#north Korea defectors

[lostinmac]

Escape (2024)

Dir. Lee Jong-pil

[yycovo]

[cactuskid99]

Yeonmi Park Tells About North Korean Life

I can't believe Kim is putting a whole nation through this 😢💔

[garudabluffs]

A North Korean refugee offers a different view of his home country from the other side of the DMZ May 3, 2024

Each year, thousands of tourists visit the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. Now a North Korean defector is guiding tourists and offering his view of what it is actually like to grow up on the other side.

May 3, 2024 “It’s the worst country,” he said. “But even there, people still try to find happiness.”

"He and his mother secretly crossed the border into northeastern China, where South Korean Christian missionaries hide escapees from the police. If caught, they’d be sent back to North Korea and, according to some rights groups, could face execution.  

The missionaries offered to help them reach South Korea. But, Jun said the missionaries had one condition — they’d have to believe in God, first."

LISTEN 06:55 READ MORE Transcript https://theworld.org/stories/2024/05/03/a-north-korean-refugee-offers-a-different-view-of-his-home-country-from-the-other-side-of-the-dmz

[comradecowplant]

Goal for 2024/j113 is to convince every one of my followers who like & reblog my gay jokes and art images but never interact with the communist posts to consider the possibility that the DPRK isn't an evil comic book villian country, and if we can achive that & open our minds enough, maybe even convince you that stalwart resistance to global imperial hegemony that has survived for decades despite the world's superpowers doing everything to literally starve them out of existence is actually pretty damn cool 🇰🇵

[neyatimes]

North Korean defectors: Inside the school teaching them how to live in the outside world

Seoul, South Korea CNN  —  Before she left North Korea, the woman known as “C” had caught glimpses of life across the border through smuggled television shows. People caught with foreign materials like books and movies, which are banned in the hermit nation, can face severe punishment. But C secretly watched the South Korean shows anyway, fascinated by what she called a “different reality” than…

[lostinmac]

Beyond Utopia (2023)

Dir. Madeleine Gavin

[radioconstructed]

⌖ TOMORROW! Interviewing a DEFECTOR from HEAVEN! Tune in to my main station!

[that-rad-jewish-girl]

They’re not protesting China. China has labor camps being used to mass produce clothing and related products. They also arrest and send defectors back to North Korea.

They’re not protesting North Korea. They torture citizens who fail to follow the country’s extreme rules. There is no freedom of speech or expression, and defectors face torture or even death if caught.

They’re not protesting Iran. The morality police regularly kidnaps women and tortures them for failing to properly cover their hair. Recently, the citizens tried to rise up after the police beat a woman to death for not wearing proper hijab. The government’s response was mass arrests, torture, and rapes.

I could go on and on - the transgressions of many countries in the Olympics are endless. So why are we only upset at one country?

The irony of certain countries being praised for refusing to compete against Israel is unreal. Those same countries being praised have horrific violations of their own. Yet, no mention of them.

[zvaigzdelasas]

2 Oct 24

[read-marx-and-lenin]

DPRK News Room has reuploaded their amazing documentary, "Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul", after the original upload had its audio broken by a Youtube error. Here's a link to the new upload, a great excuse to watch the video again if you have already seen it, and a great chance for anyone who hasn't seen it yet to watch and learn the truth about so-called "North Korean defector" narratives spread by the US and South Korea.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

North Korea launched 720 balloons across the world’s most heavily armed border overnight Saturday, hitting South Korea with their payloads: plastic bags full of cigarette butts and other trash.

Its officials indicated that they might switch on their loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border to blare K-pop music, which the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has found so threatening that he once called it a “vicious cancer.”

The North has cast the floating offensive as “tit-for-tat action.” It has accused North Korean defectors living in South Korea of “scattering leaflets and various dirty things” over its border counties in recent days.

This is amazing. A nuclear power and an economic powerhouse acting as the regional outpost of a global superpower fighting like feuding franchises in a shopping mall

[etirabys]

Epistemic status: unusually low endorsement. I gave up quickly on the book I'm about to talk about, and it's extra likely I'm being unfair.

I started reading a compilation of interviews of North Korean defectors. I didn't like it – the defectors seem weirdly boring and catty:

You are the first North Korean defector-resident to earn a doctorate. In 1997, 18 years after I came to the South, I became the first North Korean defector-resident to earn a doctorate in South Korea. Now, there are about 40 North Korean defector-residents with doctorates, each of whom claims to be the first – first female defector doctor, first defector pharmacist, and so on. It’s funny how everyone in the North Korean defector-resident community claims to be the first whenever they achieve something.

(I was annoyed at this guy but he's not wrong, check out this other guy)

What did you feel at that moment? It was one of those glorious moments that are rare in life. My heart swelled at the thought that I, once a poor North Korean boy who used to be teased and called an ‘idiot’, was now sitting proudly next to the US president on behalf of all North Korean people. President Trump listened intently to what us eight North Korean defectors had to say and expressed his sympathy. (...) I am the first North Korean defector-resident to ever be invited to this White House Christmas event."

The interviewer (whom I find extremely pompous) throws them softball questions about their current political activism. Like, "What is this I hear about you planning to change the name of the org you founded?" / "You were the first one to..."

The second mention of the interviewee meeting a US president in, it hit me: the book sucks (as a document addressing questions I have about North Korean life) because the interview is asking bigwigs in his relatively small (30K) defector community*. I took another look at the table of contents and over half the interviewees are currently the chairman, president, or director of some organization, usually related to NK human rights. Aided by a friendly interviewer, they are eager to describe their turning point, their moment of international fame and glory, why they founded their particular human rights group.

(The book immediately became more interesting to me qua byproduct of a exotic-to-me status game, but not enough to finish it)

Let's zoom out for a bit, because this is pretty neat. People have very different stories – there's one guy who spent ages 9-18 in a prison camp because his grandfather lost a political battle, a special ops guy who tried to assassinate the South Korean president in 1968, a guy who defected because he was upset about not getting a military promotion, kind of normal guy who lost his leg stealing coal from a moving train, and all of these people... have come together... to play the YA twitter game

(I'm sure I'm getting a skewed picture because of the interviewer's selection process, but also – how skewed? The defection process probably does select for drive.)

[ed-nygma]

Big fan of terminal leftist brainrot. When you hate the US so much that it completely blinds you to the corruption of other states. The west has an awful relationship with North Korea, so Surely it is actually quite great and everyone there actually has better conditions than Americans do!

And, well, there are certainly hoards of misinformation and propaganda against NK. A lot of it is fueled by racism too! But that doesn't mean the state isn't oppressive or cruel towards its people. Communist groups online always attract a handful of western NK defenders and it's hilarious. These are people who have generally progressive values and believe victims of abuse (systemic or otherwise), yet they manage to say that every single defector is actually just lying for western clout or a RFA pawn. Even the ones who time and time again refuse interviews and media attention, but still share the same stories, all of them are actually part of psyops.