38north.org is a pretty decent source on North Korean news.
Or actually attack the credibility of the story.
You have the burden of proof backwards: WHY would anyone believe that “hot dogs are banned in North Korea”. It simply makes no sense. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
There’s no reason to think the story is credible. I’ve searched it and it appears RFA posted it in November, then The Sun picked it up 3 days ago. Then various repeaters.
Are you saying RFA isn’t a branch of US interests? I have never heard anyone make that claim before.
No, I’m saying that their reporting and fact-checking is credible.
38north.org is a pretty decent source on North Korean news.
Yes, it certainly appears to be.
You have the burden of proof backwards: WHY would anyone believe that “hot dogs are banned in North Korea”. It simply makes no sense. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
Because North Korea’s dictatorship has a well-documented history of atrocities and bizarre, freedom-limiting proclamations. Heck, it’s well-known for banning foods that it considers contrary to its culture, such as sushi, and it’s hard to imagine a more western food than hotdogs.
There’s no reason to think the story is credible. I’ve searched it and it appears RFA posted it in November, then The Sun picked it up 3 days ago. Then various repeaters.
a well-documented history of atrocities and bizarre, freedom-limiting proclamations… it’s well-known for banning foods that it considers contrary to its culture, such as sushi
You are coming across as someone who believes things they read on the internet.
People have done a good job in the more upvoted comments of showing you why you’re jumping to conclusions, but you keep doubling down like you have something to prove.
Pyongyang is not North Korea. It’s a Potemkin village designed to present a false image to the rest of the world.
And it’s hilarious to accuse me of jumping to conclusions when all I’ve been saying is that RFA is credible and we don’t have a reason to believe they’re lying about this.
If we end up with evidence that they’re lying, I’ll happily remove the post.
Pyongyang is not North Korea. It’s a Potemkin village designed to present a false image to the rest of the world.
You are going down a rabbithole of increasingly improbable beliefs. First you say hotdogs are banned; then you support that by saying sushi is banned; then you support that in turn by saying that a city my friends have been to is a lie. This city.
Surely at some point you’d realise, “Wait I’ve been fed lies.” Nobody can seriously believe that Pyongyang is a propaganda piece.
Reminds me of the Wikipedia edit war where people were trying to claim that a shared bicycle scheme “is propaganda”.
I’m going down a rabbithole? You’ve entirely bought into North Korean propaganda and believe a city they literally use as a showcase for foreigners to lie about life in the country is somehow representative of the country, and I’m the one going down a rabbithole?
Surely at some point you’d realize, “Wait I’ve been fed lies.” Nobody can seriously believe that Pyongyang isn’t a propaganda piece.
Foreign visitors are given strict routines and routes they must follow, with government minders at all times to prevent them from photographing anything they don’t want seen or talking to people who they aren’t approved to talk to. Of course it looks good in the photos and videos that are allowed out, because it’s a carefully constructed and orchestrated falsehood.
But even in that, it fails, because of what’s so obviously missing from Pyongyang that you find in pretty much any other major city.
Ever been to an actual large and well-off city that isn’t in a despotic dictatorship? Paris? Tokyo? London? New York? Mexico City? Toronto? If you’ve ever been to any city like those, you’ll find you don’t have government handlers, can take photos of anything you want, there is traffic on the streets of all sorts, there is music, there is entertainment, parts of the city will be dirty while others are beautiful, and no one is putting on a performance for you.
This is a photo of downtown Pyongyang:
Do you see what’s missing? That’s the largest city in the country, in the middle of the day. A four-lane street cutting right through the heart of the city - and it’s nearly empty of traffic. The street next to it clearly has more people in it, but most are on foot.
The image of the city as presented to people like your friends that have been there really is a lie. Not everything, of course… I mean, people do live, work, and go about their lives there, too. Obviously. There’s a great uncut video of a drive through Pyongyang here that highlights that fact - just people, living their lives. It matches pretty well with the video you shared, too. Real people, walking the streets of Pyongyang. No dispute there.
But both videos also highlight how weird the city is, with the regular propaganda street-signs, the fact that the streets are far over-built for the traffic that they carry, the sparseness of all forms of traffic (seriously, the parts of the videos that are most densely packed with people still look less active than cities 1/10th Pyongyang’s size), the weirdly identical brutalist apartment buildings everywhere… And then, once the driving video leaves downtown Pyongyang, cars basically vanish from the street (which becomes much more poorly maintained). It becomes apparent that people are walking - likely for hours - to get to and from their places of work.
Other things I looked for and didn’t find in either video:
Cafes. There are no cafes visible in either one, anywhere. There are a couple street food vendors, and that’s basically it.
Windows. There are no businesses or organizations of any sort with windows that would let anyone see in or out. Watch a bike tour of Paris to see what an incredible difference windows make.
Shopfronts. I don’t doubt there are businesses in Pyongyang, but you will not be able to identify any of them from either your bike ride video or my drive through video. You’ll see very few signs (except for propaganda posters of Kim Il Sung), lots of faceless, nondescript buildings, and tons of brutalist apartments.
Teenagers. I didn’t see a single person who looked like a teenager in either video. That’s not to say I don’t think they exist there, of course, but usually in a vibrant city you’ll see people of all ages.
Architectural variety. Every building looks like it basically follows the same design pattern.
Clothing variety. Most people in both videos were wearing basically similar outfits. I noticed in the bike video several women wearing identical coats.
Shopping bags. In any other large city, you would expect to see people coming or going from shopping expeditions. Not one person that I could find in either video looked like they were going shopping. Maybe the woman at 4:45 in the pink coat in the bicycling video, though those didn’t really look like shopping bags. She was also one of only a small number of people I saw wearing anything colorful at all. (Another was right at the beginning of the bike video).
Art. As far as I could tell, there is no street art anywhere in Pyongyang with the exception of things like monuments to Kim Il Sung. No sculptures, no murals, not even any flower gardens. Maybe they exist in other parts of the city, but they were certainly not visible in either video.
Music. At about 50 seconds in, there is music briefly audible in this Paris bike ride. There is never any music audible at any point in the Pyongyang bike ride. (I happen to like this particular Paris ride video because it shows the city, good parts and bad.)
Seriously, watch any video of a driving or bicycling tour through nearly any major city in any other country, and you’ll see astonishing differences. It’s impossible to watch your friend’s video or the driving video I shared and conclude that’s a thriving city when compared to cities like Tokyo or Paris.
In this post you seem to be entirely arguing against a point that was never made by your opponent.
Nobody says north korea is a good place, just that these claims made by radio free asia are at the very best completely baseless, and can only be believed if we take their word for it, and they are an inherently biased source. Surely you must acknowledge the bias in the fact that they are entirely funded by the US government, no?
There’s no way for me to verify ANY of those claims made by radio free asia, nobody is saying north korea is a great place, which is what you seem to be arguing with.
It’d be really weird to ban sushi everywhere except one city, don’t you think? How do we prove sushi is banned elsewhere? Our only choice is to trust radio free asia, why didn’t they include the evidence of this in their reports? Why didn’t they give us any way to verify the information for ourselves? Don’t you find this highly suspect?
Nobody is arguing north korea is actually good, just that they’re an easy target to make up shit about. I can’t find a single article on radio free asia about north korea where they provide ANY evidence for ANY of their claims.
As for “is pyongyang a propaganda piece” they obviously mean the city really exists, and the fact that they have guided tours with strict routing means that parts of it are propaganda pieces at best… If the whole city was a propaganda piece, why would they need that?
And none of them back those claims up. Or actually attack the credibility of the story.
Now then, are you here to defend Kim Jong Un too?
“those claims” meaning that RFA is linked to US intelligence/politics?
Are you saying RFA isn’t a branch of US interests? I have never heard anyone make that claim before.
See 1st paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Agency_for_Global_Media
38north.org is a pretty decent source on North Korean news.
You have the burden of proof backwards: WHY would anyone believe that “hot dogs are banned in North Korea”. It simply makes no sense. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
There’s no reason to think the story is credible. I’ve searched it and it appears RFA posted it in November, then The Sun picked it up 3 days ago. Then various repeaters.
No, I’m saying that their reporting and fact-checking is credible.
Yes, it certainly appears to be.
Because North Korea’s dictatorship has a well-documented history of atrocities and bizarre, freedom-limiting proclamations. Heck, it’s well-known for banning foods that it considers contrary to its culture, such as sushi, and it’s hard to imagine a more western food than hotdogs.
And RFA is credible.
“well-documented”… then a link to worldpopulationreview.com without a mention of their source??
You are coming across as someone who believes things they read on the internet.
People have done a good job in the more upvoted comments of showing you why you’re jumping to conclusions, but you keep doubling down like you have something to prove.
Here’s Vice saying many Pyongyang residents love sushi.
Pyongyang is not North Korea. It’s a Potemkin village designed to present a false image to the rest of the world.
And it’s hilarious to accuse me of jumping to conclusions when all I’ve been saying is that RFA is credible and we don’t have a reason to believe they’re lying about this.
If we end up with evidence that they’re lying, I’ll happily remove the post.
You are going down a rabbithole of increasingly improbable beliefs. First you say hotdogs are banned; then you support that by saying sushi is banned; then you support that in turn by saying that a city my friends have been to is a lie. This city.
Surely at some point you’d realise, “Wait I’ve been fed lies.” Nobody can seriously believe that Pyongyang is a propaganda piece.
Reminds me of the Wikipedia edit war where people were trying to claim that a shared bicycle scheme “is propaganda”.
I’m going down a rabbithole? You’ve entirely bought into North Korean propaganda and believe a city they literally use as a showcase for foreigners to lie about life in the country is somehow representative of the country, and I’m the one going down a rabbithole?
Surely at some point you’d realize, “Wait I’ve been fed lies.” Nobody can seriously believe that Pyongyang isn’t a propaganda piece.
Foreign visitors are given strict routines and routes they must follow, with government minders at all times to prevent them from photographing anything they don’t want seen or talking to people who they aren’t approved to talk to. Of course it looks good in the photos and videos that are allowed out, because it’s a carefully constructed and orchestrated falsehood.
But even in that, it fails, because of what’s so obviously missing from Pyongyang that you find in pretty much any other major city.
Ever been to an actual large and well-off city that isn’t in a despotic dictatorship? Paris? Tokyo? London? New York? Mexico City? Toronto? If you’ve ever been to any city like those, you’ll find you don’t have government handlers, can take photos of anything you want, there is traffic on the streets of all sorts, there is music, there is entertainment, parts of the city will be dirty while others are beautiful, and no one is putting on a performance for you.
This is a photo of downtown Pyongyang:
Do you see what’s missing? That’s the largest city in the country, in the middle of the day. A four-lane street cutting right through the heart of the city - and it’s nearly empty of traffic. The street next to it clearly has more people in it, but most are on foot.
The image of the city as presented to people like your friends that have been there really is a lie. Not everything, of course… I mean, people do live, work, and go about their lives there, too. Obviously. There’s a great uncut video of a drive through Pyongyang here that highlights that fact - just people, living their lives. It matches pretty well with the video you shared, too. Real people, walking the streets of Pyongyang. No dispute there.
But both videos also highlight how weird the city is, with the regular propaganda street-signs, the fact that the streets are far over-built for the traffic that they carry, the sparseness of all forms of traffic (seriously, the parts of the videos that are most densely packed with people still look less active than cities 1/10th Pyongyang’s size), the weirdly identical brutalist apartment buildings everywhere… And then, once the driving video leaves downtown Pyongyang, cars basically vanish from the street (which becomes much more poorly maintained). It becomes apparent that people are walking - likely for hours - to get to and from their places of work.
Other things I looked for and didn’t find in either video:
Seriously, watch any video of a driving or bicycling tour through nearly any major city in any other country, and you’ll see astonishing differences. It’s impossible to watch your friend’s video or the driving video I shared and conclude that’s a thriving city when compared to cities like Tokyo or Paris.
In this post you seem to be entirely arguing against a point that was never made by your opponent.
Nobody says north korea is a good place, just that these claims made by radio free asia are at the very best completely baseless, and can only be believed if we take their word for it, and they are an inherently biased source. Surely you must acknowledge the bias in the fact that they are entirely funded by the US government, no?
There’s no way for me to verify ANY of those claims made by radio free asia, nobody is saying north korea is a great place, which is what you seem to be arguing with.
It’d be really weird to ban sushi everywhere except one city, don’t you think? How do we prove sushi is banned elsewhere? Our only choice is to trust radio free asia, why didn’t they include the evidence of this in their reports? Why didn’t they give us any way to verify the information for ourselves? Don’t you find this highly suspect?
Nobody is arguing north korea is actually good, just that they’re an easy target to make up shit about. I can’t find a single article on radio free asia about north korea where they provide ANY evidence for ANY of their claims.
As for “is pyongyang a propaganda piece” they obviously mean the city really exists, and the fact that they have guided tours with strict routing means that parts of it are propaganda pieces at best… If the whole city was a propaganda piece, why would they need that?