#I've seen plenty of people online call Ling a CIA asset but I'll leave that judgment up to others

[999-roses]

while we're talking about north korean defector industry being part of the [western - including south korean] media agenda to smear, vilify, and discredit the DPRK,, (particularly how specific defectors seriously make serious bank from selling these lies through books and media appearances, although, this is quite the exception and not the norm)

consider Operation Yellowbird. a short background:

Operation Yellowbird was a collaborative effort between British HK, MI6, CIA and other actors to smuggle persons wanted for their dissident actions during the 1989 protests in Beijing.

known CIA regime change agents were spotted (and reported by western media sources!) in the area during the protests in Beijing, on and near Tiananmen Square in summer of 1989.

for those of you who still believe in the "Tiananmen Massacre" narrative, and are skeptical about official Chinese accounts, here is a reading list, including accounts and news articles from western journalists who were there on the ground, about what actually happened. available here (hint there was no mass killing of civilians)

These evacuated "dissidents" were quickly admitted to Ivy league and other high-prestige academic institutions in the west, some even awarded honorary degrees. Some of the most prominent people relocated by Operation Yellowbird are now business and tech execs, venture capitalists/financial managers, NGO founders living comfortable lives in the west.

Their exaggerated (and inconsistent) recollections of the protests that ended with June 4th, recounted to western media years later while living in the west, has built up the myth of a massacre of civilians by an "authoritarian and totalitarian" Chinese government. They're still making documentaries and media appearances and testifying to US Congress. The mischaracterization of the events in summer 1989 that feeds into sinophobic narratives about Chinese people and the Chinese government are built on hyperbolic recollections and outright lies, and ritualistic recounting every year by these people keeps this narrative afloat in the minds of westerners. Concern for "human rights violations," especially when exaggerated or even built on towers of lies, are a common sympathy-garnering tactic for manufacturing thirst and support for "intervention" (read: war) by portraying “enemies” as monsters, and also works to muddy the waters about actual human rights violations regularly committed by the United States, both foreign and domestic.

Yeah we should absolutely dunk on the Yeonmi Parks. But we should also very much also dunk on "What we are looking anticipating is bloodshed, and only when the square is filled with rivers of blood will Chinese unite, but how could I tell my followers that I need them to sacrifice their lives [for "our" cause]?... But I cannot continue on in square, I'm different from them, I'm on a blacklist, I don't want to die." Chai Ling