners" was
| somehow good for the country because it _looked_
| communist.
| golergka wrote:
| Communist theory may not imply those things, but it
| always comes down to them in practice.
|
| I have a theory that if you jump of a tall building and
| wave your hands really hard, you can fly. This theory
| does not imply you falling to your death. And if you do,
| it just means you weren't really following my method.
| palata wrote:
| > Communist theory may not imply those things
|
| Then just don't mix up the words, I guess? Otherwise you
| end up saying nonsense like this:
|
| > I have a theory that if you jump of a tall building and
| wave your hands really hard, you can fly. This theory
| does not imply you falling to your death. And if you do,
| it just means you weren't really following my method.
| golergka wrote:
| That's what happens when you still listen to the theory
| which has been disproven by a lot of very bloody
| experiments.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Every communist regime becomes authoritarian; none has
| proven otherwise. But we can see many examples of
| successful capitalist countries with democracy and
| freedom, even though they aren't perfect.
| phatskat wrote:
| An argument I've seen is that we haven't seen a truly
| communist country yet. The most promising ones (imo) were
| smaller countries who's communist ambitions were stifled
| by American-backed coups. Many of the earlier communist
| leaders like Lenin and Mao also knew that their countries
| weren't communist in practice, as you can't slip a switch
| and suddenly you have working communism. Their goals were
| to establish governments that could lead their
| populations to eventually being communism in practice
| instead of just as an ideal. Obviously, this depends on
| having a government that is actively trying to make
| itself obsolete, and most politicians don't want that.
|
| Capitalism may "work", but it's definitely not
| sustainable without checks and balances and limits on
| wealth accumulation and influence. Allowed to roam free,
| it's disingenuous to say they "aren't perfect", they're
| destroying the planet and its people.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Oh yeah, the old and tired argument that we haven't seen
| "true communism". I'm still waiting for it but till then,
| the ideology can be deemed invalid. I wonder if people
| that give this argument realize that they sound like
| religious cultists saying we haven't reached the true
| promise land...let's push harder! (despite all evidence
| being against them).
| CodeMage wrote:
| It's just as old and tired as the defense of capitalism:
| "That's not capitalism, that's corporatism (or cronyism
| or anything other than capitalism)."
| phatskat wrote:
| Oh I'm not pushing for them to "keep waiting". I
| personally am of a mind that if you're going to do "real
| communism" then just do it - don't know how that works or
| looks, but we inevitably end up with governments like
| China when going the stop-gap route.
|
| Personally I'd be more in favor of socialism. Even that
| requires a lot of retooling, and most countries would
| have an easier time with more regulated capitalism backed
| by more socialist governments.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| > Capitalism may "work", but it's definitely not
| sustainable without checks and balances and limits on
| wealth accumulation and influence. Allowed to roam free,
| it's disingenuous to say they "aren't perfect", they're
| destroying the planet and its people.
|
| I don't see how this wouldn't apply to so called working
| communism, if there is any
| phatskat wrote:
| There isn't any that I'm aware of - most governments fall
| victim to the rich and powerful, one way or another.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| So why not change Capitalism to just government including
| Capitalism, Communism or Whatevernism?
| [deleted]
| freddyfred wrote:
| Go home, AI. Yeer drunk!
| treme wrote:
| At least the new president of SK won't return defectors to NK to
| appease KJU like his predecessor president Moon.
|
| https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/02/28/national/nor...
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I really wish that bill Clinton could have brokered a deal with
| china (right before NK got nukes) which would have done a two-
| pronged invasion with the assurances that China would control all
| of NK as a direct puppet state.
|
| A Chinese direct puppet state would be far superior to the
| current situation.
| NSMutableSet wrote:
| This could have never happened because it would have meant
| sacrificing Seoul.
| eunos wrote:
| Clinton planned to have a kind of thaw with NK (before they had
| nuke), maybe using Vietnam thaw model. Post 94 GOP killed the
| plan.
| severino wrote:
| Well, that didn't work, but there's still time for a similar
| deal with China in regards to Taiwan.
| knodi123 wrote:
| To save them from....?
| freddyfred wrote:
| Niiice try, butt-head.
| abstractbill wrote:
| If you want to try to help, Liberty In North Korea is a charity I
| donate to: https://libertyinnorthkorea.org/
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| How are they allowed Telegram if they're constantly being
| surveilled (including, I assume, their phones)?
| ez_mmk wrote:
| Recently read the book Escape from camp 13 I think it gives a
| good insight how life is in North Korea can recommend it
| bitsinthesky wrote:
| Any details you can share? Sounds interesting, but I probably
| won't get around to reading it.
| samstave wrote:
| The Yeonmi Park interview on Joe Rogan is FN nuts ;
|
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/0G5o6GYjWgbSvKG3W2W2xO
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=joe+rogan+north.
| ..
| law_enforcement wrote:
| Ms Park has gone from tragic and respected refugee, to
| fullout lunatic being caught in all kind of lies. I feel
| genuinely sad for her. Find the early interviews with her,
| without the plastic surgery (mentioning this because of
| timeline, not for judgement). You will see a different
| person.
| samstave wrote:
| WOW I had no idea - after the first interview, I didnt
| follow her in any regard... so I had no idea...
|
| But - I did have a secret thought when I first saw the
| interview on Rogan, that the reason she was largely given
| credence and airtime was her atractive looks...
|
| Based on your comment, she might be a demented sociopath
| along the same ilk as Elizabeth Holmes. (who thought
| getting pregnant would keep her out of prison)
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| > (who thought getting pregnant would keep her out of
| prison)
|
| blatantly false and mysogenist!! sorry to say
| samstave wrote:
| Hey goof-ball ;
|
| >> '* _Sorry to cite*_ '
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-03-01/therano
| s-e...
|
| -
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=theranos+holmes+pregnant+to+sta
| y+o...
|
| --
|
| https://i.imgur.com/DtWrWwH.png <-- incase you delete
| your embarassment.
| ez_mmk wrote:
| Yeah i created this for a school project https://www.figma.co
| m/file/UbkESYe64NjlmikA1WeC4k/Angels%C3%...
| ornornor wrote:
| It was harrowing.
| karaterobot wrote:
| That was harrowing.
|
| There were a couple things I didn't understand:
|
| 1. What changed about China's surveillance systems or procedures
| to make them ~20x more effective at catching refugees in a couple
| years?
|
| 2. There's a bit about how North Korean refugees can apply for
| asylum in South Korea. I was under the impression (from Barbara
| Demick's book _Nothing to Envy_ ) that all North Koreans are more
| or less granted asylum by default. My recollection is that she
| put it even more strongly in her book: that SK in effect treated
| fleeing North Korean citizens as de facto citizens of South
| Korea, because they are meant to be one country. Is the asylum
| process mentioned here a rubber stamp, or did the process get
| more strict? Would a refugee from North Korea ever be refused
| asylum in South Korea?
| dirtyid wrote:
| > What changed about China's surveillance systems
|
| In the last few years, I don't think anything substantial. IMO
| new difficulty (post zero covid) was due to massive human
| trafficking crackdown after the "chained woman" uproar in PRC.
| Don't forget some of these people are "rescued" by human
| traffickers / organized crime that sold them to sex work in
| first place. There's also geopolitical layer of these
| defections being run by Durihana, South Korean NGOs (double
| whammy of foreign + religious), conducting operations on
| mainland soil without PRC assent - there's no reason to allow
| these operations in the first place.
| BoxFour wrote:
| 1. The article briefly discusses the impact of COVID,
| highlighting China's implementation of supplementary measures
| and limitations during this period. It is evident that having
| knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly
| assist in contact tracing efforts. However, as the article
| states it can also be used for malicious exploitation.
|
| 2. If your question is about why they go to Thailand instead of
| stopping in Laos: Thailand is reluctant to repatriate
| individuals back to North Korea, while Laos does not share the
| same reluctance.
|
| For the more general question: It is understandable that South
| Korea would scrutinize refugees to some extent to prevent the
| infiltration of espionage agents and similar threats.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| >It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel
| destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing
| efforts.
|
| Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact
| tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been
| tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a
| pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are
| trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it
| helps for pandemics like COVID.
|
| Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass
| surveillance, that requiring very very thorough proof that it
| actually helps is the bare minimum. This story is proof of
| that.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Here's one study that found the highly flawed, partial, and
| abandoned contact tracing in the UK nevertheless saved
| around 10,000 lives.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36495-z
| BoxFour wrote:
| Are you asking for evidence that knowing everyone's
| locations and travel itineraries would assist in contact
| tracing? Because I think that one is obvious.
|
| Otherwise, I'm not particularly interested in having a
| COVID conversation.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| > Are you asking for evidence that knowing everyone's
| locations and travel itineraries would assist in contact
| tracing? Because I think that one is obvious.
|
| Ok, I don't think it's obvious so let's have that
| conversation. Do you have any examples you can share
| where contact tracing lead to less restrictions compared
| to another area that did not engage in contact tracing?
| My intuition is that no such example can be proven, which
| relegates contract tracing to nothing more than a
| faithkeeping exercise.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It's not a conversation about COVID. It's one about
| contact tracing. And yes I think that evidence should
| always be required when talking about potential tools for
| such mass surveillance. "It makes sense" isn't really
| proof for anything, as the last pandemic has proven times
| and times again. For example here in Quebec, contact
| tracing apps and tracking location of everyone with covid
| has had pretty much no measurable effect. Even
| fundamental questions like "what is a contact" are hard
| to answer, so actual studies might be helpful for this
| conversation.
|
| And again, even tracing infectious contacts was much
| easier with mass tracking of every single citizens
| location, that still doesn't mean it is actually useful
| to stop a pandemic. It might be! Which is why I was
| asking for good evidence.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Contact tracing (contact investigation, etc.) is a
| standard practice in public health. In tuberculosis
| control where I got my start, it's what we do for any
| active case of TB we identify - we find the people who
| may have been exposed and widen the circle as necessary.
| It's also critical for STDs.
|
| The only difference with COVID was the scale, not the
| methodology. There is an argument that if the disease is
| everywhere, people can be infected anywhere, and you
| would need an accordingly exponential increase in
| monitoring scale to pull any kind of signal from the
| noise floor. But the principles work for any disease.
|
| source: TB control physician for 17 years
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I agree but do we use mass tracking for stuff like
| tuberculosis and STDs?
|
| And agreed also that my point is probably more true for
| COVID than anything else. The scale of COVID is such that
| it automatically requires mass tracking to even consider
| contact tracing, but I guess my argument was that even
| then we should have evidence that such massive tracking
| improves contact tracing for very infectious viruses like
| COVID.
|
| I'm genuinely asking, not in a "just asking questions"
| manner here. So thanks for replying! I didn't know
| contact tracing was useful for TB too.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis
| and STDs?
|
| My understanding (my mother is a doctor) is that we do
| try to do contact tracing for STDs, but this relies on
| patients' self-report of who they've been in contact with
| recently.
| danielharan wrote:
| I live in Quebec. We never had mass tracking - this was
| FUD about the app, which did NOT share data... and that
| level of privacy protection is also why it was difficult
| to prove its positive impact.
|
| What we did have was public health which sometimes
| managed to call people after a positive result - to warn
| their contacts, so they don't infect others in turn. This
| is absolutely standard for public health for many
| illnesses, and helps reduce contagion.
|
| Neither of those is mass tracking. Public health doesn't
| report you if you went to see prostitutes or used illegal
| drugs; their job is to stop chains of transmission, and
| contact the people you were around. That's true for TB as
| mentioned, as well as smallpox, Ebola, etc
|
| Anyways, since you're in Quebec you might be interested
| in this figure, selecting the 0-49 demographic. Public
| health isn't telling us about this, or simple methods to
| reduce risk. Hell, HEPA filters are still near impossible
| to install in schools.
|
| https://statistique.quebec.ca/fr/document/surmortalite-
| hebdo...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I purposefully mentioned the tracking separately from the
| app. I was implying that the app being used for massive
| tracking (just that it was another example of ineffective
| contact tracing), and if it came off that way I just
| wasn't clear about what I meant.
|
| This is the story I was referring to:
| https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-trips-to-liquor-
| stor...
|
| And I totally agree about your last point. I'll add a
| more controversial opinion that our Public health
| authorities have been completely politicised here.
| Legault does not want to talk about COVID anymore so we
| don't. And when it was scoring points politically, they
| blatantly played with facts and timelines to make
| political decisions sound "based on science". Very very
| disappointed about how our public institutions acted
| during the crisis. For example, that the crazy, criminal,
| stuff that happened in CHSLDs early on was completely
| swept under the rug with no government official suffering
| from any meaningful consequences was... Eye opening.
| levinb wrote:
| Hi; I built all of the contact tracing analytics for one
| of the Harvard hospitals during the pandemic. Also had a
| parent that was clin epi for 25 years.
|
| The entire effort, using essentially every technology
| applied, was useless.
|
| It was for many reasons, but primarily because the
| asymptomatic rate was very, very high, that there was no
| way to actually trace anything. Where or who you got
| Covid from was pure speculation for a majority of
| positive cases.
|
| Scales and rates matter. With TB you have a very high
| fidelity, testable, slow spreading causal chain. Which is
| why TB tracing programs are effective, and good public
| health policy.
|
| Our national Covid policies were ineffective, to say the
| least.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > that still doesn't mean it is actually useful to stop a
| pandemic
|
| You're arguing against ghosts. That is not what I said,
| or even implied. I wrote:
|
| > It is evident that having knowledge of individuals'
| travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact
| tracing efforts.
|
| Tracking movement is obviously helpful for contact
| tracing, because you can track the proximity of
| individuals to each other and warn those who were near a
| confirmed case.
|
| I wrote absolutely nothing on whether contact tracing is
| impactful, and I wrote nothing about whether you could
| accomplish the same result in a different way. The
| usefulness of contract tracing is not a conversation I
| wish to engage in.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Ok, how do you define a contact then? How can it be
| evident that tracking locations is obviously helpful for
| contact tracing without defining what it means to trace a
| contact? That's why evidence would be helpful here. How
| does knowing a location helps with determining a contact,
| especially for coarser tracking like know where someone
| is travelling.
|
| You keep repeating that it is obvious and again, saying
| that something is just... obvious is not enough when
| discussing dangerous, almost "dual use" methods like
| contact tracing using mass tracking.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > Ok, how do you define a contact then?
|
| You'll have to ask the Chinese CDC, I'm sure they have an
| answer for you much like our own CDCs do.
|
| It's usually some combination of time and distance
| proximity to a confirmed COVID case.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I'll actually look into it, it sounds more interesting
| now that I started reading about it. Sorry if my comments
| sounded antagonistic, I was genuinely wondering. I'll
| dive into the rabbit hole now!
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| The Chinese Communist Party doesn't give a shit whether
| it stops Covid or not. The technology isn't exactly hard
| and they're not doing it with US tech companies
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Contact tracing is also phenomenal cover for increasing
| surveillance on people, and China's a dictatorship so no
| one can really complain that much. You can do things like
| spend more on cameras, use Bluetooth beacons to determine
| people's locations even when they're not sharing them,
| monitor highway traffic more, crack down on people
| traveling with strangers, so much surveillance tech has
| contact tracing related uses and unlike America, the loss
| of privacy is a positive for the government
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that
| contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it
| has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early
| stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which
| virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual
| proof that it helps for pandemics like COVID.
|
| > Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass
| surveillance, that requiring very very thorough proof that
| it actually helps is the bare minimum. This story is proof
| of that.
|
| I guess it depends on the type of technologies used. For
| example, Google's and Apple's Exposure Notifications API
| that many of the contact tracing application used didn't
| actually allow accessing locations directly:
| https://developers.google.com/android/exposure-
| notifications...
|
| > Your app must have the BLUETOOTH and INTERNET permission
| in its manifest, but your app doesn't require and can't
| include ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, nor
| BLUETOOTH_ADMIN. For more information about restrictions on
| your app, see the API's Terms of Service.
|
| In particular, in the section 3c:
|
| > i. Your App may not request the Location,
| Bluetooth_Admin, Special Access, Privileged, or Signature
| permissions, or collect any device information to identify
| or track the precise location of end users
|
| How it worked was that you gathered more or less randomly
| generated identifiers through Bluetooth of devices that
| were nearby and whose users had also turned on the app
| functionality. When you were less than 2 meters or so away
| for around 15 minutes, a contact would be registered.
|
| If that person later got sick, the identifier (without PII)
| would be published and your app could alert you, along the
| lines of: "Hey, you were in contact with a person that was
| infected. You probably should self-isolate."
|
| Source: worked on the Apturi Covid project in my country as
| a volunteer, though mostly developed the webpage: https://w
| eb.archive.org/web/20230530141239/https://apturicov... (was
| nice to see ~100 volunteers coming together to make it
| happen in my country, personally got a notification about
| possible exposure as well and self-isolated for a bit,
| though didn't get sick)
|
| Actually wrote a blog post ages ago about how one might
| actually try to aggregate GPS data while preserving
| privacy, though obviously that sort of approach is a
| ticking time bomb because of the nature of the information:
| https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/covid-19-contact-tracing-
| wi...
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I think this ended up pretty much useless. If you use the
| app in public transport, you would get a warning every
| day.
|
| What were you supposed to do with that information then?
| Most people just ignored it.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > If you use the app in public transport, you would get a
| warning every day.
|
| Wasn't really the case for me going to work, but maybe
| that's because of keeping a bit of distance, which might
| just be possible due to the lower population density over
| and eventually a gradual shift to remote work.
|
| > What were you supposed to do with that information
| then? Most people just ignored it.
|
| There definitely were people who got the notifications
| and self-isolated for a while, to not end up spreading
| the virus and probably take a test ASAP.
|
| If enough people used it, it could help quite a bit with
| limiting the spread. It did have _some_ effect from what
| I 've heard, which is still good, when doing nothing
| would result in more deaths. Thankfully eventually the
| virus variants got less dangerous, but it's sad when a
| good initiative ends up being less useful due to people
| just not caring.
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think monkey pox was mostly contained through contact
| tracing and then vaccinating those who were potentially
| exposed.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| It's more meaningful for monkey pox too because
| vaccination up to 2 weeks _after_ exposure still reduces
| the chances of getting symptomatic disease
| bee_rider wrote:
| > It is understandable that South Korea would scrutinize
| refugees to some extent to prevent the infiltration of
| espionage agents and similar threats.
|
| That makes sense. It does seem to point to an obvious
| maligned behavior NK could engage in: send inept spies, let
| it seem like a problem, and suddenly SK will have to apply
| extra scrutiny to any refugees. Hopefully the extra scrutiny
| won't bump anyone from the "defect" to "don't defect" camp. I
| guess it must be a secondary concern, I mean defecting is
| already a huge decision.
| kijin wrote:
| The South Korean constitution treats North Korea as an integral
| part of its territory, currently occupied by hostile forces.
| Therefore, anyone from North Korea is automatically, and in
| fact always has been, a citizen of South Korea. It's not just
| asylum, nor "de facto" citizenship. It's full citizenship,
| period.
|
| There's a mandatory program that every refugee must go through,
| not only to get them accustomed to South Korean culture but
| also to filter out spies and criminals. You will be under
| surveillance for a long time afterward. But even if you turn
| out to be a spy, you are still a citizen of South Korea and
| will be punished as such. The law simply does not recognize any
| such thing as "North Korean citizenship".
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no North
| Koreans?
|
| edit: This was an honest question, I don't understand the
| reason for downvotes.
| xoa wrote:
| > _Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no
| North Koreans?_
|
| South Korean criminals I'd assume? It'd be like if some
| American militia suddenly seized some area of land and
| declared themselves a new independent country and began
| oppressing everyone already living there. The US wouldn't
| recognize that (and would move to stop them), but while of
| course the civilians there wouldn't lose citizenship, the
| militia wouldn't legally lose citizenship either. They'd
| just be criminals. Citizenship is a fairly big deal and
| it's not trivial to renounce it. In the US at least IIRC
| you literally cannot renounce citizenship domestically at
| all outside very rare exceptions, you must be abroad and do
| so at a consulate or embassy, and it's something considered
| not automatic and instant. Additionally one can be charged
| an exit tax depending on net worth and tax status.
|
| SK of course will have its own rules, but I'm just saying
| as a matter of law "everyone in that area of our country is
| citizens of our country being illegally coerced/controlled
| by other citizens of country, who are criminals" wouldn't
| be that strange. Although often countries facing such a de
| facto split work something out legally, there's no inherent
| reason countries can't refuse to legally recognize things
| indefinitely.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no
| North Koreans?
|
| Rebels, traitors, and criminals (at least, those claiming
| to be the North Korean government, or its active
| adherents), just as was the case of the self-described
| Confederate States of America within the terriory of the
| USA.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I don't think the surveillance system got much more
| sophisticated but for anyone wondering what china's
| surveillance system was like before the pandemic, I stayed in
| China three times for a total of about a month and a half in
| the 6 months before the pandemic.
|
| When you get to the airport, you will likely notice the
| abundance of cameras, including paths which take you right
| under overhead cameras. Your photo will be taken at the airport
| border control and your visa will be stamped. You will get an
| entry card you must fill in before leaving china and present
| alongside your passport. This card details the hotel you will
| be staying at. If I recall correctly you also had to provide
| these details on the visa application form, as well as a recent
| photo.
|
| When riding in a car, cameras on all major roads will
| periodically take photos of the front of every car every few
| hundred meters, accompanied with a literal flash.
|
| Once you arrive at your hotel, you will be greeted with yet
| another camera, you will be required to check in your passport
| and have your photo taken. This system, I believe, is a
| government integrated system as between all the hotels I
| visited, they seemed to have a very similar computer with a
| similarly mounted camera.
|
| If you plan to travel between cities, you will need your
| passport to buy the ticket. Once on the bus to a different
| city, it's possible someone at some checkpoint will abruptly
| enter the bus with a hand-held camera to videotape everyone's
| faces.
|
| In large cities, especially the bigger ones, cameras are
| everywhere, there's cameras on top of cameras pointing at other
| cameras. Comedic cartoons of surveillance don't do it justice.
|
| When using the metro (underground) transportation systems you
| will again be passing through gates with overhead cameras
| pointed at your face. Presumably to match up the chip-coins (or
| whatever the particular metro system of the city you're in
| uses) with routes taken and map these to photos of your face.
|
| If you plan on taking a taxi, expect to have to use didi or
| something equivalent, didi doesn't take payments via bank
| cards, didi takes payments via wechat or alipay. To get wechat
| working as a foreigner in china, you must find Chinese people
| who will vouch for you to activate your account (let's hope you
| can chat up some people in a bar to help you with this feat).
| To get alipay working in china, you need a chinese bank
| account, unless you're extremely lucky and manage to get it
| working without one (I managed once out of my three trips). I'm
| pretty sure both alipay and wechat are tightly integrated into
| the chinese surveillance system.
|
| I'm pretty sure the information which gets collected would be
| useless if it also didn't get dumped in a centralised system
| and processed collectively, so I'm pretty sure there is some
| centralised system with complex processing.
| kelnos wrote:
| Your bit about taxis seems hard to believe. I haven't been in
| China in around 15 years, but there are still tons of
| foreigners visiting China for business reasons, and they need
| to get around. Requiring them to jump through these sorts of
| hoops to merely ride in a taxi seems a bit unbelievable.
|
| Granted, sometimes the business we were visiting would send a
| car to our hotel, but not always, and not when we were going
| out on our own. Is cash still accepted by taxi drivers?
| That's how we usually paid when visiting for work.
|
| I haven't traveled to China as a tourist since around that
| same time, when we (again) paid cash when taking taxis. China
| presumably (at least, pre-pandemic) still gets a lot of
| tourists, and it again seems unlikely that the only way a
| tourist can take a taxi is to get a random local to vouch for
| them, and/or an ability to open a local bank account.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Normal taxis exist and you can get them called in by your
| hotel or whatnot but from the few experiences of using
| them, they require payment in cash or alipay and some of
| them refuse cash becoming extremely confused why you can't
| alipay for the taxi.
|
| They're also way less convenient. Try calling for a taxi
| when you don't even know how to recognize a taxi
| advertisement, never mind finding a taxi company where the
| staff speak English in a non-major city. In Shanghai it's
| not hard, but try something off the beaten path and you'll
| seriously struggle. In fact, outside of Shanghai I
| struggled to find anywhere which would accept payment with
| anything other than cash or Alipay/Wechat (sometimes you
| weren't even able to use cash).
|
| I was in China for business reasons, I needed to get
| around. Jumping through hoops was the name of the game.
| inimino wrote:
| The commenter is talking about the local equivalent of
| Uber, not actual taxis.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Re: point 1 -
|
| 1. Widespread surveillance camera emplacements, especially in
| large cities and over highways.
|
| 2. Widespread and explicit/implicit use of facial recognition
| software in conjunction with said camera systems.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Thank you, wide-eyed AI researchers. You are making the world a
| better place.
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| If NK has a relatively recent and relatively good quality photo
| of you (national ID card) they can just share it with the CCP
| and run it through their massive CCTV surveillance network
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Just read Nothing to Envy myself and one important point is
| that that work is from almost two decades ago at this point.
| With the advent of computerized surveillance, it is
| understandable that the difficulty has increased. A country
| such as China, it's probably quite easy for the surveillance
| systems to loop in a human _any time_ that an unknown face
| crops up. Paired with the pronounced physical and cultural
| differences between North Koreans and an other people in the
| world, it's probably easy to guess when someone is attempting
| to escape from NK.
|
| Does anyone have book recommendations for modern insight into
| NK? I have been reading about the country much more in recent
| weeks.
| [deleted]
| mikequinlan wrote:
| https://archive.ph/UXyGN
| mahkoh wrote:
| Android 13:
|
| This site can't provide a secure connection
|
| archive.ph uses an unsupported protocol.
|
| ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
| a1o wrote:
| Curiously it's working fine on iPhone Safari.
| Wistar wrote:
| Also on ipad
| cmrx64 wrote:
| use https://archive.is/UXyGN as an alternative, idk why
| people drop "phake" links ;)
| robobro wrote:
| Not helpful for you, but works fine for me on my PC, if that
| helps anyone else.
| politelemon wrote:
| Works on Firefox
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Are you using CloudFlare for your DNS (i.e. 1.1.1.1)? The
| archive URLs (ph, is, today) used to block requests from them
| for some reason (and possibly still do).
|
| EDIT: Apparently the issue was resolved in 2022 (on mobile
| and gotta run so can't link wiki page).
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| I see this too. I'm using Firefox, and 1.1.1.1 for my DNS,
| and get SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP in Firefox, and the same
| error you do in Chromium. Curl also fails with a similar
| error.
|
| 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS), and 9.9.9.9 (Quad9) all
| resolve archive.ph to the same IP address for me,
| 89.253.237.217.
|
| If I get on a VPN (Mullvad, exit in Los Angeles, CA, USA), I
| get a different address for archive.ph (41.77.143.21), which
| works fine. If I get off the VPN, but put that address in
| /etc/hosts, it still works.
|
| Reverse DNS on 89.253.237.217 (no VPN) gives me
| "example.spb.ru", while for 41.77.143.21 (with VPN) it's
| "host.41.77.143.21.binaryracks.net".
|
| If I get back on the VPN, and put the Russian IP in
| /etc/hosts, it works as well. So I wonder if my ISP (Comcast)
| is interfering with TLS negotiation when attempting to access
| some hosts, and perhaps this is related to Russian sanctions,
| or just some other Russia-related blocking?
|
| Anyhow, try putting: 41.77.143.21
| archive.ph
|
| in your /etc/hosts file (not sure if there is an equivalent
| on Android), and see if that helps.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| North Korea exists because 5 years after the US liberated China
| from Japanese oppression, the communist Chinese declared war
| against the US lead UN forces in South Korea.
|
| Fairly wild, in retrospect.
| l3mure wrote:
| It's not particularly wild because the South Korean government
| was almost entirely fascist collaborators who had run the
| colonial government for Japan, and who were reinstalled by mass
| violence and the crushing of dissent, with US approval. The SK
| government killed several hundred thousand of their own
| citizens, see the pictures of the Bodo League massacre taken by
| American officers for example.
|
| [1]
|
| > Estimates of the death toll vary. Historians and experts on
| the Korean War estimate that the full total ranges from at
| least 60,000-110,000 (Kim Dong-choon, who stated that this was
| likely a very conservative estimate) to 200,000 (Park Myung-
| lim).
|
| > The massacre was committed by the government forces of
| president Syngman Rhee and falsely blamed on the communists led
| by North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. The South Korean government
| made efforts to conceal the massacre for four decades.
| Survivors were forbidden by the government from revealing it,
| under threat of being treated as communist sympathizers; public
| revelation carried with it the threat of torture and death.
|
| Moreover, the Chinese did not enter the war until UN forces had
| driven all the way to the Manchurian border, along with regular
| "accidental" cross-border air attacks. MacArthur, Kai-shek, and
| Rhee all fully desired war with China and were hoping to
| escalate the conflict.
|
| I've posted these quotes before, copied below:
|
| [2]
|
| > In the fall of 1946, the US military authorized elections to
| an interim legislature for southern Korea, but the results were
| clearly fraudulent. Even General Hodge privately wrote that
| right-wing "strong-arm" methods had been used to control the
| vote. The winners were almost all rightists, including Rhee
| supporters, even though a survey by the American military
| government that summer had found that 70 percent of 8,453
| southern Koreans polled said they supported socialism, 7
| percent communism, and only 14 percent capitalism. [...]
|
| > Chung Koo-Hun, the observant young student of the late 1940s,
| said of the villagers' attitude: "The Americans simply re-
| employed the pro-Japanese Koreans whom the people hated." [...]
|
| > Seventy of the 115 top Korean officials in the Seoul
| administration in 1947 had held office during the Japanese
| occupation.
|
| > In the southern city of Taegu, people verged on starvation.
| When 10,000 demonstrators rallied on October 1, 1946, police
| opened fire, killing many. Vengeful crowds then seized and
| killed policeman, and the US military declared martial law. The
| violence spread across the provinces, peasants murdering
| government officials, landlords, and especially police,
| detested as holdovers from Japanese days. American troops
| joined the police in suppressing the uprisings. Together they
| killed uncounted hundreds of Koreans.
|
| > American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood, spending much of
| 1947 in a village west of Seoul, watched as police carried
| young men off to jail by the truckload. A "mantle of fear" had
| fallen over once peaceful valleys, he wrote. The word
| "communist," he said, "seemed to mean 'just any young man of a
| village.'" On August 7, 1947, the US military government
| outlawed the southern communists, the Korean Worker's Party.
| Denied a peaceful political route, more and more leftist
| militants chose an armed struggle for power.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
|
| [2] - quotes from The Bridge at No Gun Ri
|
| [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
|
| [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising (note that
| this was in 1980, under a different dictator that the US also
| backed)
| NSMutableSet wrote:
| The 38th parallel was originally drawn up based on Soviet
| troops invading Japan-controlled Korea from the North, and US
| troops invading from the South.
|
| See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea
| More-nitors wrote:
| + PRC sending back escapees back to NK
|
| PRC should give the escapees the right to travel, instead of
| deporting.
|
| I expect a lot of wumaos to resort to whataboutisms completely
| unrelated to the right-to-travel / right-to-asylum / right-to-
| immigration / etc
| kelnos wrote:
| PRC restricts the right to travel of its own citizens; seems
| utterly unsurprising they'd give North Koreans even less.
|
| China has a vested interest in NK remaining a viable country;
| again, seems unsurprising that they'd do this.
|
| "Should" is aspirational. I agree with you in what China
| should be doing, but of course they won't.
| HannibalLecter wrote:
| [dead]
| nojvek wrote:
| Paywall less link?
|
| Happy to pay $1 for article but absolutely won't get into a
| subscription. Unsubscribing from NY times is a nightmare.
| [deleted]
| dewey wrote:
| The archive link bypasses the paywall:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36654027
| lisperato wrote:
| opening the article link with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) let me read it
| without the paywall. thought it's in a terminal so goodbye
| images or css
| julesallen wrote:
| If you haven't done it recently it's not the nightmare that it
| was. These days you say you want to cancel, they'll ask you
| "would you pay $X?", you say no and you're out.
| dtx1 wrote:
| I wonder how many more decades of suffering it will take for the
| NK People to finally rid themselves of their government. Or
| perhaps it's at a point were the indoctrination is so complete
| and the control of the government so absolute that it is
| essentially stable forever.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| For more on what it's like being a North Korean software hacker
| working for the state, listen to the Lazarus Heist podcast.
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads
|
| The whole thing is good but IIRC season 1, episodes 5 and 6 are
| the ones most specifically about what it's like to be a North
| Korean software engineer in China stealing money online.
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(page generated 2023-07-09 23:01 UTC)