• Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        North Korea has the world’s worst human rights, so when they made it sound like only one country had this issue, that was my guess. I’m in North America and never experienced what is described. Unless I’m wrong to have even the amount of faith required to believe there are no North Korea denialists here.

          • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            When I say that, I’m going by every regular source that ever existed, plus satellite images, its near-impossible standards for leaving or entering, its lack of internet access (who here has seen anyone who is actually from North Korea), and the fact that the average North Korean adult is only five feet tall, with height being an indicator of health (the taller the healthier). What do you weigh against it that inspires you to posit it’s all just propaganda and hearsay? Other hearsay (as opposed to a conflict within the narrative you oppose)?

            • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I say that, I’m going by every regular source that ever existed

              “regular source” citations-needed

              its near-impossible standards for leaving or entering

              did you know these are imposed on them externally? their policy is that they love tourists. here’s a video of a couple of australian tourists enjoying themselves there. the reason americans can’t go there is because the US forbids it.

              its lack of internet access (who here has seen anyone who is actually from North Korea),

              it’s a country under brutal siege for its entire history. yes, they’re poor. whose fault is that?

              • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Regular sources as in MSNBC, CNN, NPR, Wikipedia, etc. sources that are the most established, enough that they’re among the top 500 websites and that they show up on the first page of a Google search. Not to mention a random source is going to have random origins, trust in a source has to be earned and even with trusted sources you must compare and contrast them sometimes.

                The restrictions for leaving and entering have not been imposed on them externally, this attitude of Korea predates even the Roman empire so external factors wouldn’t have been possible as a cause, even though it’s undeniable there are nations that have restricted anyone from going there. Japan used to be the same way at different points in history, though for the time being they’re open to everyone.

                • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  sources
                  Wikipedia

                  michael-laugh

                  The restrictions for leaving and entering have not been imposed on them externally, this attitude of Korea predates even the Roman empire so external factors wouldn’t have been possible as a cause

                  jesse-wtf

                  come back when you can form a coherent thought

                  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    In what way is it not coherent? Am I supposed to communicate almost wholly in pictures like you’re doing instead of links (it should be noted your pictures appear as transparent blocks either due to the defederstion settings or a glitch thereof).

                    Apologies if my semantics/grammar are too loose, as English is not my first language (it’s always hard translating Asiatic languages into English), though an online grammar checker said it was fine.

        • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          According to who?

          Could it be, the United States? The most vicious and bloody empire the world has ever known?

          That aside (like, wow, holy fuck)

          If you could not recognize the earlier comments as an indication of western capitalism, you are rich or otherwise so privileged you cannot comprehend the struggles of the average person

          • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Or maybe you’re overreacting a little. I don’t deny struggles such as those by the average person, but being unable to take care of one’s health is not one of them. That’s also why I answered “North Korea” to someone’s assertion that there’s a place where this is an issue. America allows people to take time away to recuperate, even for mental health, and has this thing called SSI for the chronically unhealthy.

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah tell that to the overworked service worker, or the many other people with two jobs. The fact that a comfortable white-collar dickhead can take time off, doesn’t really mean much to me when every teacher, every driver, every railworker, every barista, chef, roadworker, janitor and every other prole is fucked

                  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    That sounds like a very forced generalization, especially considering that certain examples doesn’t disprove the whole of a practice that you originally said didn’t exist at all. I know people in all these fields who do this. I’ve been called into a psych ward before, proof it’s even systemically embedded or else that aspect of the system wouldn’t work.

          • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            The federation aspect of Lemmy is acting up again, the image won’t show up for me except as a transparent block (I assume it’s supposed to show something).

            • Flinch [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              dang, unfortunate. it was an emote, a picture of famous North Korea liar/grifter Yeonmi Park, inventor of many truths such as: “North Koreans don’t have a word for depression”, “the word for friend is banned in North Korea”, and (my favorite) “the trains in North Korea don’t work so people have to push the trains wherever they go”.

        • panopticon [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Your whataboutism can’t deflect the fact that the US policy on COVID put the prerogatives of capital ahead of public health, doing the most half-assed lockdown procedures without contact tracing, pretty much guaranteeing that this apex predator would continue to stalk the streets and mutate indefinitely, enabling mass social murder on a historical scale, pushing the most precarious workers back into contact with the public to get sick over and over, pushing kids back to school without vaccinations under the pretext that they were low risk (false), allowing infections to rebound through the population endlessly through the vectors of families, workplaces, and schools.

          We’re now at the point where the most at-risk, especially the immune compromised, continue to die quietly in the background while the country’s leadership declares the state of emergency to be over. Officially over a million dead here and it’s sure to be a mass underestimation because states are no longer reporting, and regardless it’s a major risk factor of other diseases, especially cardial, one of which claimed one of my closest family members after they caught COVID multiple times before being vaccinated despite performing all these supposed protocols to the extreme (doesn’t matter how much you isolate if the workers delivering your groceries bring the virus with them).

          Oh yeah and, the pandemic never went away, “endemic” is a weasel word that really means “the weak shall suffer what they must,” hardly a word about long COVID in the media any more even though we don’t yet understand its full extent. US COVID policy amounts to enabling a mass death and disability event. Guess our burgers and haircuts are more important than the lives of the elderly and immune compromised. America’s COVID policy is neglect and eugenics with more steps. As for North Korea, who’s deranged enough to give a fuck about their supposed lack of protocols (also false) when the real disaster is still unfolding all around us?

          • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            You say that like it’s whataboutism to mention a country had it worse when the original commenter meant to make it sound like there was a singular country with the issue. I never said America’s response was great, but I responded asking if they were talking about North Korea because they had it worse, even going so far at one point to say covid didn’t exist in a practical sense. They ignored the virus and it almost decimated them because North Korea has such bad health. They fit the commenter’s allusion to a country that handled it badly better than America even if America handled it badly too.

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          America had a larger infection rate and mortality rate than North Korea.

          I know what you’re gonna say “oh they lied about their numbers”. Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
          The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
          The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
          The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
          Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they’d murdered 20% of it.

          • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Even if giving your sources the benefit of the doubt, you say that as if the US is the only place that talks about things going on in North Korea.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Ah neat you failed to engage with the central argument, instead moving the goalposts to now being another weirdly general discussion.
              You were referring to American media and American claims, so this is the framework. Instead of either accepting your sources are flawed, that you have a bias, that they have a bias, that you might not be entirely correct, you choose to shift the discussion to one where you yet again take another incredibly broad position that is so vague it is nigh impossible to disorove. I don’t think you do this on purpose, I think it is reflexive, but I encourage you to interrogate your actions upon encountering data that conflicts with your worldview.

              • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I’m not moving any goalposts, I’m simply stating the observation that there are other nationalities who not only might serve as a spark or derivative for whatever the American media says but also that info is shared enough that it can amount to a confirmation. Some other countries and their media, such as the BBC and Russia Today, report on both America and North Korea as much as America does. Never did I imply I was only talking about things because America was the one doing the narrating though.

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  m simply stating the observation that there are other nationalities who not only might serve as a spark or derivative for whatever the American media

                  What does this have to do with a discussion about North Korea as presented by American media? You are not engaging with the argument or the points, you are not even relating it to your own, you are instead reframing the discussion to be about something else - You are moving the goalposts.

                  Never did I imply I was only talking about things because America was the one doing the narrating though.
                  dawg your alleged sources were all American media.

                  Oh hey you managed to find one whole article! Good on you! Is that article the sources you mentioned? I just wanna be sure that I’m not missing out.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          North Korea was shut down anyway, it took a long time for them to have their first covid outbreak and I think when it finally did happen they did shut down.

          Also, I am glad you have come out so strongly in favor of the PRC approach, or so I must convlude.

          • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Being so close to China, North Korea couldn’t be in a position to escape being one of the first to suffer. Kim Jong-un spent the first part of it saying it didn’t exist. What’s worse is health in North Korea is poor, so there were more casualties. Any true response was too late.

                • Abracadaniel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The NPR article also has no evidence for an earlier outbreak. They just report what the North’s government stated, and add that the reader shouldn’t believe them.

                  Sure they share a border with China, but China had COVID pretty well controlled for a significant portion of the pandemic. That combined with the DPRK’s survival strategy of self-reliance make it seem plausible to me that they were clear of it until the vastly more contagious variant became dominant.

                  So far, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to the contrary.

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  It’s always the same bullshit. If they are handling covid well “they’re lying about their numbers”. If they report high numbers it’s “evidence they’re incompetent.”
                  What reason do I have to mistrust their numbers? They’re not the ones having lied to me for decades.
                  And it’s not like the US wasn’t lying about its own numbers

                  Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
                  The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
                  The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
                  The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
                  Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they’d murdered 20% of it.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              You’re gonna need a better source than Wikipedia, which has a ridiculous level of slant against the DPRK (look up “Propaganda village” if you need convincing)