We've been raised practically from infancy to Korea-Watch and gawk at whatever Weird Scary Foreigners are currently doing. I remember hearing about the whole "Kim Jung Il kidnapped a South Korean movie producer to create better films and how he and his wife made a daring escape" story in fucking middle school. No real context to it. Just the kind of stuff teachers would introduce into the classroom setting because it was in the news or part of a big book release or whatever.
I knew more about the 90s-era famine in Korea than I knew about any kind of US foreign policy, by the time I entered high school. I knew far more about the East German police state than any big American police department by the time I entered college. As a young kid with a Jewish family, I was repeatedly informed of the Second Secret Holocaust that was happening in Russia until the night Stalin died. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major bullet point in every history class, while the US interventions in Chile and Guatemala and Haiti went virtually without mention. Literally all I have to say is the word "Venezuela" and I can get people to shake their heads scornfully, because we all know what it means.
This shit is catnip because it feeds directly into my priors. I can't look away. And I'm a fucking Leftist. Imagine how tantalizing this shit is for the Chuds and the Neolibs.
We've been raised practically from infancy to Korea-Watch and gawk at whatever Weird Scary Foreigners are currently doing. I remember hearing about the whole "Kim Jung Il kidnapped a South Korean movie producer to create better films and how he and his wife made a daring escape" story in fucking middle school. No real context to it. Just the kind of stuff teachers would introduce into the classroom setting because it was in the news or part of a big book release or whatever.
I knew more about the 90s-era famine in Korea than I knew about any kind of US foreign policy, by the time I entered high school. I knew far more about the East German police state than any big American police department by the time I entered college. As a young kid with a Jewish family, I was repeatedly informed of the Second Secret Holocaust that was happening in Russia until the night Stalin died. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major bullet point in every history class, while the US interventions in Chile and Guatemala and Haiti went virtually without mention. Literally all I have to say is the word "Venezuela" and I can get people to shake their heads scornfully, because we all know what it means.
This shit is catnip because it feeds directly into my priors. I can't look away. And I'm a fucking Leftist. Imagine how tantalizing this shit is for the Chuds and the Neolibs.