I was listening to the Unchained podcast when DPRK defector Yeonmi Park was a guest. She escaped from the DPRK when she was 16 and just having watched the movie Titanic (that her uncle had gotten hold of) once as a kid influenced her thinking a lot.

https://unchainedpodcast.com/yeonmi-park-on-why-doing-busine...

I started reading that transcript and my BS detectors were bouncing off the charts. I think she's peddling a profitable narrative; from other sources [1], it seems clear that her position in NK was privileged in relative terms. No doubt she's had hardships, but all her incentives as a professional - what, exactly? witness? victim? - are to exaggerate the harshness of her experiences.

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2014/12/the-strange-tale-of-yeonmi-p...

Honestly I think the same way about that too, but there is just far too much video evidence against North Korea to suggest that these people are lying. Being well off in North Korea does have it's perks, but being essentially what is their middle class equivalent still is terrible. These people usually end up in Millgram experiments basically where they HAVE to do things they morally do not want to but cannot refuse because they'll lose their financial status and be stripped of their position or thrown in a camp.

Anything said about NK is not an exaggeration. So much so that South Korea has a television station dedicated to defectors who make shows themselves and produce loads of content exclusively for helping defectors acclimate to the culture as well as smuggling efforts to let them know it's better on the other side. Many of them as well are volunteers.

Oh I don't think things are great in NK, and they're probably dire for the peasants, but her story specifically is very shaky.

I heard of a similar story from my history teacher, but with eastern block and the show Dallas. From what I remember authorities were hoping that it would show the decadence of the west, but I think people mainly saw the higher living standards.

IIRC they were oil moguls. What I found confusing was that guys that were complaining of their salary, like policemen, lived in 2000 sqft houses, like in the show with a kid named Urkell.

When was this apparently being aired, and in which country?

At least in Hungary a dubbed version of Dallas was being aired in the mid 1990s well after the Berlin Wall fell.

I even remember my brother jokingly asking a Hungarian at the time if she wanted to know who shot J.R. and she answered immediately with a very loud, "no!"

The East German communist regime lost to West German television. Comparing your 10 year wait period for a Trabi with the latest BMW made by the same ethnic and cultural group just a few miles across a fence living in a prosperous capitalist system was all the daily reminder East Germans needed. I remember how in a village in the North in 1982 they erected a giant TV antenna pole for better reception...

They probably got more of their aspirations from sitcoms featuring black families and less from advertisements.

Yes, I suspect so, I was speaking about TV in general, not advertisements, which could be confusing given the posted article.

anti-apartheid struggle started way earlier though. TV may have helped break some of the propaganda of the government

I don't doubt it.

I can't remember if it was a Vice or BBC documentary but it was about how basically the poor nobody sees live. I mean the most prominent thing they mentioned was how Kim Jong Un inherited a functionalist government that didn't exist with his predecessors. Also a lot of people stand up to police or even fight back even though the cops could very well throw them in jail. The cops don't because often times a crowd of, essentially peasants, will show up not caring if they go to. So the cop realizes getting beaten up and mugged is not worth this.

I feel like if Kim Jong Un dies in the next 10 years and he doesn't have a designated successor, it'll turn into a Junta like Thailand or possibly even ones like Argentina or Portugal where they end up reuniting with South Korea.

I think a percentage of North Koreans undeniably know what the real world has that they lack, but remember compared to other countries which managed to throw off their shackles, this is a totalitarian regime. There is no contact with the outside world, widespread spying, and brainwashing.