Sorry, you’re asking me whether the motives of South Korea are suspect? A nation that is still officially at war with North Korea and regularly engages in inevitably provocative war games in partnership the US?
I mean sure, if we lived in a world composed of goodies and baddies, then I’d take your point.
That would be plausible, although I think that the idea of being attacked by a troop of Williamsburg hipsters less than terrifying.
(Disclosure: I was once given this haircut as a sort of emergency cover-up job due to a hairdressing ‘incident’ There are no pictures).
Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi certainly gave a shit about hairstyles. Beards too. Women in trousers or short skirts. So yes, I’d say it’s pretty likely.
So we can’t even trust native Korean speakers to translate correctly because they’re not Perfect McPerfects?
Yeah, fair point - although I’m not very familiar with written Chichewa either… (lol joakes)
No more than I’d trust everything a Croat said about a Serb (or vice-versa).
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only person who understood what I meant!
I don’t think we’re the target market for the golfing or unicorn stories, those are likely for internal consumption. I think any nation without significant freedom of the press is susceptible to fantastic stories. The US is too, but we can look to see what other countries are saying, and get a balanced view. If BBC and RT are repeating it, it’s means it’s not just a US fantasy. This story came out first that it was all men, then it was amended to being just students, and some sources just saying that it may not be true at all. There may or may not be a grain of truth behind the stories, but the common stories of starvation and autocracy seem to be true. I think the silly season stuff is most widely heard, but most of what I’ve been hearing over the years has just been dismal. I think people who are given tremendous privilege in any culture will often behave in excess, in the US that’s seen in individuals jumping on couches on Oprah, having drug/alcohol/bad drving binges. He’s essentially the country’s #1 rockstar/VIP, he has almost no repercussions for bad behaviour, so it doesn’t seem that crazy that the crazy is pretty concentrated in him. He’s where he is through heredity only, he has not demonstrated any particular skill or wisdom.
So Kim Jong Un is North Korea’s answer to George W Bush?
I’m thinking he might be closer to an evil Elvis.
Or maybe a Paulie Shore who somehow achieved an Elvis level of success would be a better example, as Elvis had some talent, and didn’t rely on heredity.
North and South Koreans are related to each other. Literally. They’re not different clans/tribes/ethnicities.
If we can’t trust native Korean speakers to accurately translate what the North Koreans are saying and writing due to supposed prejudice, and we can’t trust “Westerners” to accurately translate either due to an assumption that it’s impossible to learn other languages enough to be fluent in them, then what’s left?
Admit it: you think the moon landing was filmed on a back sound stage somewhere, amirite? I mean, we really can’t know that anything we see or hear is real.
Be warned though, it´s heavy stuff.
I believe this report is a hoax since it is reported as such in South Korea.
Got it…thanks.
East and West Germans are also the same people, but they talk a lot of shit about each other even 20-odd years after reunification.
I’m trying to point out the intrinsic difficulty in divining the truth in situations where all sources are intrinsically untrustworthy. In many cases you can evaluate all sources and arrive at a fairly solid picture of what’s going on. However in this case I think it’s unlikely - I ought to make clear, I wouldn’t trust the North Korean media any more, even if I was privy to an unmediated disclosure from them.
Of course I believe the moon landing was real. However if the narrative of the moon landing was better suited to a children’s story, I would probably harbour some doubts.
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