Actually, no. If you are born in a poor NK family, you are starving all the time and you can’t even try to go to another country, under threat of death. Poor north koreans are basically starved slaves. Do you want to be a starving slave? I don’t think so.

Here’s some perspective for you. The nations that you mentioned are currently in turmoil, but have the opportunity to improve. North Korea does not have that opportunity; its issues are not a matter of organization, but of tyranny, and are far more dangerous as a result.

I have visited the DPRK myself and spent nearly a week there. This man’s videos and the time of the commentary are horrendously disturbing.

Welcome to the new normal millenials! A world where brutal dictatorships are ignored for profit by the privileged few, and propaganda painting a picture of near perfection with slick production values is the soup du jour.

Don’t know who this is, don’t WANT to know who this is. If he thinks North Korea is so great, he should go there and try living life like an every day citizen - I doubt he’d enjoy the famine and the forced labor so much. Or to sum up my thoughts in two much shorter words, F#$# HIM.

I think you’d probably regret that choice.

The dude is callous. All he cares about is his own amusement, that’s clear. And it’s real fucking easy to focus on positivity when your entire life has been one goldcloth cushion of privilege. This kind of myopia truly disgusts.

Oh please. How the fuck is the US more evil than NK? The US doesn’t kill people with anti-aircraft rounds for falling asleep during meetings.

Except nobody thinks north koreans are bad people - no more or less than any other nation of people.. if anything, most people feel sympathy for them, for the fact they live under a brutal regime, that they are starving en masse constantly... nobody I’ve ever spoke to about them spoke ill of the korean people, most…

The problem with this dude’s thought process (aside from, you know, everything) is the concept that we need to combat coverage that leans to one side by producing coverage that skews that far in the opposite direction. There’s plenty of times where the bad outweighs the good, and the idea is to have an accurate…

Malnutrition mostly, from what I understand.

North Korea isn’t Iran, not by a long shot. And Rick Steves’s travels there were infinitely more education and nuanced than this.

well there are only so many actors you can “hire” (I doubt they’re paid... they just get special treatment, like not going to jail for no reason, or something). Yes, those people you see in the streets (at least where the tourists are allowed) are almost all actors, to make the country look better than it is. And also…

North Korea is literally a prison that you are born into. It’s not a real country. The citizens of North Korea are, for lack of a better word, victims. Anything that helps to legitimize the government aides the unjust situation.

He’s normalizing the oppressors, while benefiting personally. Not helping the oppressed one bit.

This is lunacy. Absolutely no one but a crazy person would believe that the NK government reflects its people AT ALL! This is an engaging strawman argument. It is a tolitarian regime that has had the people of the country under its boot for generations! They didn’t fucking elect anyone so how could anyone think, or…

“Human connection is the only step forward in bringing our world together”

How do you test for that?

That first one is the most important. I knew a guy that forgot a round was on the chamber and accidentally shot one of his cats legs clean off.

If only those were actual rules, rather than just guidelines.