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.

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_claims

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.

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...

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.