Take this with a grain of salt as I’m talking from memory, but I think he’s acted as a middleman with North Korea to set up trips to the country for tourism, including for some Spanish journalists that were taken through very controlled routes. I remember the guy kept talking about how the North Koreans don’t mess around and so the people should be careful, about how great the Kim family is and about how proud he is to be so well considered by the regime.

I remember wondering if it’s all just a charade for him that allows him to have contact with North Korea (as in, him being some sort of agent), if he just found his business niche, of if he’s an idiot who drank the kool aid because he likes to feel he’s important.

As an aside, I was impressed watching those documentaries by how many North Korean officials spoke perfect Spanish without any trace of an accent. Apparently some of them had lived and studied in Cuba for some time.

Edit: I found it, the documentary is called 'En tierra hostil', from 2015. It's currently only legally available under subscription from A3player, a streaming service from a private Spanish TV channel, but it might be viewable in other sites.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4206218/

I guess the risk is worth it for some companies/individuals if they're only spending a few thousand dollars to potentially save many more.

> “Let’s say you’re making a cartoon, and you are outsourcing the work. So you go to Romania, because you know it’s very cheap.” But the Romanian company knows of an even cheaper option. Its representative flies to Pyongyang and makes a deal for the same work at half the cost—and then gets 50% of the fee without employing anyone. “This has happened,” he says. He will not name movies. Nor popular video games. North Korean labor is also behind websites and crypto, he says. The shadow hands of globally sanctioned socialist labor are all around us.

The Onion was right all along [3].

And I know this is a pretty stereotypical nitpick, but I wish they (both the author and Cao de Benós) would be more specific and refer to DPRK's ideology as Juche [4], instead of just calling it socialism. Ignoring nuances in political ideologies just makes them more difficult to discuss.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_Korea#/media/...

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/04/547390622/...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaZ57Bn4pQ

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche

Interesting article. I often wonder about the mindset of people who deny the obvious facts. Does he really believe it or is he just cynical?

Neither, IMO. From observing him over the years, he knows what's good for him, and he knows how to get a good vibe going with others at the same time. The vibe can make anything true or false and is not known for being concerned with moral true/false questions, which get into subjective (qualitative) ethics. (You can argue that those same ethics prevent reasonably helpful business from being done in many cases, as distasteful as it sounds.)

I'd add that he has a good nose for opportunity and a higher than average threshold for risk. This is your typical "fixer" type.

This guy, on the hand, has voluntarily chosen to be an apologist and enabler for one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet.

Does North Korea have any competition for this title? I thought they were number one on that list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Eritrea

Libya cancelled its nuclear program in the early 21st century and welcomed UN inspections. Then an international alliance force removed Gaddafi from power and he was killed.

I am sure would-be-dictators all over the world are taking note - if you have nukes, you don't face invasion.

That said what keeps the west from invading NKorea aren’t the nukes. It’s the katyusha and other conventional armament that would rain down on Seoul a few Kms across the border.

This just made me think of Baghdad Bob so I looked him up and apparently he is still alive and allegedly living in the UAE. It would be interesting to hear what he thinks now of all the obvious lies he told almost two decades ago.

“If only I was in America, then with my talents I would have had an awesome career in law, politics, or business.”

Most Americans don’t bat an eye that they pay taxes to fund this. As long as it’s in our interest we turn a blind eye. As long as it’s someone else we look down on them.

Not a DPRK apologist. But I wouldn't really say "obvious" with respect to anything coming out of there... Just two weeks ago rumors ran rampant that the leader was dead... We just have no clue.

There have been pictures, even cellphone video of things like public executions. Here's one recent report but people have been escaping the place and bringing evidence of abuse out for years.

https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-north-korea-public-execu...

[0] https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/3205842/russia-2018-world-cup...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C76HqPaA6kw

You think it is - in reality, it's not really so shady. He probably picked the name not because it's true but because it's believable.

Yikes, can you please edit out personal swipes from your comments to HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are? We're here for curious conversation. It's also best to avoid denunciatory rhetoric, not because things don't deserve denouncing, but because it degrades internet discussion quality badly.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

I'm not entirely sure what country you're talking about here. Is it Romania? United States? Maybe United Kingdom?

You must live in one heck of a bubble, I'm a Romanian and definitely wouldn't describe it as "shady".

While you clearly have some issues with the way certain things are going inside the country, the generalizations you're making are definitely exaggerated.

People just don't know the Eastern Bloc all that well. It is shady as the OP says. It's a mentality and a way of life that the more polite-class citizens of those countries there are trying to unwind and return to some bastion of civility, but it's hard when the modern-day mafia runs the governments and does it's best to stay in power.

At least here, the corruption isn't as obvious. Over there, they wag their tail right in your face and ask you what are you going to do about it.

People emigrate from these countries to say, North America or Western Europe or UK in search of a better life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSU1IJk70i4

what a weird smear. who in their right mind really believes DPRK is the realization of any kind of socialism? i guess the nazis were socialists too then.

>The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of "socialism", as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free market capitalism. Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organization,[9] which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism