North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

Re:North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed co... by OkayPhysicist on Thursday June 15, 2023 @07:37PM (#36348573)

Making that argument about, say, Cuba makes plenty of sense to me. Sure, there's a relatively oppressive regime, but they also have made a lot of moves that genuinely have the people's interest at heart, and most people's needs are being met. That claim doesn't work when almost half your populace is starving: literally the second most important human need is being failed.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed co... by pydry on Friday June 16, 2023 @03:44AM (#36352925)

>That claim doesn't work when almost half your populace is starving: literally

They're not. This is another consistently manufactured impression - that the famine never ended.

They were starving in the 90s but it wasn't like that was deliberate and it ended 25 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine

There's a number of ways the media continues to manufacture this impression, including:

* Interviews with people who fled North Korea a long time ago - closer to the famine.

* Paying North Koreans they can gain access to for good stories - at which point they get some really juicy stories. A small number of these apart under the weight of their own contradictions - the rest, of course, can't ever be verified.

* Looking at satellite photos and drawing dubious conclusions (like if there isn't food being imported from China this month that they don't have food).

* Looking at trailing indicators of the famine like stunted height.

* Comparing everything to South Korea - which has really good metrics even by first world standards - rather than, say, an average middle income or 3rd world country.

[ Parent | on HN ]