Concerning. Looking into it!
Yeah this popped up on the BBC and as usual it was just "video from years ago", "appears to show" and then some quotes from defectors saying "they shoot you if they catch you watching squid game". Just hilarious levels of make-believe.
I never watched Squid Game (because I am a little contrarian) but is the show really pro-DPRK or just anti occupied Korea?
The North Korean defector character cannot answer and remains silent when asked whether it would have been better to stay in North Korea. In South Korea it's illegal to share any opinion on TV that shows DPRK positively, so this is literally the most pro-DPRK they could be without breaking the law.
In addition, the North Korean character is shown pretty explicitly as being abused by a South Korean group focused on "helping detectors". She is financially extorted for even more money to bring the rest of her family to South Korea, while iirc also being SA'd by the guy who's supposedly helping
story spoiler
Also she gets killed by a financial capitalist in the end. She was winning the games with her strength and the intelligence with the sacrifices of her comrades, but the capitalist breaks the "rule of law" and "fair competition" to kill her. He doesn't get punished but rewarded with advancement to the next round.
Having this sequence of actions happen to the North Korean character isn't coincidental. The whole show is a giant critique of capitalism but there's layers and layers of it until the end.
user report: doesn’t seem appropriate response to previous comment talking about SA and abuse
I am inclined to agree. I do not understand why you though this was an appropriate sentiment to share here 🫤
I don't know why I thought it was appropriate either. I completely ignored the implications of saying it in this context, I guess. Sorry, should've known better.
She wasn’t asked if it was better to stay in North Korea. She was asked if South Korea was any different than North Korea and she didn’t reply.
The implication is that whatever people think the north is, the south is no better or even worse because of the lies it peddles about freedom from oppression.
Of course I only watched the subs. Perhaps they libbed it up compared to the actual script, but so far I haven’t seen anyone claimed the Korean dialogue was mistranslated.
Just anti capitalist Korea. It's illegal to show support for DPRK in the South. There's been policing actions as recent as 2019 over displays of Kim Il Sung.
Realistically, it's as much pro-DPRK as it can get before the writer gets summoned for police/CIA questioning.
It’s not pro DPRK lol. The girl was asked if South Korea was any better or different than the north. She remained silent. That’s not praise of North Korea, that condemnation of the south for being as bad or worse than whatever people imagine the north to be.
Yo what if fucking Squid Games is like fucking NORTH KOREA and how evil Kim Jong UN is?
Bro Squid Game is obviously pro capitalist, they pay you money if you win
And winning is good and money is good, so obviously capitalism is good
This was the argument of the reality game show spinoff show runner. It's not actually anti-capitalist because it shows how people can all compete equally with each other and those that work the hardest are rewarded the most. Absolute clown
It's a shame they weren't able to smuggle the sound out of the country as well. Especially with how widely spread this video was.
Can you blame them? They only have Nokia brick phones in North Korea, and 95% of them are used for remote nuclear missile detonation because they can’t afford to build an on-impact warhead.
No sound, no original subtitles, no one talking, shown by the BBC.
Source: My balls
pirated K-dramas are ubiquitous in the DPRK and no one gives a shit
To the potential lurking liberals, that's what a resonable claim about North Korea looks like, unlike your idea that they execute ayone caught watching drama because they're so evil which is peak liberal idealist nonsense.
Why is the content ubiquitously pirated if it's legal and totally acceptable in NK?
I could imagine someone unfamiliar with America saying "weed is ubiquitous and nobody gives a shit", but that'd be a massive oversimplification given we have a metric fuckton of people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses.
Could it not be the case that in NK that pirating and watching foreign media is both extremely common and against the law/lands people in prison?
And if that is the case, then even if this one case happens to be fabricated, there's likely a ton of cases where people are actually imprisoned for breaking the law, since that's usually how breaking laws goes. I don't think it should be against the law to watch foreign media.
Why is the content ubiquitously pirated if it's legal and totally acceptable in NK?
This is speculation, but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say South Korea refuses to license media to the DPRK so they literally have no other choice but to pirate it. Like if you tried to obtain a PS1 game in the West right now, Sony isn't selling the vast majority of them any longer so your best bet is to download it from a ROM site.
Thanks for at least giving a plausible explanation instead of tightening your asshole and throwing insults because someone suggested that there might be a flaw with the mighty DPRK like the other commenter who responded to me.
Lol, even why we are civil and provide detailed answers to you Libs who wander in here you still end up bitching about how mean we are to you.
Why is the content ubiquitously pirated if it's legal and totally acceptable in NK?
Do you pay for content??
Could it not be the case
there's likely a ton of cases
I don't think it should be
Thank you for your feels based analysis
I read an account by a DPRK defector once. He had been given fingernail clippers that were made in the USA. They were so well made, and cut such neat clean lines that they made him despondent, because he knew the DPRK could never make anything that well.
Wtf they're nail clippers. If you can manufacture AKs you can manufacture nail clippers. Literally 3 bent and cut bits of polished spring steel, a rivet, and a retaining pin
Nope, in North Korea entire towns share the communal nail clipper or if they dont have that they get the guy with the most teeth to bite them off for them
Are there still nailcliplers made in America? I don't believe I ever bought one not Chinese.
Funny, I just experienced the inverse of this. Saw a tweet from a Russian about how due to remnant industry from the USSR they can get some specialized machinery for $10 there and it costs $1000 in the US.
Who would win in a fight, a country building atom bombs or a pair of snippy bois?
They will beleve the most ridiculous nonsense as long as it's compatible with their unshakable assumptions that [country liberals don't like] is literally 1984.
This almost feels real. Like maybe a small oversight on production lines due to sanctions and the like.
But now Real Korea has their own "Legos", so who the fuck cares, really.
no communist can withstand contact to the perfected craft of tweezerman cosmetic tools.
Gotta scroll down ten comment threads to get to the first one that's critical of the narrative being presented.
You can just overlay any text over a video and people believe it.
Fucking TRUE
Yeah my coworker tried showing me this. There's no audio and nothing to indicate what's actually going on. I don't know what trials in the DPRK like, but do they really look like this? The audience looked like they were in a stadium or auditorium or something. For all I know this could be a theater and everyone on that stage is an actor.
I don't even think watching dramas are illegal in the DPRK lmao. I'm pretty sure nearly everyone in the DPRK watches pirated media they buy on USB drives and no one cares.
Yeah they sell them on the street, government owned vendors do it. Jaka Parker filmed it
what in the everloving fuck is the SAND Institute? they make it sound like a legitimate organization, but literally the only mentions I can find of it anywhere are either quoting the BBC article or the article itself
these fuckers can just outright make shit up and there's going to be some rube who'll buy it, zero questions asked
It's just rare footage bro you wouldnt have seen it. She goes to a different school
she used to at least, before she was caught watching K-dramas and shot with an AA turret by Dear Leader
https://sand.or.kr/kr/
Unfortunately without the ability to understand Korean I can't Google any info on funding, but if I had to guess I would say NED or US state department.
lmao, I'm checking out the website with google translate and it's absolutely breaking my CIA meter, this shit looks like one of these fake websites the CIA used as fronts for spies in Iraq
look at their history section, lol
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also, in the SAND activities page, there's a tab that goes into their vast social contribution:
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I know that google translate does not give perfect results, but this is hilarious to me lol a completely empty shell of an organization that just sprang up out of seemingly nowhere and somehow has enough credibility to be taken seriously by the BBC, the supposed bastions of quality journalism... get the fuck outta here
What do you mean? They were selected as a "designated donation organization" in 2019, presumably by someone who knows their shit, they seem like real deal
This is 100% a CIA front website for spies and defectors in North Korea lol. Hide in plain site I guess. Wonder how long before some south Korean patriot accidentally leaks the list of agents while donating money
Apparently it's the "South and North Development Institution" but I can't find anything on it either
BBC: They are being sentenced to a life of hard labor for watching tv
Reality: Me and the boys interrupting the adults to ask if we can buy a Fortnite skin
I swear that educating people on the history of Korea since the war is one of the most effective ways to radicalize them. As soon as you understand why there even IS a North Korea and a South Korea, suddenly all these stories about K-dramas and unicorns are revealed to be the embarrassing fiction that they are.
Looking at the make-up of the two governments was big for me too; one led by freedom fighters and the other by Japanese collaborators. Guess which was which?
excvse me, commvnist, but general dovglas "nvke the entire 38th parallel" mcarthvr and his band of merry fascist collaborators were the real freedom fighters and don't yov forget!
Absolutely true, it’s astonishing to me but also not how few people know the US conducted a full scale genocide in the country, and set up a military dictatorship in the south that directly took over the implements of the Imperial Japanese occupation. At the very least people tend to shut up when I ask what they have to say about 2 million Koreans being killed and 80%+ of infrastructure being leveled in one sided bombing.
When I was in high school just over a decade ago they were still peddling the Korean War in canada at least as a “just war” that we should be proud of like WW1/2. Absolutely zero mention of the whole genocide thing, really disgusting stuff in hindsight. I knew I was morally in the right to skip Remembrance Day nonsense to drink and play Minecraft
Yep my Canadian history classes in the late 90s also conveniently excluded the Korean War genocide, said it was a just war and that almost none of the good guys died so such a success for Canada's military prowess.
I wonder if that's why the DPRK, out of all AES nations, gets so much outrageous propaganda pushed about them? Even China doesn't get the same extreme levels of fantastical claims. The goal is to stop people ever even taking that first step towards thinking about it as a real country, it needs to be a fictional villain that is cartoonishly evil in order for the western viewpoint of the country to even exist.
I think the DPRK gets it because it's an entire business in South Korea to sell salacious rumors to newspapers. South Korea has entire media empires built specifically on selling shocking stories from defectors or spies or whatever. Since the UN doesn't allow North Koreans to travel freely, it's easy to make up whatever you want and get no backlash.
My favorite part of the interview is that the movie presents DPRK's citizens as brainwashed by violent media that depicts the deaths of foreign politicians. The Interview's climax is a gratuitous slow motion shot of Kim Jong-un dying in a helicopter explosion. If it was satire it would be brilliant.
The DPRK is a lot more culturally, economically and politically isolated than other AES states. It's easy to counter propaganda about, say, Cuba, because despite the USs best efforts Cuba does have some stronger geopolitical allies who are willing and able to counter the more egregious disinfo about them. The DPRKs allies are all states the West hates and doesn't take seriously.
Where can I read some info about the DPRK, that isnt trying to blame them for everything wrong in the world at every sentence? I just read the wikipedia page and its full of blaming the north while forgetting the south puppet dictatorship
Possibly something by Stephen Gowans?
Or start here: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2063780
Or here: https://dprkorea.carrd.co/
I definitely thought this was a shot from a bootleg anime at first glance.
This looks like a school auditorium, 90% chance it's some sort of explanation of the judicial process
Would people really do that, just use ambiguous footage of something and make up a whole lie about north korea to tell on the internet?
There is litteraly nothing in this clip that indicate what they are being convicted of, where the fuck are they getting that from? Also, am I the only one to think it's a little sus that this video doesn't have any audio?
Audio could be a problem, because it would mean that someone who can speak Korean could translate. We need a white guy who has never left America to be our guide to understanding the strange ways of the Oriental Despots.
It's fine that there's no audio, as Westerners believe neither their ears nor their eyes. A while back there was a top post on
about Chinese fans at an association football game. The headline did not match the content of the video at all, yet all the commenters were eating it up. I forget exactly what the claim was. Maybe about wearing masks? LolI have repeatedly seen videos of Pakistani families celebrating cricket being shared as if they are celebrating 9/11, which now I am older and more jaded I realise is not nearly as bad as the kind of genocidal shit Westerners celebrate.
Yo, any folks on here got info about this SAND institute that sourced this video.
Trying to look them up only gives me the BBC article about this video which has this to say about them "This video was provided to the BBC by the South and North Development (Sand), a research institute that works with defectors from the North."
Something deeply sus about this, if you don't mind me donning the tinfoil hat a sec.
I was curious and looked a bit more into this. So looking up public information regarding the org in Korean, there's 0 employees. The registered address is in a residential apartment building directly facing the head office of seoul metropolitan office and two blocks away from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 1
These are their web presence Youtube Webpage Twitter
It seems to be an evolution of NK defectors association. But I didn't look much into it because I got sidetracked by the South Korean Ministry of Reunification that I stumbled upon while looking into SAND. The planning regarding the forced privatization of North Korean land is wild.
If I was a spy risking my life and my family’s life and my family’s subsequent 25 generations to sneak a video of evil go the heroes, I’d maybe spend an extra second to also capture sound lol
Thanks for the links comrade.
Can't speak Korean myself so I'm having to rely on the little robot in my phone to tell me what that website says.
Having a little read about though, and it's kinda what I expected - some of the articles on it seem to be arguing for a tighter surveillance state to root out communists and the rest are your typical unsourced defector stories.
Edit: whole lotta reposts of BBC articles.
Edit again: including a story eerily similar to the recent one.
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Edit once more: and in contradiction, this.
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1/5 of North Koreans have publicly stated they watch K-dramas a crime executable by death and/or hard labour.
That's a reasonable assumption, but the website Trudge linked to in this thread has a timeline of SAND's history that starts in 2017 and ends in 2019 (although the "research" section of the website has links to, like, seminars and shit they've done since and they've maintained a presence on Twitter since 2022, so it's likely they just haven't updated the timeline).
has a Metal Gear game that no westerner will ever get to play
