/ot/ - off-topic

Fuck North Korea

I've always been interested in learning about North Korea, ever since I watched this documentary in Middle school.

I couldn't believe a place like that currently existed, it blue my "first world" mind.

Just earlier today I was looking up more documentaries, so it's crazy how you posted this thread.
The one I'm linking is the one I first saw, and it's fairly old.

Oh jeez, DPRK, my slightly autistic, morbid interest that has led to more cynicism than ever.

If people want some interesting info and stuff that isn't in spanish I'm here to help.

To give a premise of understanding to the system be aware that anyone convicted of a politically related crime has both themselves and their family sent to the camp, much like Nazi Germany.

There are two flavors of punishment. The reeducation camps are presumably for rehabilitation and the claim is those not in lifelong sentence will get out eventually. Spoiler alert: Most don't. Now, if you are given a lifelong sentence, and in certain camps devoted to exclusively that, you aren't getting out alive.

Now for the accounts:

First, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" by Kang Chol-hwan is a wonderful and tragic book that is a good starter book. It has the most accurate and easy to understand English translation thus far. It provides an extremely broad view of the class structure in DPRK. This is because its from the view of a child who went from a resident of Pyongyang to political prisoner of Yodok because of his grandfather.

The things in that book are horrific enough, and yet, somehow, IT GETS WORSE!

Soon Ok Lee, a prisoner of the Kaechon camp, described in "Eyes of the Tailless Animals" how she was told to "forget how to be human" upon arrival and that was not inaccurate. Besides all the forced labor and torture, she gave accounts of sexual abuse including frequent rape, forced abortion by unknown injection which seemed to caused horrific stillbirth, and direct infanticide for the rare woman that could bring her baby to term.

And yet, the abyss gets so, so much deeper, because those two prisoners escaped. There are camps where escape for a prisoner is impossible.

Camp 22 is the only one of these camps we had significant information about (I say "had" because satellite indicated major changes in 2012 and we do not know what that means.) A guard finally could not take it anymore and escaped so that he could tell the world about it.

The illustrations in OP's link are direct from the hand of former guard Ahn Myong-chol. But even they don't include the worst deets of this horrible place.

Everyone is starving, most are deformed due to disability or beating, children die before 10 years old, they send hundreds of these prisoners to work on secret military projects and be killed for secrecy, and, to top it all off, they do practice human experimentation at this one. Gas chambers and a biological weapon that women were instructed to eat and that caused internal bleeding were the notable ones witnessed. There are probably more and worse.

So, to sum up, DPRK is a fucking shit hole and I'm glad I stopped being friends with the communist retard that said none of this ever happened.

Anyway, that shit was pretty morbid, and I didn't include links because hot damn you don't want to read any more of that trust me.

If you want a really neat and insightful look into DPRK, this guy managed to get into Pyongyang without a guide and be unsupervised for 36 hours: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

Such a thing would not happen today.

>>101096
Thank you so much for this, anon.

I am also joining the NK interest weirdo group here.
Two years ago, I watched every documentary about NK I could find.

I contribute this but you have all probably seen it already.

I visited North Korea for a week a while back. If any of you have any questions, feel free to ask.

>>101098
Did you have to be stuck with a tour guide the entire time? How do the regular citizens seem? Unhappy, happy, malnourished, etc. Did it seem like most people were trying to put on a show that everything is Ok there?

>>101098
I've always wanted to go, but I'm scared shitless of being detained like that American guy who got sentenced to hard labour. Did you fly Air Koryo or go by train?

>>101097
I love this morbid curiosity with NK, and have also watched a lot of documentaries.

Personally I wouldn't go there since paying money = supporting NK, but I have absolutely no problems with others who do the trip, so long as they're not defending NK in any way.

>>101099
I'm not the one who went to North Korea but I feel like this book: https://www.amazon.com/Pyongyang-Journey-North-Guy-Delisle/dp/1897299214

really illustrates the people of DPRK well.

I'm curious about DPRK but I struggle hugely with trusting anything that more or less anyone has to report about it. There are far too many conflicting interests for me to take personal accounts at face value, no matter how callous that sounds considering the immense trauma that ex-pats claim to have gone through. Anyone else skeptical? Sage for tinfoil hat.

>>101099
>Did you have to be stuck with a tour guide the entire time?
Yes, we weren't allowed to go anywhere without our guides. When the sightseeing ended at night we were all more or less stuck at our Hotel.
>How do the regular citizens seem?
Our contact with regular citizens were extremely limited, and whenever we were in a physical space with them our guides did all sorts of weird shit to make sure we didn't have any kind of contact with them.

However they all waved and smiled at us when we drove past them in our bus (especially outside of Pyongyang).

All people are extremely skinny, but those in Pyongyang didn't seem particularly malnourished .. our male tour guide had the narrowest hips I have ever seen in my fucking life.
- However I remember from when we drove from Pyongyang to the DMZ, I saw a small boy no older than 5 or 6 sitting alone out in the middle of fucking nowhere drinking water from a dried out and dirty waterwhole. I felt extremly bad after seeing that.

>Did it seem like most people were trying to put on a show that everything is Ok there?
It really did. For an example we visited a factory where our guides claimed that all the workers were at a ''staff meeting'', but just looking at the factory it was fucking easy to see that nothing had been produced there for years.

They also came with comments meant to damage control whenever something seemed out of place.

>>101100
Flew with Air Koryo from Beijing to Pyongyang, went back to Beijing from Pyongyang with train.
I have never been more scared in my life than flying for that one hour.

>>101104
My god, is it just me or is everyone wearing some sort of uniform? I know that they have certain approved hairstyles there but do they regulate what their citizens can wear too?

>>101103
Anon that posted info dump on camps. I actually went and did some research and you were correct that some things came up. For example, there is a guy named Shin Dong-Hyuk that was born in a prison camp. DPRK released a video of Shin Dong-Hyuk's father claiming all of his story was made up to discredit him. This immediately brought suspicion on both DPRK and Shin. It then became clear that someone was embellishing and covering up details, but whom and why?

Of course, Shin confirmed it was his father and that certain parts of his story were embellished or changed for PR reasons, however, the overall take away is that his account is still mostly true. Shin has stated that he believes that they said things which directly imply "shut up or we'll murder your father" and while he will correct his account, he will not be silenced in this way.

Soon Ok Lee has allegedly never been in a prison camp according to another notable defector, and her testimony was discredited by other defectors.

In my research, it seems overall stories of the imprisonment for life and with family in harsh conditions are mostly true, save for possibly Soon Ok Lee.

However, the problem is actually that we are offering large amounts of money and recognition to traumatized, emotionally dysfunctional, and memory impaired torture victims. These victims have not experienced a level of wealth that the developed world offers.

So, what they think is happening is a combination of torture affecting their memory, and plain old human necessity to survive tempting them into telling the media the best story.

We need to remember in our fascination that these people are human, too, and that they cannot be expected with the supposed things they went through to have 100% perfect recall.

I just wanted to chime in and say that the topic of North Korea has always been fascinating, the idea that this country exists right now, we're aware of it and how it is but there's no big move to change or fix it. It's astounding.

I haven't seen much material on it. Honestly a documentary or two (one being the one on netflix, with the Spanish consulate friend or whatever). Does anyone have any more material I could read/watch? It would be appreciated.

>>101107
There's a few North Korea subreddits that have pics, links, reading materials, but to comment on this:
> there's no big move to change or fix it.

There's a few factors that go into this. The cost to dethrone the regime would be massive, and not to mention would open a sticky, horrible land grab between SK, China, Russia, and maybe the US for the former territory. It's actually better for the world to not fight over that land right now.

Let's say in an ideal world, we have some UN-type agreement and a bunch of nice first worlds go in and take-over…there's no secondary power to install, no political foot-holding outside of the Il Regime. Ontop of that, we have millions that also need housing, food, water, clothing, medical attention, meaning we'd need to set up yet another immigration policy, or spend even more money to create the infrastructure for.

Here's a pretty decent, short video from a former NKer turned SK "star":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZEmDpkz0g4

>>101105
Yes, they do.

Of course everybody is aware of the situation in North Korea but I think that a lot of people don't know just how fucked it is. Why is North Korea barely discussed?

>>101110
In my experience because its too depressing.

What makes me really sad is that we/the rest of the world can't really help NK without an actual invasion. And invading NK would mean war. The North Korean military is quite large, and they have nuclear power. It would have been devastating, and too risky for other surrounding countries and populations. Plus, there are other factors that China is allied with them. So unless China is somehow convinced to attack NK, they won't let it happen because it would interf with their own border/population, and also impose unnecessary risks.

NK's leaders and military are all fucking insane, and even if Kim Jong Un dies, it won't fall apart. Most of the military probably exists of men and women who are too scared to refuse doing service. But there are also people who grew up thinking (I'f say his closest relatives and coworkers) the inhuman situations in NK are completely normal and necessary.

Tl;dr, NK is absolute shit, but we can't do much about it yet without starting WW3.

>>101112
I think China is allies with them in name only. I doubt China would not actually defend them if they were invaded, they make too much money from the Western worn. NK is an annoyance to them at this point.

>>101112
the fact is that no-one is really interested in invading NK and in a North and South Korea reunification.

Russia and China sees North Korea as a buffer between them and US-controlled South Korea and the US and South Korea are aware of the huge economic burden it would be to re-unify with North Korea.

So no matter how much North Korea provokes anybody, the west wont initiate any kind of military action against them.

>>101113
I doubt anyone actually likes North Korea. Even China. They really have nothing to gain from Best Korea. They make way more money with the west. Why sacrifice that?

I feel so sad thinking about those people in the prison camps (and those in general in north korea)

:( I wish I could help them all…

>>101112
North Koreans are really insane. They still broadcast through radio on Russian language news about north korea, and god it's full of hate to Jappan, full of hate to South korea, full of hate in general.
Not only the fanatically follow early soviet model of government and politics, they are twice as paranoid(oh, and russians really were paranoid, but they had reason, while north koreans don't) and indoctrinated.
in USSR even the shittiest place had decent quality of life, and everyone had means to live.

In short: koreans copy soviets really bad and they full of hate.

An important fact about North Korea is that they removed any vestiges of Marxism from the constitution a few years ago.

It's basically a racially, Confucian orientated state now. The first thing that the North Korean chief negotiator brought up with the South Korean one when they met some years back were his concerns about race-mixing in South Korea, to which the South Korean diplomat dismissed him as saying it was a drop in a river.

Read BR Myers "The Cleanest Race".

>>101117
I'm not surprised, NK is stupid and unoriginal.