Introduction

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Hi everyone, Elwood here, this is a written version of the first episode of the MEGA documentary series, “Yeonmi and North Korea” (originally released in video form back in January 2022), for those who would rather read what we have to say than watch it, the original cheecken.net website only contained an announcement of the doc and an embed of the video version, but I’ve decided to bring the script to our site now it’s been reborn as the Entropic Domain.

The text here is almost identical to the narration in the video documentary because it has been copied straight from the original script, the only changes I’ve made are removing the editing notes we used in the document, which mentioned what clips to show at what timestamps, because they’re meaningless outside of a video context, these clips have been changed into source links or short text explanations instead.

Keep in mind that this was written when MEGA was written by both me and Massi (aka Cheecken), but presented only by him, so when you read first person references like “The question I pose myself is”, imagine it being said by him!

The video embed is also still on the page, so you can watch the documentary and read along with the script with easy access to the sources if you like, enjoy!

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This documentary was originally released in video form on the 15th of January 2022, this written version was released on the 25th of February 2024.

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MEGA: Yeonmi and North Korea

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Section 1: The Strange Tale of Yeonmi Park

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Not many of us grow up under communist tyranny, and those who do rarely manage to escape it. The refugees that do tell us harrowing stories of famine, death and misery; A lesson to the free world about the importance of its values. One of the few countries of this kind left on Earth is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or as we know it, North Korea, which is constantly being exposed by the stories of people who fled its territory. 

We don’t know everything about what is going on behind the secretive borders of the Hermit Kingdom, but what we do hear from escapees is absolutely heartbreaking. Accounts of unimaginable hardship under the boot of an uncaring government that never lets anyone leave, people being left malnourished so they can’t resist, millions being sent away to isolated prison camps, accounts of these happenings convince much of the world that North Korea is a rogue state, one that cannot be trusted and must be kept isolated, in the hope that its people will eventually rise up and depose their regime.

But what if the things we think we know about this country and its way of life don’t hold up to scrutiny? Are defector accounts always truthful? Are there any questions we could raise, or doubts we could have? Surely no one would lie about experiencing hell on earth, right? Well, the best thing we can do is listen to what these defectors have to say, and judge for ourselves.

One of the most fascinating people on the roster of outspoken defectors is Park Yeonmi, an activist who frequently speaks out about life in North Korea and champions causes opposing its government; she has made many appearances on television and social media, spoken at numerous talks about human rights and is a published author. 

Yeonmi was born in 1993, right as the DPRK was hit with a terrible famine which went on to be known within the country as the Arduous March. She is the daughter of Byeon Keum Sook and Park Jin Sik and grew up in the border town of Hyesan, near China, together with her big sister Park Eunmi. According to her book, In Order to Live, much of her early life was characterised by a state of absolute poverty, her parents resorting to desperate measures to keep the family fed. It was often necessary to cuddle in front of the fireplace just to keep warm on cold nights due to lacking electricity and even death was no stranger; People were dying all the time due to starvation.

As food rations from the state became scarce, many North Korean families were forced to think outside the box for support, buying food and selling other goods independently to make ends meet. Park Jin Sik began trading in Chinese cigarettes and other forms of contraband in order to live, a practice initially deeply frowned upon under the DPRK’s planned, directed Communist system.

According to Yeonmi, visits to the black market occurred often and she even was involved in illegal activities from time to time too. But as more open markets sprouted up with the knowledge and acceptance of the North’s government, more citizens of Hyesan began excelling in forms of legal bartering and Park Jin Sik sold products of greater and greater value to keep up the worth of his trade, he began selling smuggled metals (such as copper, silver and even gold) to complement the rest of his stock, the North Korean government was none the wiser.

But eventually this illegal trading caught up with him and Park Jin Sik was arrested, sent away to serve a long prison sentence. This led to various periods during which the Park sisters needed to fend for themselves with the intermittent support of their mother. Yeonmi claimed to have endured terrible periods of hunger, needing to catch grasshoppers and dragonflies and eat various plant life in order to survive. According to the book, when Byeon Keum Sook was arrested and sent to a labor camp, Yeonmi and Eunmi were dropped off at their uncle’s place. Byeon Keum Sook was eventually released and Park Jin Sik got his 17 year sentence temporarily suspended due to illness, reuniting the family. 

Realising how desperate their situation was, the Parks secretly began plotting their escape. Yeonmi was recovering at the hospital from an appendectomy when Eunmi left for China on her own without the knowledge of the others. This prompted Yeonmi and her mother to follow in Eunmi’s footsteps to China, fleeing the DPRK with the help of Chinese brokers. As it was stated in the book:

“She begged me, “Just give me one chance to tell your father that I’m going. Then I’ll come back.” I wouldn’t let her leave, not even to tell my father. He would find a way to stop her, or she would change her mind. I knew if I let her out of my sight I would never see her again. So I said everything I could to persuade her to go with me now. I told her that we would find Eunmi and could settle in China first, and then we would get Father to come later.”

~ Page 120 “In Order to Live”

So as we can read, Yeonmi and her mother were so desperate, they decided to leave Park Jin Sik behind to escape on his own. Through luck or determination the family actually reunited in China, but sadly Park Jin Sik succumbed to cancer and passed away. He was then buried in secret by his family to prevent the body being discovered by Chinese authorities. From China Yeonmi and her mother were able to pass through to Mongolia and from there to South Korea and later the United States, where they now live.

Or at least, that’s one way she tells this story, on other occasions she claimed to have left the country with both of her parents together, saying “I went to China with my family so, my mom my father…” “I crossed to China so I escaped with my mom and my father three of us.”.

So, which one of the stories is true? In reading an article from The Diplomat written by journalist Mary Ann Jolley titled “The Strange Tale of Yeonmi Park”, we can see Yeonmi elaborated in an interview that she together with both her parents defected from the DPRK with the use of cars belonging to Chinese contacts her father established through his years of illegal trade.

Interestingly enough, Yeonmi responded to this article and made various corrections surrounding her claims but notably did not change her statements on 2 key facts that appeared in the article; that she left with both her parents and that they were picked up by cars. This does not add up with most other accounts of the escape she has made where, as we read previously, she described leaving her father behind and travelling on foot across the frozen Yalu River to reach the Chinese border. Despite this narrative not matching with the stories she told to various other journalists, she did not point it out as miscommunication or misreporting in her response.

A common justification for the discrepancies in Yeonmi’s stories is a language barrier or a murky childhood memory, she initially claimed to have climbed over mountains to reach China and had to eat grass to survive during the famine, but after these claims were questioned she later stated that “grass” and “plants” in Korean use very similar words, as do “mountain” and “hill”, which can explain some strange details. However, I think it is unreasonable to believe that two drastically different versions of the Park family’s escape story are up to not speaking English properly and I doubt that you can cast 2 completely different fates for her father as simply misremembering, even from someone at a young age.

How do you say “We left my dad behind” in Korean? Is it similar to “I defected to China with both my parents”?

Additionally, Yeonmi’s book, which she has claimed is the entirely true account of her story, still makes references to mountains despite this language barrier clarification, it also includes accounts from Yeonmi about witnessing public executions in Hyesan City even though she claimed in her response to The Diplomat article, which also included the execution anecdotes, that “I never said that I saw executions in Hyesan’’ and any implication to the contrary was due to “miscommunication”. Remember, this article and the response were written before the book was finished.

So these execution rumours were mentioned, she publicly debunked them, then went on to repeat them in her supposedly 100% truthful written account? Why criticise a journalist for reporting a claim that you then go on to make yourself?

There are more discrepancies and questionable details that should be brought to light as well. In an interview with SBS Dateline, the same interview where the discrepancies over her father leaving or staying came to light, it is mentioned that Yeonmi and her family crossed into China through the Tumen river, while in her book the very first sentence describes them as crossing through the Yalu river, 2 different rivers straddling across 2 different sides of the North Korean border.

Do these rivers have similar names in Korean too?

Even more notably, the DPRK analysis site 38North claimed in an article before the book’s publication that other advocate defectors believed Park was “taking the stories of other refugees” to use in her own account, these alleged defectors were not named, so this is info to take with a big grain of salt, yet the allegations of plagiarism, coupled with numerous examples of blatant inconsistencies, are hard to ignore.

Some defenders of Yeonmi have made the case that her inaccuracies should not diminish her trustworthiness in the eyes of others, and that it is unfair to question these discrepancies as muddled memories can be caused by trauma.

While it is obviously reasonable to imagine that a trauma survivor could not give you a perfectly accurate point by point timeline of their experiences, especially on a first attempt; that dates or orders of events could be mixed up, Yeonmi has a track record of telling key segments of her story differently across a period of not days or weeks or months, but years, far from a one time occurrence or an understandable slip up. 

Ultimately, if you want to be an outspoken activist and base that activism on your personal life story, you should be able to tell that story with consistency and honesty, as it is inevitable that your activism will be undermined if that story later shows to be filled with gaps, irreconcilable differences or unanswerable questions, something we can especially see by the fact that the DPRK has capitalised on Yeonmi’s inconsistencies in its own state media documentaries.

These sorts of problems are in a way a reminder of a story: The Boy Who Cried Wolf, if you tell lies over and over again, when you eventually come forward and say “now, I’m offering you the full truth”, can you really be surprised if that “truth” is seen as another misdirection? If your credibility as a trustworthy source has been lost? If the state you’ve made it your mission to call out uses your own claims against you?

The DPRK is already known in the public eye as a country shrouded in darkness. To create reporting that shines a light on it there has to be a solid standard of truthfulness, a standard that North Korea related journalism seems to badly lack with its tendency to spread stories that appear out of seemingly nowhere like wildfire with little to no basis in truth.

Speaking of shoddy reporting…

Section 2: Playing pretend with Journalism

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Now after we sprayed Yeonmi’s story with bullets, it is time to look at another facet of her career. Yeonmi pretends to be a journalist, just like how I pretend to be one! The big difference being that this report here is heavily backed up with research. But surely the shit Yeonmi comes out with can’t be as bad as… I don’t know, claiming that cannibalism is resurging in the DPRK based on watching a movie?

So, Yeonmi baits the viewer into her report on cannibalism in the DPRK and explains only halfway through the report that this description of cannibalism only took place in a movie, no sources are linked in the description of the video, all we get are anecdotes. Actually, no videos I have seen from her YouTube channel include any kind of sourcing linked whatsoever, always containing the same stock links to her social media and her book.

And just in case you might assume this is just a one time example of rookie journalism, a mistake that wouldn’t be repeated, here’s another example of this bait and switch technique.

At a first glance this video seems to be all about what life is like for LGBT people in North Korea, something that would seem like a rather interesting topic; how a socially conservative society responds to people with different sexualities and unconventional mindsets, but when you actually get into watching the video it turns out to be all about TikToks, complaining about pronouns and people in American society questioning their gender identity. The closest we get to hearing about North Korea is a series of anecdotes about the culture shock Yeonmi and her defector friend experienced when seeing these topics being brought up in the West for the first time, at no point does the video ever address its supposed topic, what happens to gay people in North Korea.

So as we can see, Yeonmi Park’s supposedly “informative” videos are, to put it politely, economical with the truth, and just in case you think we’re cherry picking from the more ridiculous videos she likes to put out, here’s a bunch more examples of the questionable things Yeonmi has to say on her channel!

And for the last stop on this train of tall tales we’ve decided to ride on, how about we show one of the most dubious recent examples of these weird anecdotes Yeonmi presents to her audience. We looked at this video, where she talks about a horrifying event where Kim Jong-Un executed an orchestra conductor by shooting him 90 times in front of every artist in the capital city.

She didn’t provide any reference for this account but we did some research of our own and found this article which lists a source for the story, a South Korean reporter named Joo Seong-ha. The article notes that Seong-ha’s story has no independent verification and goes on to point out that he could not even name the supposedly executed conductor.

These stories from the South Korean press, which Yeonmi and many others seem to get their news from, puzzle me a lot, because they seem to put 2 opposite images of North Korea together and expect us not to question them while doing so. On one hand we are told that North Korea is a country where no one can get in or out, where moving from even one town to the next is difficult, where international phone calls are impossible to make and you can’t talk to anyone without a secret policeman listening in on your every word; on the other hand, South Korean journalists come out with these stories about supposed current events in North Korea all the time. They must be getting their info from someone, right?

How is it that the DPRK is a country totally cut off from the rest of the world, yet also a country where time and time again people are able to reach out and give all the gritty details on the next horror story of the week to members of the media on the other side of the border? How is it that North Korea can be such an information black hole, yet be a journalist’s wet dream at the same time?

Of course, there is one explanation I can offer, the South Korean newspapers are making all this shit up to get a quick buck from their readers, but that would be a bit too cynical of me to believe, right? I personally do not think so. The fact of the matter is that none of the tales we hear so often about have been backed up by any hard evidence. Sensationalist horror stories often go unchallenged by most media outlets, no matter how wild they sound. If they later turn out to be from the most unreliable accounts imaginable, or the story is able to be proven wrong, then tough shit, the damage has already been done.

Instead of being encouraged to think about the stories we hear from this country in a nuanced way, acknowledging both of the 2 sides that always appear on every coin, we are rather pressured into believing every word said without questioning its validity, since looking at these topics in any other way than the typical horror show narrative is painted as sympathising with a government marred by allegations of abuses and totalitarianism. But can one really believe that thirty thousand people were executed for one person’s defection, that committing a crime in this country dooms 8 generations of your family, without at a bare minimum raising an eyebrow? Is it reasonable to uncritically believe that wide ranging economic sanctions only affect the elite of the DPRK and have no part to play in its economic troubles or shortages? It turns out that Park Yeonmi likes to either not mention the sanctions at all, or downplay the effect they have on the North Korean people, if the DPRK is poor, trade embargoes and sanctions have nothing to do with it, it’s all down to the state, its leaders and the dreaded ideology of communism.

Speaking of communism, can you guess who HATES commies more than anyone else? Die hard, right wing, conservative Capitalists! I wonder what side of politics Yeonmi places herself on? 

Considering the fact that she was backed by the Freedom Factory and its partner, the Atlas Network, both Libertarian Think Tanks which despise left leaning governments, we might have found the reason why Yeonmi doesn’t like to talk about the sanctions or certain parts of North Korean history. These Think Tanks are no joke either, for instance the Atlas Network has partially been blamed by some for the destabilisation of Venezuela, which has faced violent protests over economic troubles and a battle for executive power between its government, headed by President Nicolas Maduro, and the opposition, headed by self-declared Interim President Juan Guaido.

Thank you Atlas!

Now, what is the problem with any sort of Think Tank sponsoring a shitload of people who make up stories or spew unverifiable claims to their YouTube audiences? Well, that sponsorship comes with a lot of concerning potential. You could mobilize this crowd of people to campaign against an ideology, the opposing political wing or in this case an entire fucking country. The last thing hardcore capitalists and libertarians want to see is a striving leftist or left leaning nation, so naturally they might just propagandize their defector partners to mislead the public, strain international relations with that nation and encourage more hardline policies against it from the capitalist world. 

The goal isn’t to just end the conflict and make the two Koreas coexist. The stranglehold the DPRK was put in mostly resembles a conform or die attitude; The DPRK is expected to give up everything it built over some 80 years and embrace a way of life from the opposite side of the border. While activism against a certain political system or set of ideas isn’t good or bad and everyone will have their different opinions on issues of this kind, using unreliable storytellers and exaggerated stories in order to do so is fucked up.

Now, since so much of what we hear about North Korea’s history is skewed to one side of the argument, why don’t we balance things out a little and offer up a side to this country’s story you might not have heard before!

Section 3: Sanctions, Nukes and History Lessons

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History and Famine

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America really dislikes Communism, and quite a few times that Anti-Communist ideology was a driving motivator to get involved in past conflicts; Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea? Ring any bells? In the case of Korea, we have to keep in mind that the freedom fighters back in the 1950s were the founders of North Korea! 

In the early 1900s Korea was annexed by Japanese imperialists, and remained in their grip until the end of WW2’s Pacific Theatre in 1945, when Koreans formed a new revolutionary government mixed between right wing nationalists and left wing socialists as the Japanese withdrew. This new government carried out a program of land reform, redistributing property to workers and farmers. You might think this is something the right would normally be against and unwilling to cooperate with and you’d be right! But in this case, Korean property at the time was overwhelmingly controlled by the Japanese and their cronies, in these conditions you can understand why nationalistic rightists would be happy to see these properties be taken into new hands.

Unfortunately for the Revolutionary Koreans, the big players of the war had other ideas and their government turned out to be short lived. Mid way through the year 2 young American Officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, picked up a National Geographic map and found a spot to split the country in half in the wake of Japanese capitulation, after a short time they settled on the 38th Parallel, a line that the Japanese and Pre Communist Russians had planned to split the country by decades earlier, at least, y’know, before the Japanese snatched everything for themselves.

They reasoned that this line would give the 2 victorious blocs of the Second World War roughly equal portions of land on the Korean Peninsula, but most importantly, would leave the capital city, Seoul, in US hands, they didn’t consult any experts, any historians, or any Koreans on their choice, but nonetheless it became the line that has divided a nation for almost 80 years.

The end result was that the country was split between the Americans, who embraced the Japanese and their collaborators and gave the revolutionaries the boot, sweeping Colonial Japanese crimes under the rug and later organising elections that were, according to the CIA, boycotted by more or less every party that wasn’t based on an extreme right wing ideology¹ and had very limited voting rights², in order to form the Republic of Korea or ROK, and the Soviets, who embraced the revolutionary system and molded it to work with their own, allowing it to carry out its original reform program and creating what eventually became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK.

For the next 5 years these 2 parts of the country began to develop separately under their own leaders, the Soviets chose to support Kim Il-Sung, a well known revolutionary who had been dubbed “The Tiger” by the Japanese for his insurgent activities, to lead the North, while the Americans backed Rhee Syngman, an exile political independence activist, for the South.

The split Korean nation faced widespread violence and unrest as both sides drew up plans to invade each other and the South faced multiple violent uprisings which were put down in equally violent reprisals by President Rhee, no one was willing to tolerate a divided Korea and neither side was willing to accept unification under the flag of their enemy, tensions very quickly reached a boiling point.

While the North is more or less unquestioningly seen as the aggressor in this conflict in the West for beginning an invasion into the South, it’s worth mentioning the extra context that they only committed to doing so after a string of provocations from the South at the border, believing the time had come to effectively retaliate.

The inevitable result was an all out war that lasted from 1950 to 1953, where the ROK, America and their allies fought under the banner of the recently formed United Nations against the DPRK and its Chinese allies. They could get away with this thanks to a domination of the UN Security Council by the US and its allies. China was represented on the Council at the time by the Pro-US Republic of China based on the island of Taiwan, not the Pro-DPRK People’s Republic on the Mainland, the USSR was having none of that shit so they protested by abstaining from taking a vote.

As a result, the US could push through United Nations Security Council Resolutions 82, 83 and 84 authorising war on North Korea under the UN flag. In short, 9 countries fraudulently claimed to be representing the whole international community of over 100 in a battle against an “illegitimate” government in the North, while backing up a supposedly “more legitimate” government in the South. Keep in mind, the United Nations was founded in order to establish an international forum for all countries, but as we can see it quickly became a tool for divisive Cold War power plays. 

Meanwhile the Chinese fielded their troops under a force known as the People’s Volunteer Army in order to avoid a scenario where their regular army, the People’s Liberation Army, was in combat with American forces, which could’ve sparked an unwanted extension of the war beyond Korea’s borders; Suddenly the battle goes from China versus America to a band of Volunteers versus the UN, bullshit was fought with bullshit!

Even now, many decades later, this smoke and mirrors direction is kept up, to this day the US and Allied forces in Korea go by the name of the “UN Command”, even though the UN itself has stated this military isn’t under their control but rather takes orders from the US military. This supposed “international” force has had a grand total of 2 Commanders that were Non American out of a total of 39 after over 7 decades. For the sake of balance it’s also worth pointing out that the Chinese still seem to pretend that their supposed “volunteer” force was anything but their original army with a new name slapped on for the sake of diplomacy, another pretty obvious misdirection.

And if that wasn’t all misleading enough, the US claimed they never went to war in Korea at all, even as it was happening, instead they were just participating in a “police action”, a “police action” with an army, fighting against another army, for control of a territory… Nope, definitely not a war. This was to dodge a requirement that exists in the US where the Congress has to be consulted before going to war, if there’s no war, there’s no need to ask! 

Now, I’m no expert in the American way of policing so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought cops did things like:

• Patrol their local area

• Give out traffic citations

• Investigate robberies

• Maybe, in more extreme scenarios, go after violent criminals

Not go into foreign countries and drop napalm over their villages.

Despite the fact that throughout this war Northern Korea ended up as one of the most bombed regions of the world, leaving behind cityscapes that could be confused with historical pictures of Hiroshima and racking up an impressive body count of between 2 and 3 million people, two thirds of which being civilian casualties, along with the fact that post war Southern Korea emerged to be a military junta and stayed that way until the end of the Cold War, the Western world is often told that they were the heroes and saviours in Korea in a victorious battle for freedom and democracy against tyranny.

Ultimately, knowing what we know, it seems more like a brutal war for control between 2 different world blocs that ended in a return to a tense status quo, leaving scars which still last today and affecting more than 70 million people. It’s a conflict that goes by many names in the history books depending on which country you’re from³, but one of the most common in the U.S. is the “Forgotten War”.

Maybe this is why we often struggle to see why the DPRK has such a siege mentality, and why current tensions are seen by them as an extension of decades of hostility. To us this conflict was a footnote, to them it was their defining moment, one they will most likely never forget.

A grand total of two cities changed hands when all was said and done, one from South to North and the other from North to South, while both sides claimed victory as they were able to preserve their political systems and achieve huge successes at different points in their campaigns; In terms of a formal end to the conflict, a peace deal has never been agreed, only a cease-fire which the DPRK, but not the ROK, chose to sign up to. Overall, since the war is technically still going on to this day, it’s an issue that likely won’t be settled for a very long time, the facts accommodate much less of a good vs evil narrative in this case.

To sum all this up, after the Koreans were freed from the grip of Japan, America arrived and in many ways started copying the methods of their old occupiers, preserving their forces, protecting their collaborators and occupying their old stomping grounds, and while the Soviet Union packed up and left the Korean Peninsula less than a decade after they arrived, the Americans are still there, calling the shots, to this day. Are you starting to see why the DPRK might hold a grudge yet?

So, now we’ve offered a new perspective on the DPRK’s birth, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the crisis of the Arduous March from 3 decades ago, which has been used to shape so much about our viewpoint on the country today. Yeonmi’s book, In Order to Live, claims North Korea’s fucked economy was spawned from the Soviet Union revoking food imports, China refusing to keep subsidising parts of the DPRKs economy and finally a heavy dose of “Communism bad!”.

What is missing from this historical recap is the fact that at the end of the Cold War, just as Kim Il-Sung was passing the position of leader on to his son, Kim Jong-Il, more or less all of North Korea’s trade partners, such as the German Democratic Republic, ceased to exist as countries or were forced through major economic upheavals, with their successor states like the Russian Federation and Unified Germany having little interest in maintaining the trade ties that acted as the DPRK’s export network and agreeing to take a harsh line against their former ally to appease the US. North Korea’s economy went from having a well integrated several decade strong support network of like minded countries to fuck all in the blink of an eye.

The DPRK attempted to foster an ideology of “self-reliance” to combat or slow these losses, but you can only be so self reliant when you live in a mountainous country not at all suited to farming.

To add to this pile of disasters North Korea faced mass floods described as being of “biblical proportions" throughout the 1990s, destroying much of the farmable land the country was already struggling to muster, worsening an already poor food situation and causing major damage to the DPRK’s power generation program, where Hydroelectric Dams act as a key energy source. A UN appeal from the mid 1990s described this flooding as “unheard of” and being of a magnitude that “had not been recorded in at least 70 years”, it estimated that the costs needed for UN agencies to help the country recover from these disasters totalled over 40 million dollars. One key thing to remember here is that every UN effort to relieve the DPRK of this crisis, both at the time of the Arduous March and in the modern day, has been vastly underfunded;

Governments are often scared off, intentionally or not, from participating in the UN effort by the policy against the DPRK spearheaded by the US, leaving agencies with budgets nowhere at all near the amount expected to be needed to handle the remaining struggles with malnutrition and a tragic crisis unresolved.

As well as governments, NGOs are also continuously scared away from providing aid in the DPRK due to the sanctions that were imposed on the country. Here we can show you a case study which details this problem, it explains how the work of an NGO called the Ignis Community has been sabotaged by the sanctions resolutions. Ignis needed to acquire appropriate U.S. licenses to be able to help in the North, yet it took them three years to obtain those licenses. After that they needed to file an exemption request from the UN Sanctions Committee which can take up to a year to be completed.

Ignis went through this bureaucratic nightmare and was able to eventually provide the DPRK with medical supplies, but sadly not many other NGOs follow in their footsteps and if they wanted to, the help would most definitely come far too late, a 2017 order from the US government banning its citizens from visiting or remaining in the DPRK has also exacerbated this problem.

But of course, in Yeonmi’s world, things are very different…

In her mind all of these factors do not matter at all, instead starvation and malnourishment is something deliberately concocted by the North Korean government, a modern day Holocaust that puts the DPRK on par with the Third Reich! While flooding disasters of Arduous March proportions have not repeated since the 1990s, the country has still been a hotspot for major flooding as recent as last year, yet somehow we are expected to believe that this country intentionally sabotaged its own workforce through malnourishment, slamming productivity to a halt, as a bid to hold on to power, and continues to do so. Does this claim at all match up with the facts? Did Kim Jong-Il sit down in his office and pray for these torrential downpours to destroy the fields, power stations and homes? If we go by the UN report we can see that mass flooding in the DPRK was so severe that not only did it destroy key infrastructure, it swept away entire villages and bridges and reportedly even changed the course of entire rivers permanently. Was this all a man made invention? 

The report also notes that “much of the rehabilitation work has been undertaken by the DPRK itself” but “the DPRK Government is not in a position to fully overcome the effects of the floods on its own”, is this not true either? What is the more likely scenario: The UN is gaslighting everyone into believing North Korea has been pulling its weight more than it really has; or a woman who hasn’t even lived in the country since she was 13 just doesn’t know what she’s talking about?

Sanctions and Nukes

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After this period of mass upheaval in the 1990s, the late 2000s brought varying layers of international sanctions on the DPRK which tightened over time, eventually more or less banning the country from legally trading with the rest of the world and participating in international banking.

While Yeonmi has this to say about sanctions…

“Because of sanctions North Korea cannot have any trades with other nations and the sanctions doesn’t affect, like, those daily life things, they affect the luxury goods that [are] going to Kim Jong Un.”

…A 48 page long analysis on their adverse effects would indicate another side to the story.

Tragically titled “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea”, this analysis is filled with unfortunate observations which showcase the consequences sanctions have in vital sectors of the DPRKs infrastructure, we highly encourage you to download this analysis yourself on the KoreaPeaceNow.org website. It details how the DPRK has been hit with a near total embargo by the UN Security Council under a recent policy of “Maximum Pressure”, disallowing the country from trading vital resources that it needs to keep its economy growing and its population fed and healthy.

Somehow, in Yeonmi’s mind, an embargo that bans North Korea from trading with any other country only harms Kim Jong-Un and restricts the luxuries the higher ranks of the country receive, not the local population or their necessities in any way!

Just think about that for a second, no permitted trade at all, none.

Who is that more likely to harm, the leadership or ordinary people dealing with these issues throughout their day to day lives? What is more likely to be lost as a result of this, luxury commodities or basic necessities?

If you’re still not sure how much a change like this could shock a nation, just think about how many foreign produced things you use every day, maybe some of the food you eat, the car you drive, the Phone, Tablet, TV, PC or Console you’re reading this article on, imagine all these things are no longer for sale and they’ll never be back in stock.

Even if you can imagine there being underground markets and off the books dealers bringing things into the country on a lower level it’s pretty easy to see that this will almost certainly have a huge impact on your lifestyle, not just that of your President, Prime Minister, Chancellor, King, Queen, whatever other ruler you happen to live under.

Now get this! This is another quote directly from the study on page 11:

”The UN exemption approval time frame is too short: it is valid for only 6 months, while the programme cycle in the DPRK—securing resources, international procurement, production of the goods/medicines, quality testing, and transport and distribution for most programme components— takes at least 9 to 12 months.”

So not only are the sanctions incredibly draconian, but they also make it systematically impossible for humanitarian exemption requests to be processed and approved. The tragic thing is that the UNSC already knows that sanctions have these side effects, yet is still allowing the system it has set up to interfere with humanitarian aid programs, here’s one last quote from the study to put things into perspective, it’s a very interesting one:

“Paradoxically, the North Korean government is excluded from applying for humanitarian exemptions despite being most responsible for the wellbeing of its people.”

So while we constantly hear about how the DPRK’s government does not provide for its people from international observers, here we can see that systematically, they are intentionally blocked from doing so. Maybe it’s just me, but I think if a Western, Capitalist country lost all its trade partners in the space of a year or two, faced mass floods for the next decade and then got progressively tangled up in greater and greater piles of red tape from a global blockade in the decade after it would be pretty fucked and near enough bankrupt as well!

Yeah Yeonmi, North Korean Holocaust my ass.

For me this is an eerie reminder of a major event in my own country’s history, one of the early flashpoints of the Cold War, the Berlin Blockade. From June 1948 to September 1949 the Soviet Union barred West Germans in Berlin from receiving food imports by blocking imports into the city via its railways, roads and canals, the only limited exemptions being several small air corridors connecting West Berlin, located deep within Soviet occupied Germany, with US, British and French occupied Germany.

Why? Due to the introduction of the German Mark, a new independent currency for West Germany that the Soviets wanted to be stopped in order to keep Germany submissive and under the watchful eye of the Eastern Bloc.

This humanitarian disaster was mitigated by constructing the Berliner Luftbrücke, which can literally be translated into English as the Berlin Airbridge, which travelled along the limited Soviet provided corridors. Great Britain and the United States transported goods to West Berlin by airplane to ensure that the civilian population was kept fed and healthy until the USSR realised their position was unsustainable and ended their blockade.

In a sense the DPRK could be said to have a similar bridge to feed its population, through the land rather than the air, at the Chinese border; But this is a rocky bridge as China varies on the strength of its support for the North and its willingness to turn a blind eye to the sanctions resolutions.

Also, while the Berlin Blockade lasted just under a year before the Soviets gave in, the Korean Blockade has lasted for 5 years and counting and there are no signs of an end to the crisis from the Americans. You can imagine the damage on the North Korean people’s wellbeing that has resulted from such a policy, Berliners were already left weary and desperate after going through a similar scenario that lasted 5 times less.

The simple fact is that attempting to starve civilian populations into submission, especially outside of a combat scenario like the scenes that took place in Post-War Berlin and the scenes taking place in modern Korea, is never a good or justifiable decision to make and will often rally people of the target country against those making it; After all, advocating for a sweeping embargo just because you feel like it’s worth screwing over a population of about 26 million is a sadistic position to assume.

The one silver lining of all this is the fact that the Koreans of the DPRK are tough as nails. After enduring the Arduous March and repeatedly being shown the middle finger by the rest of the world, North Korea has proven time and time again that they do not let themselves be bullied into submission. Their independence is ever growing and they also managed to up their food production significantly in recent times, showing that even during immense hardship, the international strategy of holding the Korean people’s livelihoods in the balance in exchange for political concessions isn’t a winning one.

While the sanctions do make it increasingly more difficult for the North Koreans to strive, nothing ever seemed to be too insurmountable to survive, much as the Cubans discovered from facing an embargo of their own by their closest neighbours… Oh yeah, the US at it again, one in this case the rest of the international community is much more willing to stand up to, there will always be workarounds, which I totally support by only smoking Cuban! These people are no pushovers, do not forget that!

Now of course, supporters of the sanctions would justify them by saying that they were provoked by the DPRK’s nuclear program and its habit of carrying out missile tests, and point out that all the DPRK has to do to see them lifted is stop the tests and disarm their WMDs, but let’s consider why the country has these weapons in the first place.

Why does any country want to build a nuclear arsenal? It’s the ultimate defence mechanism, countries tend not to attack you if you have weapons capable of destroying them in a matter of minutes at your disposal. And of all countries, the DPRK is probably most in need of weapons of this kind if it wants to avoid invasion. As we already explained, the Cold War wiped most of the DPRK’s allies off the map, depriving it of the collective security an alliance of supportive countries could provide, the country is on its own surrounded by richer neighbours with better funded armies on all sides⁴, one of which likes to practice invasions on its border every single year. In a situation like this you can see why the country would see a weapon like the atomic bomb as the best method to keep its borders secure. 

On top of this, statistics indicate that out of all the nuclear armed states, the DPRK actually has the least warheads, with around 30 bombs. Of course, 30 bombs capable of wiping entire cities or regions off the map sounds like a big problem, but to put that into perspective China has around 300 warheads, while the US and Russia have over 6000 each! Somehow superpower countries arming themselves with world ending arsenals is not an issue, but this one small country arming itself with a supply of weapons eclipsed by everyone else is so unacceptable that it needs to be starved into capitulation. The US does missile tests of its own, it has a huge arsenal of its own, do you think it would compromise and remove these weapons if demanded to by the international community? Would any other nuclear country? You can imagine the answer.

Some would say that the reason the DPRK having nukes is an issue while others having them is not comes down to how untrustworthy the country is with such a destructive weapon, because Kim Jong-Un is a madman constantly hovering his finger over the red button, but let’s ask ourselves, how many wars has the DPRK fought in? What about the US? How many nuclear bombs has the DPRK used against actual people, as opposed to the US? Which country seems more war -or, uh, “police action”- crazy when you put things into perspective?

And to add on to all these factors, the supposedly nuclear crazy North has made deals on dismantling their WMD program multiple times, coming to the table with their mortal enemy to try and find a common ground. The last time they tried this approach was in 2018 and 2019, where Kim Jong-Un met with Donald Trump and signed agreements pledging to denuclearisation, envisioning a step by step approach; Some parts of the WMD program are dismantled, some sanctions are pulled back, going through bit by bit until there are no more nuclear weapons and in turn, no more chains wrapped around the DPRK’s economy. But the Americans had a very different idea of how things would go, as Trump eventually decided to demand that Kim hand all of his nuclear weapons over to the US in bulk if he wanted sanctions to go, and that killed off the negotiations, leaving the North to carry on with their program. What’s the big difference between an immediate deal and a step by step approach you might wonder, surely it produces the same end result? The DPRK should be happy anyway!

It’s simple, the issue is trust, with a step by step approach both sides can build confidence in each other and see their agreements are being followed, one big deal straight away is filled with question marks for the DPRK, what if they handed over their bombs and the Americans chose not to hold up their part of the bargain and kept the sanctions? The country would suddenly be decades behind on their defence program, much more vulnerable to attack, in exchange for nothing in return, if the North Koreans didn’t hold up their end the Americans could reimpose sanctions with the stroke of a pen, the consequences for the Americans not following through are far greater for the North.

Deals like this falling apart are nothing new either, as early as the mid 1990s the DPRK and the US came to the table with an arrangement, the two sides would normalise relations, the US would help build light water reactors in the country to compensate for the loss of power from denuclearisation and supply electricity and heating oil to the North until they were completed, in exchange the DPRK would phase out its WMD program, the North Koreans began to follow this arrangement, shutting down their reactors and ending construction projects on newer ones, but the Americans delivered their oil infrequently and late and never provided funding for the water reactors, as for normalising relations?

Yeah, didn’t go so well. So the deal collapsed and North Korea went back to its WMD development, as we can see twice the supposedly nuke crazy country has signed deals to dismantle its program and both times it has fallen through, not because of the DPRK, but because of the people on the other side of the table who were supposed to be its partners.

Suddenly this whole issue is looking much less like a problem the DPRK has imposed on itself and more like an issue created by outside pressure, nuclear armed countries berating the North for playing them at their own game. The whole story reeks of an old lesson, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Yeonmi conveniently forgetting to mention the brutal embargo and when she does remember to talk about it, saying that the sanctions do not affect the general public but only the elite, shows how little the self entitled “Voice of North Korea” actually knows about the problems her people endure. Journalistic masterpieces like; Cannibalism is resurging and I know because I watched a scary film, or Kim Jong-Un is creating a real life Squid Game in his country because military parades exist, only make a mockery of the DPRK without offering potential resolutions to some of the many problems the Koreans of the DPRK have to endure.

If Park Yeonmi has the best interests of her people in mind, she should be raising awareness of the embargo, which is one of the main reasons why the poorest of the Korean people are starved and sickly. How can one expect for a country to further industrialize and produce necessities when said country is disallowed from purchasing fuels and any item that contains metals. The reality is that the DPRK wants to trade, but if no one is able or willing to help or exchange goods, there are no options left but to sit patiently by and wait.

Section 4: Stage Managed Image

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Now you might say, “It does not matter if Yeonmi lied about some things, she still endured a terrible existence in North Korea and spreads awareness!” and there’s no doubt that growing up in such a time of hardship must have taken a toll on her and the other North Koreans who chose to leave their home country. But in the end we have to ask ourselves, where does this awareness lead us if it is presented in the form of skewed, misleading activism? Tales peppered with exaggeration, both of how bad the North is and how great the South is, have massively warped public perception on the two Koreas and those who choose to cross its borders. A messy, inaccurate picture. 

Something foreign media sources often choose to omit is the fact that North Koreans are a neglected minority in South Korea; At many times pushed to confess to be spies, forbidden to ever travel back home if they so wished and severely disadvantaged in the job market, as it is not an uncommon phenomenon for the South’s population to see Northerners as outright enemies or second class citizens.

This kind of treatment and lacking opportunity helps us understand why the phenomenon of the celebrity defector has become so widespread in the last few decades of mass media. Let’s say you’re a poor North Korean refugee with little in the way of future prospects; One day a journalist knocks on your door and asks you to talk about your arduous journey to the South. They might nudge you to exaggerate or provide you with the words to say to make sure your story has the impact the editors want to get across, with rewards in line for creating something newsworthy and following the script. Once you get used to the pattern of crowd pleasing and finally climbing out of the life of poverty you thought you’d be stuck with for good, you realise you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole without much in the way of an exit. This is only speculation, but maybe this is how the celebrity defector Park Yeonmi was created. 

The question I pose myself is; Is how the DPRK is treated just? While most defectors, even those who massively exaggerate their accounts, likely do what they do to get by in an alienating society and don’t hold malicious intents, the reality is their words are twisted and used as products of hate, used to create a cartoonish villainous image of the North that only feeds the perception we have of the country as an enemy to be at best contained and at worst destroyed. Not only is this a problem because it obscures the truth and doesn’t show journalistic integrity, but more than that it’s a problem because this portrayal has a real world impact on roughly 26 million lives, in some cases defector accounts have been seen to directly influence policy makers into further tightening the noose around the DPRK. 

The ultimate impact of this web of lies, revised stories and contradicting narratives is that many anecdotes are overblown or just plain idiotic, turning out to rely solely on unprovable word of mouth. Tragically I must admit that the trust I have had for defectors has been permanently tainted, what is a fabrication and what pertains to reality? The lines have been massively blurred and the seeming willingness of journalists to accept this state of affairs has only deepened this distrust.

Section 5: Conclusion

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Be honest, before you were confronted with this information, did you think everything you heard about North Korea was true? That the country was always responsible for its own hardship, that the Kim dynasty wanted to starve its own people and wipe out its neighbours with nukes? Well, so did I until I got the chance to see the other side of the coin, and no one can be blamed for believing this narrative, it’s a mindset spread far and wide with little in the way of competing messages to challenge it. 

And while this messaging of demonisation against the DPRK carries on without an effective counterargument, politicians can still justify harsher and harsher actions against its people, barricading this country in, keeping it cut off from the outside, unable to trade, to keep much of its infrastructure running or offer its people a sense of normalcy in their lives. This kind of situation will carry on until either we challenge the messaging, or the country collapses. Maybe some think that all this is worth it for the sake of pushing North Korea’s political system to the brink, but ultimately we have to ask ourselves, do the people of this country deserve to be starved out because of the system they live under or the decisions of their leaders, punishing some 26 million for the decisions of a few? Is adding to their problems through embargoes and threats going to make their lives better in the long run or not? Is it going to create the conditions for peace, or is it going to encourage a further butting of heads and more explosive conflict?

The fate of the people living in the Hermit Kingdom mostly lies on the perception the world has on them, as international pressure could weaken or strengthen the strangleholds foreign governments hold on the DPRK and right now, in part thanks to the phenomenon of celebrity defectors, the country does not stand in a good light.

SOURCES

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_{This list is identical to the list used in the credits of the video version of the documentary, some of the video sources may not have appeared in this written version.}

Video Sources and Showcased Articles (Order of appearance)

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“How do we change a mindset?” - By SBS Insight

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Fovpy6lmg

“I Am a North Korean Millennial - Yeonmi Park (CC)” - By Liberty in North Korea

Source: https://youtu.be/uDXkdjx7VAE

“Celebrity Defector: Speaking out against North Korea” - By SBS Dateline

Source: https://youtu.be/PD44psFn-nI

“Bob Zadek Show June 22nd 2014”

Source: https://static.squarespace.com/static/53615d24e4b0a4907f99ed24/t/53a8f1b2e4b04eb3d0ae79aa/1403580850616/Bob%20Zadek%20Show%20%20June%2022%202014.mp3/original/Bob+Zadek+Show++June+22+2014.mp3

“The Strange Tale of Yeonmi Park” - By Mary Ann Jolley

Source: https://thediplomat.com/2014/12/the-strange-tale-of-yeonmi-park/

“When North Koreans Go South, Some Go Professional” - By Jason Strother

Source: https://www.38north.org/2015/06/jstrother062515/

“Yeonmi Park Details Horrific Effects of North Korean Starvation” - By PowerfulJRE

Source: https://youtu.be/KK6psAnynUA

“Is Kim Jong-Un Gay?” - By Yeonmi Park

Source: https://youtu.be/Ra5FApzc9Es

“The Lies of Yeonmi Park - A Cunning Witch Using Deceptive Tears” - North Korean State Media

Source: https://youtu.be/-GiWERASEPY

“The true story of Yeonmi Park, who got rich through lies about her homeland DPRK” - North Korean State Media

Source: https://youtu.be/9W_bplUZdho

“Breaking: Shocking Resurgence of Cannibalism in North Korea” - By Yeonmi Park

Source: https://youtu.be/RoxZfs_baNg

“What would happen if you are a gay person in North Korea” - By Yeonmi Park

Source: https://youtu.be/I8gxf1ioxYw

“Shocking Secret of Kim Yo-jong” - By Yeonmi Park

Source: https://youtu.be/-V6HIwaly_8

“Tyranny, Slavery and Columbia U | Yeonmi Park | The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - S4: E26”

Source: https://youtu.be/8yqa-SdJtT4

“Breaking: Kim Jong-Un might be dying from brain tumor” - By Yeonmi Park

Source: https://youtu.be/X6iC-nHrBog

“Kim Jong-Un brutally shoots an orchestra conductor 90 times in front of every artist in Pyongyang” - By Yeonmi Park

Source: https://youtu.be/469kgY8vPNE

“Kim Jong-Un Had Conductor Executed By Firing Squad Following Celebration, South Korean Paper Says” - By Jon Jackson

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/kim-jong-un-firing-squad-conductor-1590226

“Yeonmi Park Tells Her Unbelievable Story About Escaping North Korea” - By Candace Owens

Source: https://youtu.be/Ua00hjZpY6E

“Yeonmi Park | Escaping from North Korea in search of freedom | One Young World”

Source: https://youtu.be/Ei-gGvLWOZI

“SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: HOW AMERICAN LIBERTARIANS ARE REMAKING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS” - By Lee Fang

Source: https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/atlas-network-alejandro-chafuen-libertarian-think-tank-latin-america-brazil/

“Venezuela protest: Opposition clashes with police” - By Al Jazeera English

Source: https://youtu.be/1lVlhEc–Rg

“Maria Corina Machado thanks the Atlas Network”

Source: https://youtu.be/FC8uYOJvxuI

“An Introduction to Atlas Network” - By Atlas Network

Source: https://youtu.be/gag_l4JUbJc

“North Korea lashes out at US over Biden ‘insults’ | DW News” - Source: https://youtu.be/nwqsKrj75gc

“Kim Jong-un meets with South Korean president at historic summit” - By The Telegraph

Source: https://youtu.be/cPoFrJUvaXE

“U.S. Keeps Japanese Rulers In Korea to Enforce Orders; Hodge Reassures Koreans U.S.  WILL RETAIN KOREA JAPANESE Abe Signs for Japanese By RICHARD J. H. JOHNSTON  Says Japanese Warned Koreans”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1945/09/10/archives/us-keeps-japanese-rulers-in-korea-to-enforce-orders-hodge-reassures.html

“Koreans March in Protest Against Keeping Japanese; Officials in Washington Amazed at Army Action–State Department Disclaims Any Part in Move–MacArthur Bars Disorder”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1945/09/11/archives/koreans-march-in-protest-against-keeping-japanese-officials-in.html

Excerpt from “Korea Yearbook (2009): Politics, Economy and Society” - Edited by Rüdiger Frank, Jim Hoare, Patrick Kölner, Susan Pares

Source: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CmaWblhxJsEC&pg=PA234&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Excerpt from “Prospects for the survival of the Republic of Korea”

Source: CIA Document published on October 1948

Excerpt from “The Korean War : a history” - By Bruce Cummings

Source: https://archive.org/details/koreanwarhistory0000cumi/page/112/mode/2up

“The 1997 Famine That Still Affects North Korea Today” - By Journeyman Pictures

Source: https://youtu.be/30-2sPGNGEw

“United Nations Consolidated UN Inter-agency Appeal for Flood-related Emergency Humanitarian Assistance to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)”

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/19970803063603/http://www.reliefweb.int/emergenc/korea/source/dha/appeal96/prk_atx1.html

“North Korea: Who is sending aid?” - By the BBC

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48637518

“The Human Costs and Gendered Impact on North Korea” - By Korea Peace Now

https://koreapeacenow.org/first-comprehensive-assessment-of-the-impact-of-sanctions-against-north-korea-shows-adverse-consequences-for-civilians-especially-women/

“The 200 Americans Living in North Korea Have Little Time Left to Leave” - By Elizabeth Diaz

Source: https://time.com/4913703/americans-living-north-korea-have-little-time-left/

“Escaped From North Korea, Sold in China - Yeonmi Park Interview” - By laowhy86

Source: https://youtu.be/xykyagu3twI

“Which Country Has The Most Nuclear Weapons?” - By Jessica Dillinger

Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-nuclear-weapons.html

“Watch Historic Meeting Between Trump, Kim Jong Un In The DMZ | NBC News”

Source: https://youtu.be/P5QpCaMHJjQ

Photograph of Trump by GAGE SKIDMORE

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/5440609290

“Exclusive: With a piece of paper, Trump called on Kim to hand over nuclear weapons” - By Lesley Wroughton, David Brunnstrom

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-document-exclusive-idUSKCN1RA2NR

Photograph of Reactor by NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION’S PHOTOSTREAM

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/69383258@N08/16041740052

“President George W Bush’s first State of the Union Speech” - By AP Archive

Source: https://youtu.be/YaSy2Yoex3E

“Almost half of defectors experience discrimination in the South: major survey” - By JH Ahn

Source: https://www.nknews.org/2017/03/close-to-half-of-defectors-face-discrimination-in-the-south-says-govt-survey/

“After fleeing North Korea, some defectors want to go back to life under Kim Jong-un” - By Matthey Carney

Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-15/north-korean-defectors-returning-to-the-hermit-kingdom/9254654

“Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart?” - By Jiyoung Song

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart

Sources (written formats not including showcased sources)

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When North Koreans Go South, Some Go Professional

https://www.38north.org/2015/06/jstrother062515/ 

South Korea boosts reward for defectors from North to $860,000

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39170614

US intel chief: North Korea will never give up nukes

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/25/politics/clapper-north-korea-nuclear-weapons-lost-cause/index.html

A Second Look: Media Coverage of the 7th Workers’ Party of Korea Congress

https://www.38north.org/2016/05/rcarlin051716/

Why South Korean media so often misses the mark on North Korea

https://www.nknews.org/2017/09/why-south-korean-media-so-often-misses-the-mark-on-north-korea/

North Korea’s invisible phone, killer dogs and other such stories - why the world is transfixed

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10554198/North-Koreas-invisible-phone-killer-dogs-and-other-such-stories-why-the-world-is-transfixed.html

A cautionary tale of dogs, imposters and North Korea

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-25621324

Hyperbole, sensationalism and surreal stories about North Korea

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2014/01/13/2003581169

‘Wrong as Often as Right’ Is Good Enough When Reporting on an Official Enemy

https://fair.org/home/wrong-as-often-as-right-is-good-enough-when-reporting-on-an-official-enemy/ 

North Korea criticises ‘reptile media’ for saying Kim Jong-un ordered executions

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/23/north-korea-reptile-media-kim-jongun

Dangerous, isolated and primed for war? North Korean clichés debunked

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/27/north-korea-cliches-debunked-hazel-smith

Kim Jong Un approval rating over 50 percent, poll of defectors finds

https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-08-30/kim-jong-un-approval-rating-over-50-percent-poll-defectors-finds

Kim Jong-un’s approval rating higher than Barack Obama’s

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10276670/Kim-Jong-uns-approval-rating-higher-than-Barack-Obamas.html

Kim Jong Un Now Has a Nearly 80% Approval Rating… in South Korea

https://time.com/5262898/kim-jong-un-approval-rating/

History of South Korea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea

NIS public opinion manipulation scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_NIS_public_opinion_manipulation_scandal

South Korea’s troubling history of jailing ex-presidents

https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/asia/south-koreas-troubling-history-of-jailing-ex-presidents/

People’s Republic of Korea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea#Development_in_the_North 

1948 South Korean Constitutional Assembly election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_South_Korean_Constitutional_Assembly_election#Background

North Korean parliamentary election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_North_Korean_parliamentary_election

Jeju uprising

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising

Suncheon rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeosu%E2%80%93Suncheon_rebellion

Death of controversial four-star general stokes S. Korea’s ideological divide

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/953443.html

Seoul frees long-term prisoners

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/283787.stm

North Korean restaurant staff defection was forced, manager says

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-44839653

Kim Jong-un’s ‘weight problem’ and the pitfalls of spy briefings

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-36700765

Effects of Sanctions on North Korea’s Refined Oil Prices

https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/effects-sanctions-north-koreas-refined-oil-prices

Report: Sanctions on N. Korea Not Working; Harming Civilian Population

https://www.voanews.com/amp/east-asia-pacific_report-sanctions-n-korea-not-working-harming-civilian-population/6178784.html

Videos Documentaries and Channels

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South Korea Releases Decades-Old Political Prisoners (1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2LqgtIyfZM&ab_channel=JourneymanPictures

AP: S. Korea Covered Up Mass Abuse, Killings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbZtPL4uea0&ab_channel=AssociatedPress

We Went To North Korea To Get A Haircut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E

Daily life in North Korea - “My Brothers and Sisters in the North” (Full awarded documentary)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBqeC8ihsO8

North Korea Travel Vlog - Rozz Recommends Season 3: EP4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHypiQpL2yQ

This North Korean Defector Hopes Trump Will Help Her Return Home (HBO)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BY0nfAaN18&ab_channel=VICENews

DAILY LIFE IN NORTH KOREA - THE WORLD’S MOST SECRET STATE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz2kh2Ls01U&ab_channel=Lovenature%26discovery

Phuong DPRK Daily

https://www.youtube.com/c/%ED%91%B8%EC%98%B9PhuongDPRKDaily

Jaka Parker

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzvCf_q10UZkUJE0lOav0ag

Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0

DPRK Video Archive
https://www.youtube.com/c/DPRKVideoArchive/videos

Totally Legit North Korea Journalist Sources

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• “trust me bro”

• A North Korean source

• A North Korean

• A source

• A contact that does not want to be named

• Radio Free Asia (aka the CIA)

• South Korean “Intelligence” Agencies

• Mongrel Think Tanks that like starving kids :)))

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Changelog

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• Edit 1 - 26/02/24 - Added numerous missing sources (these weren’t initially carried over because they weren’t hyperlinked in the Google Doc of the script this article was based on), added release date disclaimer, other presentation improvements
• Edit 2 - 07/03/24 - Added extra line splitting release date disclaimer from article introduction and line break between the video embed and the article intro
• Edit 3 - 11/03/24 - Extra media (video clips, Yalu/Tumen river image, image of Yeonmi’s book on the DPRK’s economic collapse, images of Korea Peace Now study), added missing sources (The Intercept on Venezuela/Freedom Factory, Multiple Perspectives on Korean War, links to more of Yeonmi’s videos), extra footnote on Korean War names, splitting some paragraphs up for easier reading, fixes to sources list

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PDFs/Books and Footnotes

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