Introduction #
MEGArundown was a format intended as a short form version of the MEGA documentaries, intended to be presented as videos that would be around 5-15 minutes long, the idea I had for the format was that it could get our points across to audiences who didn’t have the time or interest to watch an hour+ long documentary, and also potentially act as a “gateway drug” to the full production, you would get a taste of the themes in the rundown and that would spark your interest, drawing you into the full documentary.
I wrote MEGArundown scripts for the first 2 episodes of MEGA (“Yeonmi and North Korea” and “The Ukraine Narratives”) back in March 2022, but they were never made, as time passed and we worked on new projects it became less important to direct viewers to these old docs.
I’m releasing the 2 MEGArundown scripts here on Entropic Domain both as a bit of cut content/historical curiosity and so they can potentially fulfil their original purpose, if you don’t have the time to read/watch our first 2 MEGA episodes you can read the rundowns instead and get the gist of what we had to say, enjoy!
This script was originally written from the 14th-15th of March 2022, and first released publicly on the 25th of February 2024 (via this website)
MEGArundown: Yeonmi and North Korea #
Yeonmi Park is a defector and content creator from the country of North Korea, she has become well known for the story of her escape from the country, which she has revealed in interviews with journalists and later her book, In Order To Live.
North Korea and its government are often discussed in the news, and Yeonmi Park is often used as a living example of crimes allegedly committed by the North Korean government.
However, her accounts of her life in North Korea and her escape have revealed numerous contradictions that undermine her activism, including:
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Who she escaped with
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Where she escaped from
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Whether or not she witnessed executions in her home city of Hyesan
Along with many other discrepancies.
She has also been accused of copying the stories of other defectors for her own testimony.
Yeonmi is an example of a “celebrity defector”.
As a result of discrimination, North Koreans living in South Korea have limited their job opportunities, one of the few career paths open to North Koreans is to appear in the media, selling their stories to newspapers or appearing on television, becoming “celebrity defectors”.
These defectors are often pressured by the South Korean press to exaggerate their stories to feed an appetite for sensationalism, leading to a distorted image of what life in North Korea is really like.
Misleading accounts from defectors like these have a real world impact, directly contributing to the development of Anti North Korea policies by lawmakers; These policies have resulted in a US-led initiative to impose widespread economic sanctions on North Korea, preventing the country from receiving resources needed to maintain the health of its population.
Along with the use of defector testimonies, advocates of Anti North Korea policies further justify sanctions by referring to the fact that North Korea has a nuclear weapons program, branding the country a “rogue state” for pursuing it and claiming that sanctions will prevent it.
This ignores the fact that North Korea is surrounded by neighbours with much higher defence budgets than its own, and that it has the least nuclear warheads of all nuclear armed states. For comparison, the United States, which has often been the lead promoter of Anti North Korea policies, has 200-300x more nuclear weapons than North Korea.
Sanctions advocates also argue that sanctions imposed on the North only affect its leaders, not ordinary people, this is a narrative Yeonmi Park has been known to promote in the past. However, studies have shown that this claim is false.
The campaign group Korea Peace Now has listed numerous humanitarian resources that cannot be imported into North Korea due to sanctions, such as:
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Hand-tools for agriculture (shovels, hoes, spades, etc…)
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Tractors & spare tractor parts
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Medical appliances, including ultrasound and cardiograph machines
And referred to case studies where humanitarian efforts have faced interference due to restrictions from the sanctions.
The claim that sanctions could prevent North Korea’s nuclear program from succeeding, or intimidate North Korea into unconditionally abandoning it, has also been proven false; The country’s possession of nuclear weapons shows they are a complete failure of a policy, yet a humanitarian disaster is still being imposed by the sanctions in spite of this fact.
Sensationalist stories surrounding North Korea and news organisations that exploit celebrity defectors to promote Anti North Korea narratives have overshadowed these real humanitarian tragedies and distorted public perception.
Yeonmi Park has also participated in the spreading of these stories beyond her own testimony as a defector by reporting them as “news” on her YouTube channel, which is watched by hundreds of thousands of people, with some videos even reaching the millions in their viewer counts.
None of these reports have been verified as fact, and in one case a video was outright removed for blatant misinformation as a result of our reporting.
A lack of scrutiny towards these stories has led to a media environment where misinformation spreads with ease on an unprecedented scale, acting as cover for hostile policies that have major effects on a population of over 20 million people, millions who are not responsible for the choices of their leaders or the disputes those leaders have with the wider world.
The concept of guilt by association is being conducted on an unimaginable scale, and there is no valid justification for it.
Want to know more?
- Watch or read the full documentary, MEGA: Yeonmi and North Korea:
- Or buy the special edition, MEGA Yeonmi and North Korea UNSANCTIONED on Gumroad, includes bonus content
Welcome to MEGA.
Changelog #
Edit 1 - 06/03/2024 - Replaced documentary hyperlink at the end with a nicer looking article link Edit 2 - 07/03/2024 - Changed article date to when the script was finished (as opposed to when it was first released publicly), added extra line splitting release disclaimer from article