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North Korea – teenagers executed for distributing South Korean movies
- kleiba 4y agoA drastic reminder of the pure luxury we're allowed to live in in the West, and a call to arms against all those trying to threaten our democracies.
- AuthorizedCust 4y agoI’m reluctant to use “luxury” to describe these rights, and even more reluctant to suggest the west shares them well. The former sets up an argument that these rights are superfluous, and the latter fails to recognize areas where the west does poorly at upholding rights, especially the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments.
- matesz 4y ago> the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments Ok enough I quit hacker news
- LegitShady 4y agoThe list of people who care about you being here is empty while people concerned about the trajectory of free expression is a significant portion of several democracies. Good luck on Reddit or Slashdot or whatever is next for you.
- wholinator2 4y agoThen go. The quality of your comment is extremely poor and is the exact kind of talk that will eventually turn this place into reddit, echo chamber devoid of actual discussion and difficult ideas. Here, the goal is to say something meaningful and extend the conversation, not stop discussion with vague appeal to emotions about frustrations with the "wrong opinion". I'd've actually been on your side in a discussion if it had continued rather than being stonewalled by attempting to set up a barrier between who's allowed to post and who's not. By commenting that you're implicitly pushing this place towards a culture that throws its hands up and plugs its ears whenever a "difficult" idea is presented. If you cannot handle that, then this isn't the place for you. But who knows, maybe if you'd genuinely asked and heard them out instead of going all, "we don't like your kind here", you might've found yourself agreeing with them. Who knows, but this is about the genuine and free discussion of ideas, not baiting flame wars. Edit: this is a long comment. It's the first one I've posted after seeing growing number of anti-discussion, reddit-like behavior. It's personally frustrating to me because this is where I go to get away from stuff like this. I hope this isn't too angry or judgy, and I hope everyone's doing okay.
- hairofadog 4y agoTo be fair, while I wouldn’t generally be in favor of a comment like the one you're replying to, I did feel empathy for it in this case. It's not about avoiding a difficult topic; it's exhaustion with this extremely tiresome tendency to try to bring bad-faith arguments about social media moderation into literally every topic. It reminds me of the scene in The Big Lebowski: https://youtu.be/pn-kxUEySy0 https://youtu.be/pn-kxUEySy0 "Excuse me, sir. Please keep your voices down. This is a family restaurant." "Oh please, dear. For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!" Is social media moderation worth discussing? Sure! Is, "Teens may or may not have been executed for distributing movies, but on the other hand they deleted my tweet" a conversation worth having? Debatable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 0dayz 4y agoI mean you're allowed to move to north Korea if you want.
- 41tor 4y agoI'd rather move someplace slightly better like... Queens ;-)
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> former sets up an argument that these rights are superfluous Luxury has more than one meaning [1]. If you prefer the language of counting blessings, so be it, though I could also pedantically quibble it implies a divine underwriting of our fundamental rights. > the latter fails to recognize areas where the west does poorly at upholding rights, especially the limitations on speech imposed by many western governments This crosses from pedantic quibbling to missing the forest for the trees. [1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/luxury https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/luxury
- crims0n 4y agoOP was making the point that we shouldn't take our rights in the West for granted, because there are people in the world who have it demonstrably worse. Not every statement needs to account for all variables.
- imwillofficial 4y agoCompared to, I don’t know, the entirety of human existence, we live in absolute luxury
- ricardoplouis 4y agoThe luxury and call to arms fails to reach all ears considering out government routinely does the same thing to teenagers in the states, but because they are poor and black, it's largely considered acceptable in our culture.
- luckylion 4y agoCan you link to a recent case where a teenager was executed for distributing movies?
- 41tor 4y ago> Can you link to a recent case where a teenager was executed for distributing movies? Did you read the OP? O_o
- luckylion 4y agoNorth Korea isn't part of the United States. The comment referenced the US. Obviously, that's what I'm asking about.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 4y agoPeople have definitely been raided by police for distributing movies over the Internet. It's only a matter of time until somebody gets killed.
- ricardoplouis 4y agoI'm mostly referring to the cases where the teenager or child was killed by the police for no reason at all. There's no movie involved, but the execution happens nonetheless https://eji.org/news/black-children-are-six-times-more-likely-to-be-shot-to-death-by-police/ https://eji.org/news/black-children-are-six-times-more-likel...
- 4y ago
- mrtksn 4y agoI don't know, the West is also preoccupied with content moderation, restriction of movement of people, restriction of ideas, abolishment of the democracy and the laws so "right things can be done" and there are people calling for executions. It's not even the oppressors VS the freedom fighters, the fight going on is over who is going to be the oppressor and what exactly should be restricted. I'm also worried that the online spaces have no accountability and that has become the norm. People and content is removed from public spaces all the time by all powerful people and algorithms, what happens if the that thinking expands beyond online forums? The existence of the individual has been forgotten and people are virtually executed at whim and I'm not sure that with the proliferation of killer drones people are not simply going to push a button and clean up the real world annoyances without thinking about the moral implications of the action.
- icare_1er 4y agoTotally agree. I would not even begin to compare our societies with North Korea but one does not need equality of situation to make a comparison. The tendency in the West is clearly to suppress content, decide arbitrarily what is good and what is evil, what you should watch and not watch.
- mrtksn 4y agoUnfortunately the digitalisation has enabled that being done at scale. Before everything going always online and recorded, the tendency to restrict freedoms was unfeasible for the most part. Not anymore.
- icare_1er 4y agoEverytime topics like this are mentionned, with the totalitarian regimes in North Korea, Iran or elsewhere, it's funny to see how free access to resources, VPNs, open internet, etc... is treated differently. Good when it comes to dictatorships, but evil when in the west.
- fyresala 4y agoWhen free access to resources, VPNs, open internet, etc. are considered evil in the west?
- ekianjo 4y agoby politicians who want to make it seem everyone using a VPN is doing evil stuff
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoI haven’t heard this one, but I’m in the US. Maybe they are elsewhere. Can you name some of these politicians?
- icare_1er 4y agoYou haven't noticed those shiny banners on Tweets or Youtube videos, shadow-banning articles for your own good or warning you that it is "disputed" ? Twitter recently has been a good example of desire to control information, with half of the political class and even head of states (Macron) saying that it should be "controlled" to restrict "fake news", by fake news they of course mean someone talking about H.Biden's laptop, or someone saying that there are only two genders.
- BurningPenguin 4y agoHey, one of France's neighbours here: Nobody gives a damn about you talking about dumb shit, as long as it doesn't endanger one or many people. What we actually care about, is a bunch of people - who coincidentally seem to come from the same political spectrum - using a public space, to artificially push unfounded conspiracy theories, and trying to rile up society, so they can seize power and abolish democracy as a whole. All by using fake accounts, bots and apparently Russian money to destabilize society, and also gathering weapons for their great "liberation" from the deep state or some shit. At the same time they keep on whining about "freedom of speech", every time their bullshit is getting called out. Just recently, a bunch of conspiracy freaks in my country were raided by police, since they were found out to be preparing for a coup. Funnily enough, it was once again people from right-wing parties, Qanons and one descendant of former royalty in Germany.
- chasd00 4y ago> we're allowed to live in the West “allowed”? Who exactly did we ask permission? The government should live in fear of the governed.
- modo_mario 4y ago>a call to arms against all those wrt interventionism and avoiding past mistakes: Keep in mind a big part of what has kept the north korean regime so stable is the memory of plentiful massacres that occurred during the war. Villages that were killed due to suspicion of collaboration and a south Korean dictatorship till 88 or so. As others pointed out by others as well: Much of what ends up reported about NK ends up being fake. I have no doubt that NK is a brutal authoritarian regime but after all the fake stories i kind of tune out to news like this.
- pfoof 4y agoOut of context but TVP is national polish TV full of authoritarian leaning party political bias
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoYou can not educate your youth like the boss was educated, thats decadent.
- sushzbdbehsh 4y ago>SOURCE: RADIO FREE ASIA, LIBERTY TIMES
- esailija 4y agoI.E. US State Department
- 41tor 4y agoSo to clarify, what's your issue here? Do you think they weren't executed? Or is it that you think executing them is totally normal and cool?
- pigsty 4y agoIf you were to believe them, Kim ate too much cheese and it forced him to disappear, and he died several times. Also he killed an uncle with an anti-aircraft gun, and he reappeared, so he fed him to dogs, then he reappeared again. (These are things they literally reported) Anyone who enjoys their reporting may also have an interest in Weekly World News.
- kcatskcolbdi 4y agoThey weren't executed.
- 41tor 4y ago
- dtx1 4y agoAt some point we have to accept that this is the People of North Koreas fault. They are very aware that their country is massively worse off than the rest of the world, yet they don't murder their kings.
- notRobot 4y agoLmao. > They are very aware that their country is massively worse off than the rest of the world That's not necessarily true. They don't have access to the internet or foreign media. Only propaganda. > yet they don't murder their kings If it was that easy, every country would be a democracy.
- 41tor 4y ago>That's not necessarily true. They don't have access to the internet or foreign media. Only propaganda. That's wildly inaccurate, read "Nothing to Envy" then educate yourself on advancements in censorship circumvention since then -- they regularly get movies and films on USB paired with broadcasts into border regions.
- dmitriid 4y agoThere are currently people in Russia with near-unlimited access to internet (and until quite recently with near-unlimited access to travel) who sincerely believe that the West is hell on Earth. You greatly underestimate the power of propaganda.
- 41tor 4y agoSpeaking as an American... they can stay in Russia then, more power to them. I remember seeing a video of two guys just walking holding hands and the entire town basically ready to jump them, not knowing there was a camera going. If they want to live like victims, fine, that's a choice you can make, I just don't want them exporting their insanity.
- wuiheerfoj 4y ago
- 41tor 4y agoRest in power. Death to totalitarians.
- throwaway122122 4y ago>source: Radio Free Asia, Liberty Times Every time. And as usual, only unnamed sources. Other great hits include: - Every citizen must use the same haircut as Kim Jong-un - NK government announced that they found a "unicorn" - NK official was executed for bad posture - Kim Jong-un's uncle was eaten alive by starving dogs - Kim Jong-un labels DOG MEAT a 'superfood' - North Korea tells parents to give kids patriotic name like 'bomb', 'gun' and 'satellite' - North Korea bans sarcasm because Kim Jong-un fears people only agree with him ‘ironically’ It's not like North Korea is paradise. It's certainly not. It's another poor third world nation, not unlike many of the ones currently on the western side of things where the same sort of life happens. But, of course, you won't hear a word of (unless it's Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, that is).
- ShivShankaran 4y agoYou will hear more than a word of any foreign entity when the US has started plans to invade them while their enemies will be called stunning and brave... eg Taliban, Kurds, vietnamese, Ukrainians.... Irony of calling north Koreans brainwashed
- wil421 4y agoThe Kurds and Ukrainians are the US’s enemies?
- ShivShankaran 4y agoI meant they are enemies of states that the US wants to attack. Once they are used up, US will throw them out to the dogs. Like how US greenlighted turkey to attack kurds this week.
- fyresala 4y agoReplacing US with NK, the comment will never be allowed to post in NK. They don't have an Internet though. Also your comment is a counter-example for the US's brainwash, if that holds.
- DoItToMe81 4y agoIsn't this sourced from the same people who claimed North Korea made propaganda about colonizing the sun?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- roguesupport 4y ago[flagged]
- iJohnDoe 4y agoA lot of these comments are really disgusting. Kudos to the few trying to call then out. There have been many firsthand accounts of those that have escaped North Korea and shared what it’s like to live there. Concentration camps, starving, torture, chemical warfare experiments on prisoners, famine. A firsthand account from a female that escaped from North Korea shared that the North Korea government will shutdown the power grid without notice and then raid homes looking for DVDs stuck in players (because no power to eject) and will kill those people responsible. Those that escape North Korea across the river to China are caught and put into sex trafficking. China is complicit in supporting the horrible treatment of the North Korean people. At least one source. https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/71/ https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/71/