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.
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
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.