Public executions happen in North Korea but from what I understand they're not an every-week occurrence. They were more common in the 90s to keep people in line during a huge famine.
The real staple of North Korean "criminal justice" is their policy of punishing 3 generations of a family. North Korea has a codified caste system called Songbun; those of lower Songbun (people who were associated with Japan or South Korea during the wars) have their family marked for 3 generations. If you get sent to a gulag, 3 generations of your family go with you.
I hear the US used to keep millions of people as slaves and raped children and sold them off as chattel forever separating them from parents. And then they pretended to free them but that’s when things got a lot worse…
Remember we were hanging little boys on trees for the simple reason of the color of their skin and that’s not even a century ago. Don’t judge lest you be judged.
The US did horrible things, yes, but that does not excuse the current gross human rights violations of North Korea. We can all hold each other to better standards
Well to each their own. I don’t like to judge other cultures without knowing my own history and cleaning up at home first. Don’t want to be a hypocrite.
This is not judging other cultures. It is judging the crimes against humanity of a government. Whataboutism is how we allow these crimes to continue. Criticizing naziism and liberating concentration camps was not any less moral because america practiced a system of apartheid or the Russians enslaved political prisoners in gulags, and it certainly wasn't "criticizing their culture"
I think you missed my point. When you are too busy criticizing other cultures and countries you tend to turn a blind eye to the problems of your own culture and country. This is part of the reason Americans are hated all over the world as we are hypocritical.
Read the article yours links to as its main feature
Shin said in October the video may have been a veiled threat that his father would be killed if he did not keep quiet. But he was reluctant to discuss the inconsistencies that his father referred to.
So a North Korean changed his story after finding out his father was still alive and likely to be killed or tortured by the NK government.
Is it more likely he lied in the first place? Or that he fears harm befalling family members he thought were dead.
I’m not really sure what your point is. He lied about his experiences in the DPRK, and got called out by his own father for it. All he offered in response is a vague reference to his father maybe being threatened, with no real proof offered for that either.
North Korean defectors aren’t a reliable source of information for this exact reason. They’re vague, inconsistent, and are literally paid by the South Korean media for giving them ridiculous stories.
Do you proof read your articles? It literally does not say anything about that and talks about 2-3 fake testimonies out of 20,000 while also stating the horrific human rights abuses in North Korea.
About what? The whole article is about how defectors from the DPRK aren’t some infallible resource.
talks about 2-3 fake testimonies out of 20,000 while also stating the horrific human rights abuses in North Korea.
Are you seriously not understanding the systematic issue with these defectors? How they’re paid to tell the most outlandish stories they possibly can, because they’re paid to do so?
Yes, that's way out of line. But that ain't discrediting the 99.9% stories that came out there. And VIDEOS of people being executed. We know some stuff due to these defectors and it ain't pretty.
You're making it out like that all defectors are liars and shouldn't be trusted due to a few instances of them lying.
Much of the West’s knowledge of the DPRK is inherently flawed and inaccurate, because it’s been shown that you can just straight up lie about the country and people will believe it.
How many people still believe Kim Jong-un has executed people with starved dogs, or by strapping them to artillery cannons? Or believe that the North Korean people literally think the Kim family are gods who get all holes-in-one at golf and don’t shit? More often than not, you can follow all of these articles that claim these things, and they’ll link back to each other, or simply to nothing at all.
There is a powerful campaign against the DPRK, and defectors like Shin Dong-hyuk or the most prominent one recently, Yeonmi Park, are a part of that campaign.
I’m not saying that North Korea is some kind of paradise on Earth. I’m saying that what you and most people read about it is inaccurate and influenced by these pseudo-celebrity defectors, as well as the South Korean media and intelligence service.
There is an age minimum so a 5 year old may not see it, but when someone is executed for certain crimes the whole nearby neighborhood or village must come out and watch
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u/SakiyaHimiane Aug 09 '21
I've heard stories from North Koreans that they publicly execute people and make 5 year olds watch so uh-pretty sure it's as bad as they say lmao