• bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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    25 days ago

    Turns out South Korea was a brutal military dictatorship under the backing of the US way longer than you’d think

            • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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              24 days ago

              People always say this to but I don’t think it’s even true, or misrepresents greatly the situation.

              1. North Korea was the better place to live until the collapse of the USSR and mid-90s famine. That’s not up for debate. Their living standard and quality of life were overall much higher than ROK thanks to Russian subsidies.

              2. North Korea has far less farmland than the ROK, which has many more river valleys and warmer latitudes. North Korea also lacks trading partners due to sanctions, while ROK currently imports around 80 percent of its food.

              3. The US and ROK time their military drills specifically to fuck with DPRK’s planting and harvesting seasons, forcing them to divert manpower to defense positions when they need able-bodied men to be on farms.

              Given these three points, I think North Korean hunger is almost entirely due to the US and its policies. But nobody likes to hear that the Kims might not be horrible monsters

        • FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus
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          24 days ago

          Lets just say “superpowers and brutal dictatorships”.

          Whoevers dominating in a period in history generally didn’t get there by advocating for peace and self determination.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Okay, but have you heard the President of North Korea claimed he scored a perfect golf game and doesn’t poop? That’s pretty bad, too.

      • subversive_dev@lemmy.ml
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        24 days ago

        Here’s a fun game - try sourcing that absurd claim without using any media source funded by NED/USAGM

      • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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        25 days ago

        Or North Korea’s imprisonment of entire generations of a family as a form of collective punishment.

        Two things can be bad, you don’t have to rush to defend one side.

        • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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          24 days ago

          Real question: Is this even true?

          If it’s true, how true is it? Who actually receives those punishment? For what crimes?

            • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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              10 days ago

              Actually this is somewhat true.

              People who escape North Korea have zero prospects here in the ROK where I currently live. It’s the most competitive economy and job market you can imagine.

              Defectors have no professional certifications, no college degree, and no plastic surgery (pervasive in ROK where a photo is required to add to your CV).

              Moreover, ROK people are highly judgmental toward anybody different. North Koreans “talk funny” so they are immediately outcast.

              (Recently, to address the situation, the ROK government has started a program to get NK refugees jobs as bus drivers)

              The best way for these refugees to make money is to tell their stories. And the more sensational, the better. They get speaking gigs, book deals, and small fame with their faces on TV.

              Here’s a news story addressing its directly: Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart? | North Korea | The Guardian https://share.google/fqpw81A1uZwXk0lR7

              TL;DR NK refugees are “paid actors” in a sense

      • naeap@sopuli.xyz
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        25 days ago

        Ah, that’s why he is so fat and instead of exploding, he just talks so much shit, to at least get rid of some of it

  • chloroken@lemmy.ml
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    25 days ago

    So few opportunities to use the word “decimate” literally. And now, one fewer.

      • chloroken@lemmy.ml
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        25 days ago

        It would be neither. It would be appropriate.

        Can you define the word redundant for me?

        • Tenniswaffles@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          24 days ago

          If it were phrased “they decimated the population” most would assume from the phrasing that it mean that you’re saying that a large proportion was killed, because that’s how that word is actually used in the English language. If it were phrased “they decimated 10 percent of the population” you’re either using the word as people understand it wrong or your saying they killed 10 percent of the population twice right next to each other, which is you know, redundant.

          The definition of words reflect how we use them. An interesting fact is that scientists use Latin for scientific names of things because no one speaks Latin so the meanings of those words will not change with time. It’s the same in courts, you’ll find that a lot of old English words that aren’t commonly used in everyday conversation are used and that’s so that the meaning of things stay consistent over time.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            24 days ago

            If you replace “wiped out” in the title of the OP with decimate then it’d be exactly as wasteful, would use the word as it’s understood in modern English properly, and you’d get to use the original meaning too. Sure, it’s redundant (sort of) but it doesn’t take any extra time or space than what’s already written.

  • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    25 days ago

    hol up, Jeju island is a real place and a real massacre took place there? Doesn’t that make it kinda fucked up that the manga Solo Leveling used it as a location and set a different, wholly unrelated massacre there? I just naively assumed they made up an island. There wasn’t even a mention of the labor struggle in either the manga or the anime.

    • harmsy@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Jeju Island is basically the Kenny of South Korean novels and webcomics. Place gets cooked pretty often.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      OP is a bot

      And yet I’ve had DM convos with them that were remarkably like talking with a human. Am I a bot?

      • vin@lemmynsfw.com
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        24 days ago

        Very high number of posts, very few comments, for this user.

        An average user with a genuine question or sharing will engage with other users. Although with LLMs, there are bots that reply too, in the writing you’ll see AI failings, not human failings.

        • Otter@lemmy.ca
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          24 days ago

          I don’t think cm0002 is a bot. From what I remember, cm0002 makes a lot of posts to grow various communities, some of which are crossposts in between communities with similar topics. Although this account looks different from the one I remember, so maybe this one is an alt.

          I personally don’t find that behaviour to be harmful unless it’s fully automated or a fire hose of low quality junk. If a human is picking out the content to post, then it gives people something to discuss and vote on.

          I’m likely biased myself since I also schedule out posts with another account @otters_raft@lemmy.ca. I do that since this account is an admin account, and so I don’t want to risk any issues if the scheduling tool goes haywire. I do check it about once a day and respond to comments when appropriate, but overall the post to comment ratio on that account is pretty lopsided.

          We DO get harmful bots too, and they get downvoted/reported/banned very quickly. Those are pretty obvious since they post spam and ads in unrelated communities.