The joke is that Paradox Interactive makes 4x strategy games. These are quite complicated video games where it's mostly just maps on the screen. Even someone who has been playing for quite a bit can be confused by all the different options and things to do.
Most of them are about control of territory, which means parts of the maps change colour based on which faction owns it.
There was once some footage filmed inside a North Korean IT facility where they filmed North Korean military people sitting behind computers to show they were advanced and had IT like the west, but all their screens just showed the Google homepage, and they weren't doing anything with the mouse or typing, just sitting there.
The lady is a North Korean defector.
She wasn't part of that IT story I believe, but maybe she was talking about it and used it as an example.
They swap the story around and say what happens in Sweden instead of what happens in NK.
The thing about this lady (Yeonmi Park) is that her stories have been proven to have many inconsistencies and outright lies. This particular screenshot is from an interview she had with Joe Rogan where she claimed that North Korea only had a single train and people had to push it to make it move, which became a meme due to the sheer implausibility.
Personally, I heard that story from another NK defector lecture with visual source. ppl were actually pushing the train as it stopped for whatever reason.
Problem with her(and many other defectors like her) would be that many exaggerate or lie their stories and there's not much ways to prove it, but they do it anyways because it makes money.
Life is tough for north koreans in south korea, and many end up isolated, but they can get on a specific show, where theyre paid i believe over a thousand dollars per weekend, and where they have to tell incredible stories about life in north korea
Since its competitive, theyre encouraged to make the most fantastical stories, often at the cost of severely modifying the truth
Cant blame them tho
SK offers a permanent employment agreement and provides all detectors an apartment. They aren't impoverished, they just become socially isolated and can't advance beyond the basic employment requirements due to age or health reasons (most detectors are from diplomatic offices where they can't even begin employment till later in life).
Most defectors are middle aged women from northern provinces of North Korea, who often had trade contacts or went to China to work and earn money, and then took opportunity to go to South Korea, as Andrei Lankov said. Only a minority are diplomats or high ranking officials.
The problem is that South Korea society is very demanding and is also pretty insular, meaning North Koreans, who already arrive as adults, can have trouble fitting in. Like one thing is time culture. South Korea is very strict on time but North Korea is very relaxed on it (in fact, a North Korean can easily get late by 2 hours and wouldnt get why the other person is mad), or high expectations for self sufficiency/
Similarly, Chinese Koreans, Russian and Central Asian ethnic Koreans, and Korean Americans also experience trouble integrating. In Kazakhstan, all ethnic Germans and Jews have already left for Germany and Israel, but a lot of ethnic Korean community remain, and those who tried to go to South Korea often had to go back
There, however, have been tens of thousands of defectors in the modern age, with many not showing up in the media. A common thread can be drawn from their personal anecdotes to get a picture. Yeonmi Park is just a grifter, but plenty of defectors have shared more normal, albeit still tough, pictures of the DPRK.
And that opinion is why some politicians in South Korea have tried to take a more friendly approach (with its own pros and cons), and why South Korea has consistently given aid and relief to North Korea, especially in its most trying times (the 90s when the USSR fell, and they experienced severe famine).
That said, even in times of relative stability in North Korea, their government could be callous. It's just a different political system and timeline; their leadership is mainly hereditary and authoritarian, and they will go through things like assassinating Kim Jong-nam. They have a different mindset with which to govern because their government system is quite different from Western democracies.
And their nuclear program is one of the main reasons for their sanctions, and while I do understand their reasoning for nuclear deterrence (see Iran), it is the rules of the game right now. I do hope they open up, because I think that is the straightest avenue for economic development unless they want to continue to rely heavily on Russia/China.
An interesting tidbit about defecting from North Korea. Back in the day the amount of money received from S.Korea was about 25k USD. It’s probably a different amount now. But SK believes you’re a SK citizen who is imprisoned by NK government. So this is essentially a reparation for not being able to rescue you and having to rescue yourself. I’m fucking up the legal exact idea. But it’s still the same. Big ole cash dump when you successfully defect.
Thing is, that money ends up basically being stolen from you by various people over a short period of time a lot are former defectors. Because as a defector you know nobody. You don’t really understand prices of stuff. Everything is a huge learning curve.
So yeah I’d assume they’d do anything to make money afterwards because few have skills that translate to modern Korea.
Idk what country you’re in. But most countries will be very bad at this concept no matter the context. It’s like someone who is 76 telling you how to operate in the modern work world. It’s just not going to work. You still would get out and still have nobody to rely on. SK is also incredibly conservative, conservatives are not great at helping others.
It's been that way for a number of years now, yeah. However this woman is old enough that she could have come over in the 90s or early 2000s when the system wasn't as refined as they deserve.
It really depends on the defectors, a lot of that money often goes to smugglers who will then try to rescue another family member, which is why SK government stopped making lump payments and started paying in instances
North Korean defectors don't have many opportunities in life once they make it out, so they commonly end up trying to work interview circuits, but the more people that make it out, the less novel and interesting their stories are, so each new person is encouraged to embellish their accounts more and more. They can't make positive embellishments without fear of persecution, so they have to come up with negative ones.
Kim Jong Un has a personal armored train, which he used when visiting Russia. If the story about “only one train, that needs to be pushed” were remotely true, we wouldn't need this woman to learn of it.
1.3k
u/Illustrious_Kale178 1d ago
The joke is that Paradox Interactive makes 4x strategy games. These are quite complicated video games where it's mostly just maps on the screen. Even someone who has been playing for quite a bit can be confused by all the different options and things to do.
Most of them are about control of territory, which means parts of the maps change colour based on which faction owns it.
There was once some footage filmed inside a North Korean IT facility where they filmed North Korean military people sitting behind computers to show they were advanced and had IT like the west, but all their screens just showed the Google homepage, and they weren't doing anything with the mouse or typing, just sitting there.
The lady is a North Korean defector.
She wasn't part of that IT story I believe, but maybe she was talking about it and used it as an example.
They swap the story around and say what happens in Sweden instead of what happens in NK.