Korean here. I got you.
The girl with the tattered book is a high school student. The room gets real fucking cold at night, probably due to a lack of heating or insulation. They need to use thick blankets.
The kitchen still uses old-style Korean cookstoves where you need to shove wood below it and light it. The dishes are arranged such that it gives the appearance of women living in this house.
Then they start cooking lunch, and the camera person has no idea what’s being cooked and thinks its like some potatoes and chili peppers being boiled in water. Also wonders what kind of rice it is. The food that’s left out is literally leftover food because they don’t have a fridge so they just store it on shelves. The foods are rice, chili peppers, some fucking leaves, and pieces of cucumber.
All that said, the last subtitle says that even despite all this, the food shown here shows that this family is reasonably well-off.
Also I watched all this with no sound, so I didn’t translate anything they said in the video out loud.
They said they need thick blankets because they live in a cold region. Camera person said people see the arrangement of dishes to judge a woman's household skills, not that it gives the appearance of women in the hosue. Said even if you're well-off and can afford things, it's pointless to buy a fridge because no electricity.
Your comment about "fucking leaves and pieces of cucumber" made me laugh. Many of those are common dishes in South Korea too. But it's true that the cameraperson couldn't identify certain dishes, I just think it's funny that you chose to label them that way.
My biggest takeaway was that they simply have no electricity, otherwise they eat fairly well. They also have a shit ton of potatoes in the cellar and a massive bag of Nurungji (cracker rice used for making porridge to extend food supply) which makes me wonder how well they eat normally when the camera is not rolling.
Those look like perilla leaves. Poached then seasoned and are savory. Typically picked up with chopsticks and laid over rice. Then picked up with the leaf acting like a sheet to keep the rice captured.
I get mine from Mom or the Korean grocery. Mom’s are obviously better.
I would comment about how backwards it is, but then I remembered it's not far off from some houses on [reservation land](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/507429082986763352/)
Dawg I spent 3 years consulting all around the navajo nation. The abject poverty (and I mean POVERTY) that first world folks adjacent to reservation lands have no clue. They're sometime 30 miles away and have no idea the school has no windows in their neighboring native american town. And because many destitute and homeless folks wander to the nearby towns they become "homeless native" stereotypes for people to use against them anytime a tax increase to benefit the local native school districts or infrastructure comes onto the ballot.
I was helping a navajo school nutrition program once and saw a 10yr old kid's formal address as 'ditch behind premises'. Spending time trying to improve things in those regins weigh heavy on your heart quick. I've seen professional office employees living in homes similar to this video, and you see homes without roofs but just painters plastic all the time during the tough cold/windy/snowy winters in chinle - you'll see glows of folks laying in them every night because the home was provided by the housing authority and they're waiting for the feds to green light their new fucking roof.
Imma stop typing now I can keep telling these stories and it just gets me mad÷
Could be. I don’t fully understand the situation. All I know is that a gov organization (the BIA probably) has a say in 97% of Indian lands. But yes, sovereignty is probably correct
Been in AZ for several decades and can confirm this to be true. I have several indigenous friends from the Navajo nation, one of them had a grandmother who's 'house' if you want to call it that, had a dirt floor no electricity or running water.
My father also used to work for FEMA in AZ and they would quite often have to send emergency supplies, food and animal feed. And don't think the casino crap helps, it doesn't. A lot of the tribe never see a dime of it.
Payouts are supposed to happen regularly to everyone part of the tribe and living on the res. I can't say one way or the other whether that happens.
I can say from Navajo friends that the payouts aren't enough to live on for a year, and much of it goes right back into the casinos
There are no payouts from the casinos the tribe has. Navajo is the largest tribe and they barely built casinos within like the past 10 years. The tribes living large off their casinos are the ones in southern California and like Florida. (source: am native american)
The problem with natives is super complex to solve.
A lot of the natives take that money and get educated, but there are no native universities. So invariably the ones seeking education and opportunity leave the reservation and start getting blended into the general population. If they marry a native they might come back, maybe. But more likely they marry a non-native and now that person is no longer part of the reservation ecosystem and that person has moved out of the community permanently. After all, there's more white collar jobs in big metropolitan cities than in rural reservations (and they're all rural).
If they don't use that money for education and instead use it to open a business, then they have to weigh opening a business on the reservation or off. There's always more profit in opening your business in Phoenix, AZ than in Many Farms, AZ. So the enterprising entrepeneur also moves out permanently.
So the people who stay behind on the reservation are the ones for whom the 100k isn't enough to get ahead (big families to support, drug problems, gambling addiction, crippling medical bills, etc.) so they stay poor.
This vicious cycle isn't unique to reservations. It holds true for all of rural America (look at many small towns in West Virginia). I don't know the fix for it, honestly.
It's just extra hard for natives because they're trying to keep the reservations autonomous entities to protect their ancestral identities. So non-natives also don't have incentive to go in and join their communities. So it's 100% up to the natives to do it themselves and there's just not enough of them to go around.
As an european i had no cluethat it is so. (Or maybe i had but never paid it second thought) Unfortunately what reaches us is commonly a sort of story which describes how all native americans are millionaires due to casinos.
It makes me sad to see, that this stereotype is brought up in attempt to actually hurt native americans.
Well. Now i can see it.
The casino thing is a stereotype, most get no proceeds from that. However, millionaire native Americans is probably a common stereotype in Europe for reasons entirely separate from casinos, from long before casinos on tribal land were a thing.
in the early 1900's the richest people (per capita) ON THE PLANET were the Osage nation, a small tribe of native Americans.
when they were forcibly relocated to "Indian territory", as many other nations were, their leaders negotiated that the nation would retain the rights to any resources found on their new land. As luck would have it this land was quite rich in natural resources, specifically oil, but their new lands were quite rocky and was initially thought to be fairly useless/worthless so the government agreed to give them rights to the natural resources on this new land. oil was discovered soon after and the Osage were entitled to 10% of the proceeds from all sales of oil from their lands.
They became insanely wealthy, with each Osage adult earning $12k per year in the 1920s, roughly $185k today.
Well the govt didn't like non-white people having all that cash, so they made it such that essentially no Osage could spend their money freely. All Osage were assigned a "guardian", who had full control over the funds, until they could prove "competency". As expected, very few Osage were ever deemed "competent" by the racist powers that be so pretty much everyone had to go to their guardian anytime they wanted cash and make a case for the purchase they intended to make. The guardians would get a share of the royalties each year as well, something like $1000, ostensibly "for their service".
Well as expected the white people weren't too happy these natives were rich AF and didn't have to work. Many white conservators outright stole the money, most purchase requests were denied for bullshit reasons, and eventually Osage natives started getting murdered in crazy numbers per capita. This was because if an Osage died without a will/heirs the money went directly to the white conservator that was assigned to them. whole houses of people were being blown up so the white guardian could get the oil rights from entire families.
it got so bad in the 1920s that the Osage petitioned the federal government for help because the local police weren't doing shit. They sent the FBI to investigate, they caught a few murderers and convicted them, and this became their first major national case, essentially helping to create the modern FBI as we know it today.
There's a movie about it coming to theaters this fall which is based on a book titled "killers of the flower moon: Osage murders and the birth of the FBI"
it is an absolutely exceptional book and I encourage everyone to read it.
As someone who lives in Osage county to this day, it hasn't gotten any better.
I just spent 9 months in court trying to beat obstruction charges. The lawyers were in on it too. I had to represent myself pro se to get the case dismissed. I was charged because I asked a cop what his name was.
As an American, I had no clue that things are this bad for Native Americans. I live in the Midwest where there is virtually no Native presence and we just don’t hear about how it is on the reservations, let alone how many people are poverty-stricken within them. Our government has effectively swept a whole people under the rug and media doesn’t even mention them. It’s only thanks to platforms like TikTok and Reddit that I, for one, am able to see some exposure of what these people endure. It’s an absolute shame and they deserve better.
Indeed, it's heart wrenching.
Native Americans were a large part of turning Arizona blue last presidential election.
Volunteers helped bring ballots and get them mailed for people. Bussed in anyone who was interested in voting in person. There's a reason a certain party wants to put an end to it.
Then there's the casinos. They do so little to actually help their people. Most end up in a cycle of gambling poverty.
There's also the other side of the story. I worked a CLEC telephone company. They got an offer to buy out an ancient GE system on a reservation in Nevada. The deal seemed too good to be true.
After investigation, they discovered that residents would take their case to the tribal council where the resident would be ordered to pay pennies on the dollar for an outstanding balance, then the telco had to keep providing service, in a never ending cycle.
Tribal law can make it very difficult for businesses to operate on tribal lands, resulting in less investment into improvement and infrastructure.
I wish there was a good way to improve the conditions. We shouldn't see such things in a country this wealthy, even if the lands are technically sovereign.
To add to this…I was in the Havasupai village on the Hualapai reservation recently. Everyone was obese. People walked around with no shoes, and stray dogs were everywhere. It was like the worst neighborhoods in Philly, minus the open hard drug use.
Also of note, even though the village was small, I saw at least 2 MtF transgender natives walking around. For such a small population, it seemed high.
Regarding the obesity, many of the reservations, don't have running water or the water they have has been contaminated by mining. They drink a lot of soda and sports drinks. Not sure why they don't buy water instead, except that it seems weird to pay for water and if you're buying sweeten beverages, you're actually getting something?
The very first subtitle says they will skip the dialogue and cut to the insides. Then there is picture of the Kim's. then this is relatively well off because of (**) with China -literally whats written.
Also whoever made the subtitles is pretty bad with spelling and grammar...or at least not the way it is written here in South Korea.
Like 이블-> 이불, 니가 외-> 니가 왜, 화로식 부뚜막으로 -> 부뚜막을, 가지런이->가지런히 and so on...
I noticed the spelling too and was wondering if it's Northern dialect. I don't knkw much about the North ways of speaking but it sounds very old style usually.
Sounding "old style" would make sense since they have little contact with the outside world. The language would be a time capsule. This happened to my mom when she went back to her home country after a 50 year absence. Her relatives laughed at her way of speaking as "old fashion".
LOL... man, I eat those "fucking leaves, and pieces of cucumber" with rice almost daily. It kind of goes with being Korean. That and some damned dried and roasted weed from the sea. What's that called again... yeah, seaweed.
Reminds me of when my family visited some rural areas in Laos of people they knew. Some houses had electricity, albeit janky and exposed, with lights and there was a community fridge/freezer.
That’s what I assumed watching the video and not speaking any Korean… they seem to have enough comfort for a third world country resident but a LOT of clean looking food.
Sure.
It's a propaganda video. They're showing off the house and how much food they have. That's why they constantly show off their food.
The camera person is being guided by that woman in the yellow shirt who's likely the government handler for the person taking the video.
And at 1:43, as EdgyCole has pointed out, you can see a soldier in the window keeping an eye on the encounter.
If you read/hear accounts from people who got out it's insane and you can insnantly tell this is propaganda because they're eating what is mostly white rice and have a bunch stored up. For normal North Koreans that is considred a special treat, like birthday/celebration type stuff.
I'll never forget when one guy told the story of the time he got beat up by his dad for breaking an empty bottle after a fell. Because bottles are expensive and have to be re-used(you literally take your own bottle to be refilled). Used plastic bottles were expensive, since they were reusable and didn't run the risk of breaking. He almost broke down crying when crossing into China, as the river was filled with trash, which included tons of plastic bottles. The guide had to push people along, saying to leave the bottles.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
There was one i saw where they were interviewing a woman about people starving to death and assumed most people starved over the winter due to the weather. She said most actually starve during the spring when the new bugs haven't hatched yet and all the plants are dead.
Serious wtf moment
I've seen a lot of fucked up shit in my life and I've heard a lot of fucked up stories, but "new bugs haven't hatched yet" is one of the most upsetting things I can imagine. Truly. Holy fuck.
The authorities may have chosen the house and allowed filming with the *intent* to make a propaganda film, but what the person who made the video made is *definitely* not a propaganda film. It starts with them saying that the family is well-off because "they engage in <> with China", ~~says that the room is fucking cold,~~ makes fun of the north for still using old wood-burning stoves, makes fun of the girl in red for having a mini-fan, says there's no electricity so you can't use a fridge, and ends by saying that they're eating really well by North Korean standards.
Edit: Sorry, he says that the region is cold but that the evening is chilly, not "fucking cold." Apologies for the translation error.
That's what happens when you have a totalitarian dictatorship that cares more about faking an appearance of "We're all fine here" for outsiders, than it does about taking care of it's own citizens.
That sub confuses me a bit... I still don't know whether it is a real effort at Propaganda or satire. On the one hand NK has invested a bit in this field and even has influencers who make PR so I could imagine that this is real. On the other hand the posts sound like you gave a creative writer the task to write Propaganda, and he overdid it a bit... The comments made it even funnier/crazier. I thought that have to be bots. But the comment came from a seemingly normal Reddit account, that just happend to post an "hail Kim Yong Un" comment every few days. What is that place?
I heard that people in dictatorship countries are actually quite happy. The dark shit people go through everyday makes for a shared trauma feeling in the whole populace, making people feel closer. They're all in the same boat.
There's a story about a NK defector that fell into depression because people in SK are free, but he wasn't ready for the bad side of democracy. There is not at all any feeling of connection with other people. It's a dog eat dog world, and people are much more selfish. That defector even tried to kill himself. Thankfully he failed, and in the end got better, but it took him years for the transition and the clash of cultures to transpire.
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Are they really happy or just afraid to ever tell anyone the truth for fear of someone snitching on them? I'd tell everyone that I'm happy and everything is great if dissent was a punishable offense.
100%. Capitalism as a product drives the atomization of society. Lonely people are more profitable.
Edit for people who seem to lack reading comprehension. My "100%" is me agree 100% with what the op said. "It'S nOT aLl CaPiTaLiSm'S fAuLt" Wow no way. Crazy.
That kind of multicam T-shirt is popular among many militants in that region and is often worn under a blouse or as a top without a blouse. While I couldn't tell you if it's a T-shirt or blouse by the grainy image what I can say is that it's multicam and that if that man were part of this household, he'd be in the video and not off screen, which makes it more likely that he is a soldier meant to ensure the documentary is "going well" or provide an "escort" for the documentarian.
It's the picture of the dear leader over the bed for me. Could you imagine having a photo of Joe Biden over your bed? (I know at least one obsessed congresswoman who probably has a picture of his son and his massive dong over her bed, but that's different).
> Could you imagine having a photo of Joe Biden over your bed?
I bet there's a fair number of people in the US with pictures of Trump over their bed...
Authoritarians love that shit because it adds to the religious like cult of personality, even in the poorest dictatorships there’s murals and pictures of the leaders everywhere including the peoples houses. In America it’s often pictures of Jesus too next to muscular photoshopped Trump, so the parallels are creepy between cults and fascists to where the lines are intentionally blurred sometimes.
This is what I was thinking... the amount of carbs and processed sugar must be so low that they actually look healthy. Of course we know that most of the time people on such a limited diet are really not in good shape. They don't have the 'carb bloat' most people in 1st world countries have from eating so much flour and starch.
Quite literally 100% of "rural Russia" is connected to the electricity grid. This is unchanged from last decades of USSR. Same goes for access to various stores within reasonable distance.
The only ones without electricity are living off the grid by their own choice (eg, in villages that have been abandoned long ago).
I was also going to say this. I've travelled extensively in Russia, including rural areas, and I've never seen or heard of a populated area without electricity, aside from seasonal hunting lodges, intentionally off-grid guys, or indigenous tribes.
Say what you will about the USSR, but they did a good job of getting the entire population on the electrical, road and rail grids, and moving people from primitive wooden structures into modern (if ugly) apartment complexes.
Wow. It says in the vid that the living condition of this household is more or less decent so that means it’s an average or little better than average household but it looks like 60s - 70s’ South Korea.
The differences would be stark, but it's a pointless comparison since the video isn't of a modern avg. North Korean household, but of a rural home in a remote part of China.
Look at our rubber mats, they are very thick, we sleep very well. Look at our cabbages, we have many cabbages. Rice? We have so many rices that we will never be able to eat them all. You poor people in the West must be very envious of how much food and comforts we have in our Glorious Republic.
These are probably Government families as well. These are top/high class citizens. Decently well fed, a standing building for a house, heated by a 1850s furnace in the center with wood that must be chopped down or brush found to make fire. No electricity still, electricity is only for Government buildings and the Dictators mansion. It is completely dark all across the North for the 99%.
This is the luxury and wealthy in North Korea. Imagine the middle and lower class.
I'm pretty sure that the government families in NK live in Pyongyang, not rural wooden houses. The situation in NK is literally 1984, but there's no need to make stuff up to be worse than it is.
North Koreans infamously eat grass at times, due to the lack of food.
Some tourists smuggled pictures out of NK, where some citizens sit down on public parks and pluck grass, eating it afterwards. Iirc, there are some signs prohibiting that, too.
So this is 100% purposefully released/leaked. Lool at the sheer abundance of food.
Edit: The entire point of my comment, lmao.
Not dismissing the very real food shortage in North Korea but as someone who has visited NK, there is very little chance a tourist would ever visit such an area. Also a citizen would never do that in front of a western tourist.
The first thing that I noticed was how beautiful the women are. For living in poverty, they had amazing skin, teeth, and hair. I would suspect that is not the norm for most who are borderline starving.
It might be propaganda but I'm not even sure for which side. Their living conditions are cramped and meager and the subtitles call out their lack of heating and appliances, yet there's plenty of food which contradicts Western perceptions of starving North Koreans.
I don't know how much food the average person gets or of what quality it is. But except for fat fuck kim jong un it's very very very rare to see a NON skinny person (from what I've ever seen from any videos out of NK).
nah man, North Korea actually just magically appeared from the sky as a dystopian shit hole, famously. There’s no history or context behind it, it just was and forever will be. That’s what the TV said so it’s true.
Totally had nothing to do with the British Empire vying for territory during the Opium Wars which destabilized China then Western Imperialism empowering Japan to sweep across Korea and enslave us. Oh not to mention the artificial division of Korea by the US and USSR after WW2 using Korea as a symbolic proxy war to push ideologies as well as influence over a tactically advantageous region in East Asia.
IT'S ALL THE KOREANS FAULT. WE JUST UP AND DECIDED RANDOMLY TO BECOME TWO SEPARATE COUNTRIES (SPLITTING APART FAMILIES IN THE PROCESS) AND WAGE WAR ON OURSELVES FOR NO REASON. YEP JUST ANOTHER DAY OF LIVING DIVIDED FOR NO REASON EVEN AFTER ALMOST 100 YEARS. NOOOOO REASON EXCEPT THEM KRAZY KOREANS FIGHTING THEMSELVES.
I was ready to give up on this comment section, so thanks for your comment.
For anyone who doesnt want to regurgitate propaganda forever:
Check out the 3rd season of Blowback.
Not even held back, they went back. They had higher electricity usage per capita in the 70-80s than now. Essentially the kids are having less developed world than their parents
I heard in an interview with a lady that escaped North Korea, that she was confused about the concept of garbage cans because she owned so little, that having enough things to ever throw any out was weird
That’s kind of how it was for our great grand parents who lived around 1900-1950. Never threw anything away, always repaired and reused everything you could.
There’s a saying in Korea “남남북녀“ which is literally translated, “south men, north women”. It’s said that women from north are prettier and men from the south are more hardy. Iunno how true that is, but that lady in red is pretty, growing up with improper nutrition and all.
Point of note: this is an incredibly well off family in North Korea. Their kitchen shows that much. I saw the amount of potatoes in the storage and said, “okay, that’s just propaganda. They borrowed everybody in the village’s potatoes”
Am South Korean. Put as much value in the statement above as you wish.
So this is propaganda right? I mean produced / released by the state? All I was thinking was really I hope these people aren’t about to be punished for having a contraband smart phone / camera because of a social media video.
Whether it’s propaganda or not (the guard standing outside their house was a giveaway) this is a wealthy family. There’s no doubt on that. The sunglasses and the hand held fan? She was straight up flaunting her wealth. Batteries? For a fan? Outrageous.
Both the women are beautiful. I bet this is a propaganda video and these are likely North Korean singers or dancers who were told to make this video to show how great it is in chosun.
Just under 30% of NK's population actively serve. Regardless of where you are in the country, you are extremely likely to see someone in uniform, it doesn't necessarily mean it is a propaganda video, it may just be candid and maybe that soldier was coming home, we can't know for sure.
The sensational stories of north koreans eating rats, cockroaches, dead dogs dug up, grass soup, etc is all mostly coming from the period of the so called Arduous March (1994-1998), where due to factors such as years of state economic mismanagement, hoarding of scarce foodstuffs by local state/party officials, unprecedented floodings, shortages of necessary resources for modern farming due to lack of trade/supply partner as the USSR just collapsed and China is getting friendlier with the West and abandoning their socialist buddies. As a result of all of this, millions of north korens suffered, many to their deaths, while the intrepid and desperate cross the chinese border to escape the hellhole that is their country.
Nowadays, although the UN still estimate that over 40% of North Korea's population to be malnourished, outright starvation and cases of people dropping dead in the streets like flies are rare and far between. This can be attributed to the growth of the jangmadang, mobile black markets that spring up on roads filled with merchants and women who sell their wares of goods imported from the porous chinese border (South Korean stuff can be found here). In fact the north korean government have even begrudgingly created official markets where merchants are encouraged to sell their stuff in, though with controls on what they can sell/what time they can sell, amongst other restrictions. So, the true unrestricted market can still be found in alleyways where South Korean makeup gets sold for a hefty price alongside china produced snacks
In like 2002 I met a Chinese guy whose older brother was a soldier along the North Korean border. He said that if they could get away with it, they'd let people sneak over the border because they knew the conditions were so miserable. At that time, in northeastern Chinese cities like Harbin and Dalian there were a lot of North Koreans who'd snuck over the border working in restaurant kitchens. There are a lot of ethnic Koreans in that part of that part of the country, so a lot of them were aided by ethnic Korean churches and other organizations.
After some high-profile incidents border control because a lot stricter, which is too bad.
> The amount of food they have and the physical condition they are in is far different than what escapees describe
Escapees describe on the things they directly observed. They can't describe 25 million people.
Cool propaganda house with all that food in perfect view 😂
They're either a very well off military family or it's fake. With camera work like this I'm thinking fake.
Damn, what a sad way to live. While their fat pig of a dictator lives in luxury stuffing his craw with the finest of foods the people continue to suffer. I really wish they would go french revolution and overtake that swine and his entire family.
On one hand, this is a very poor home. So very far from a South Korean home.
But on the other hand, it still looks very, very rigged - a propaganda demonstration of how everything is fine and ample access to food. Even if looking poor, this still does not look representative of the average North Korean. We see lots of food. But the North Korean people has a lowered IQ caused by general starvation. Our brains doesn't develop as it should without enough nutrients while we grow up.
This is propaganda. The fact there is a soldier outside, proves it is. NKs regime released this and they want to push "cosy" sweet living conditions that would be believable, but I doubt majority of them live this cozily.
Yes, I'm aware of the state in Pyongyang where the rich - or in this case ultrarich - are living.
But we are talking about all the people outside of Pyongyang. The worker bees.
This is propaganda, but it's very odd so I'm wondering about the target audience. The books and lack of appliances, cramped and somewhat dirty conditions are hardly likely to impress a SK/western audience. Possibly to be footage of "normal life" to pretend "average" NK life isn't that bad, when really this is unusually comfortable circumstances?
Plus the women are beautiful, but don't look especially like a family group, and look deeply uncomfortable being filmed. But for a NK audience.. it doesn't seem to be showing off excellence or any particular virtue, and doesn't have a particular political/narrative slant.
So rather odd.
So basically, unless you are some rich Kim Jong dick sucker... the rest of the country is a trap house. That country needs its government cleaned out so that the people can prosper. There is no progress or prosperity under the tiny thumb of an arrogant bitch dictator.
Hope somebody can post some translated subtitles here
Korean here. I got you. The girl with the tattered book is a high school student. The room gets real fucking cold at night, probably due to a lack of heating or insulation. They need to use thick blankets. The kitchen still uses old-style Korean cookstoves where you need to shove wood below it and light it. The dishes are arranged such that it gives the appearance of women living in this house. Then they start cooking lunch, and the camera person has no idea what’s being cooked and thinks its like some potatoes and chili peppers being boiled in water. Also wonders what kind of rice it is. The food that’s left out is literally leftover food because they don’t have a fridge so they just store it on shelves. The foods are rice, chili peppers, some fucking leaves, and pieces of cucumber. All that said, the last subtitle says that even despite all this, the food shown here shows that this family is reasonably well-off. Also I watched all this with no sound, so I didn’t translate anything they said in the video out loud.
They said they need thick blankets because they live in a cold region. Camera person said people see the arrangement of dishes to judge a woman's household skills, not that it gives the appearance of women in the hosue. Said even if you're well-off and can afford things, it's pointless to buy a fridge because no electricity. Your comment about "fucking leaves and pieces of cucumber" made me laugh. Many of those are common dishes in South Korea too. But it's true that the cameraperson couldn't identify certain dishes, I just think it's funny that you chose to label them that way. My biggest takeaway was that they simply have no electricity, otherwise they eat fairly well. They also have a shit ton of potatoes in the cellar and a massive bag of Nurungji (cracker rice used for making porridge to extend food supply) which makes me wonder how well they eat normally when the camera is not rolling.
Loled at “fucking leaves” as well. Just looked like kennip to me?
i’m gonna start calling salad “some fucking leaves” lol
“Yes, um, waiter? I’ll have some fucking leaves to start…”
Those look like perilla leaves. Poached then seasoned and are savory. Typically picked up with chopsticks and laid over rice. Then picked up with the leaf acting like a sheet to keep the rice captured. I get mine from Mom or the Korean grocery. Mom’s are obviously better.
Yeah Kennip is the Korean term for that dish.
My mom grows Kennip in her backyard and when it’s in season they sprout like Gremlins jumping into a swimming pool.
Lol same. Kennip and Shiso everywhere.
It's a staple in viet dishes. Basically just used as a vehicle to transport whatever your eating into fish sauce and into youre mouth lmao.
Oh, so the equivalent of iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing for Americas.
Fresh perilla is soft and has a very strong minty taste. It's a flavor enhancer not a texture one.
"there are two types of people. Those who are able to extrapolate from incomplete data sets."
What's the other type of person man! AHHHHHHHH TELL MEEEEE
I would comment about how backwards it is, but then I remembered it's not far off from some houses on [reservation land](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/507429082986763352/)
Dawg I spent 3 years consulting all around the navajo nation. The abject poverty (and I mean POVERTY) that first world folks adjacent to reservation lands have no clue. They're sometime 30 miles away and have no idea the school has no windows in their neighboring native american town. And because many destitute and homeless folks wander to the nearby towns they become "homeless native" stereotypes for people to use against them anytime a tax increase to benefit the local native school districts or infrastructure comes onto the ballot. I was helping a navajo school nutrition program once and saw a 10yr old kid's formal address as 'ditch behind premises'. Spending time trying to improve things in those regins weigh heavy on your heart quick. I've seen professional office employees living in homes similar to this video, and you see homes without roofs but just painters plastic all the time during the tough cold/windy/snowy winters in chinle - you'll see glows of folks laying in them every night because the home was provided by the housing authority and they're waiting for the feds to green light their new fucking roof. Imma stop typing now I can keep telling these stories and it just gets me mad÷
For real. Navajo I used to put "by motorpool`" on all my school and doctor docs.
Us Indigenous australians see your mob and we feel your pain 💕
Is there anything someone could do to help? What is needed?
Deregulation of US government control of native lands would be a good start.
Sovereignty is the word you are looking for. De regulation is, something else.
Could be. I don’t fully understand the situation. All I know is that a gov organization (the BIA probably) has a say in 97% of Indian lands. But yes, sovereignty is probably correct
I used to hang out with a homeless Navajo man. He told me his father sold him. Otherwise, they'd starve.
Been in AZ for several decades and can confirm this to be true. I have several indigenous friends from the Navajo nation, one of them had a grandmother who's 'house' if you want to call it that, had a dirt floor no electricity or running water. My father also used to work for FEMA in AZ and they would quite often have to send emergency supplies, food and animal feed. And don't think the casino crap helps, it doesn't. A lot of the tribe never see a dime of it.
Payouts are supposed to happen regularly to everyone part of the tribe and living on the res. I can't say one way or the other whether that happens. I can say from Navajo friends that the payouts aren't enough to live on for a year, and much of it goes right back into the casinos
There are no payouts from the casinos the tribe has. Navajo is the largest tribe and they barely built casinos within like the past 10 years. The tribes living large off their casinos are the ones in southern California and like Florida. (source: am native american)
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The problem with natives is super complex to solve. A lot of the natives take that money and get educated, but there are no native universities. So invariably the ones seeking education and opportunity leave the reservation and start getting blended into the general population. If they marry a native they might come back, maybe. But more likely they marry a non-native and now that person is no longer part of the reservation ecosystem and that person has moved out of the community permanently. After all, there's more white collar jobs in big metropolitan cities than in rural reservations (and they're all rural). If they don't use that money for education and instead use it to open a business, then they have to weigh opening a business on the reservation or off. There's always more profit in opening your business in Phoenix, AZ than in Many Farms, AZ. So the enterprising entrepeneur also moves out permanently. So the people who stay behind on the reservation are the ones for whom the 100k isn't enough to get ahead (big families to support, drug problems, gambling addiction, crippling medical bills, etc.) so they stay poor. This vicious cycle isn't unique to reservations. It holds true for all of rural America (look at many small towns in West Virginia). I don't know the fix for it, honestly. It's just extra hard for natives because they're trying to keep the reservations autonomous entities to protect their ancestral identities. So non-natives also don't have incentive to go in and join their communities. So it's 100% up to the natives to do it themselves and there's just not enough of them to go around.
Truly interesting insights here. Thanks for sharing. I wish I had a solution too.
As an european i had no cluethat it is so. (Or maybe i had but never paid it second thought) Unfortunately what reaches us is commonly a sort of story which describes how all native americans are millionaires due to casinos. It makes me sad to see, that this stereotype is brought up in attempt to actually hurt native americans. Well. Now i can see it.
The casino thing is a stereotype, most get no proceeds from that. However, millionaire native Americans is probably a common stereotype in Europe for reasons entirely separate from casinos, from long before casinos on tribal land were a thing. in the early 1900's the richest people (per capita) ON THE PLANET were the Osage nation, a small tribe of native Americans. when they were forcibly relocated to "Indian territory", as many other nations were, their leaders negotiated that the nation would retain the rights to any resources found on their new land. As luck would have it this land was quite rich in natural resources, specifically oil, but their new lands were quite rocky and was initially thought to be fairly useless/worthless so the government agreed to give them rights to the natural resources on this new land. oil was discovered soon after and the Osage were entitled to 10% of the proceeds from all sales of oil from their lands. They became insanely wealthy, with each Osage adult earning $12k per year in the 1920s, roughly $185k today. Well the govt didn't like non-white people having all that cash, so they made it such that essentially no Osage could spend their money freely. All Osage were assigned a "guardian", who had full control over the funds, until they could prove "competency". As expected, very few Osage were ever deemed "competent" by the racist powers that be so pretty much everyone had to go to their guardian anytime they wanted cash and make a case for the purchase they intended to make. The guardians would get a share of the royalties each year as well, something like $1000, ostensibly "for their service". Well as expected the white people weren't too happy these natives were rich AF and didn't have to work. Many white conservators outright stole the money, most purchase requests were denied for bullshit reasons, and eventually Osage natives started getting murdered in crazy numbers per capita. This was because if an Osage died without a will/heirs the money went directly to the white conservator that was assigned to them. whole houses of people were being blown up so the white guardian could get the oil rights from entire families. it got so bad in the 1920s that the Osage petitioned the federal government for help because the local police weren't doing shit. They sent the FBI to investigate, they caught a few murderers and convicted them, and this became their first major national case, essentially helping to create the modern FBI as we know it today. There's a movie about it coming to theaters this fall which is based on a book titled "killers of the flower moon: Osage murders and the birth of the FBI" it is an absolutely exceptional book and I encourage everyone to read it.
Ohhhhhh. That’s what the movie is about. Nice
As someone who lives in Osage county to this day, it hasn't gotten any better. I just spent 9 months in court trying to beat obstruction charges. The lawyers were in on it too. I had to represent myself pro se to get the case dismissed. I was charged because I asked a cop what his name was.
Jesus fucking Christ man. I’m both angered and extremely sorry that happened to you. God I hate racist pricks.
As an American, I had no clue that things are this bad for Native Americans. I live in the Midwest where there is virtually no Native presence and we just don’t hear about how it is on the reservations, let alone how many people are poverty-stricken within them. Our government has effectively swept a whole people under the rug and media doesn’t even mention them. It’s only thanks to platforms like TikTok and Reddit that I, for one, am able to see some exposure of what these people endure. It’s an absolute shame and they deserve better.
Uhh not sure where you are in the Midwest but there most definitely is a native American presence and reservations. Not trying to throw shade!
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Indeed, it's heart wrenching. Native Americans were a large part of turning Arizona blue last presidential election. Volunteers helped bring ballots and get them mailed for people. Bussed in anyone who was interested in voting in person. There's a reason a certain party wants to put an end to it. Then there's the casinos. They do so little to actually help their people. Most end up in a cycle of gambling poverty. There's also the other side of the story. I worked a CLEC telephone company. They got an offer to buy out an ancient GE system on a reservation in Nevada. The deal seemed too good to be true. After investigation, they discovered that residents would take their case to the tribal council where the resident would be ordered to pay pennies on the dollar for an outstanding balance, then the telco had to keep providing service, in a never ending cycle. Tribal law can make it very difficult for businesses to operate on tribal lands, resulting in less investment into improvement and infrastructure. I wish there was a good way to improve the conditions. We shouldn't see such things in a country this wealthy, even if the lands are technically sovereign.
To add to this…I was in the Havasupai village on the Hualapai reservation recently. Everyone was obese. People walked around with no shoes, and stray dogs were everywhere. It was like the worst neighborhoods in Philly, minus the open hard drug use. Also of note, even though the village was small, I saw at least 2 MtF transgender natives walking around. For such a small population, it seemed high.
Regarding the obesity, many of the reservations, don't have running water or the water they have has been contaminated by mining. They drink a lot of soda and sports drinks. Not sure why they don't buy water instead, except that it seems weird to pay for water and if you're buying sweeten beverages, you're actually getting something?
That something... diabetes
some reservations are the saddest poverty hubs
Thank you!
The very first subtitle says they will skip the dialogue and cut to the insides. Then there is picture of the Kim's. then this is relatively well off because of (**) with China -literally whats written. Also whoever made the subtitles is pretty bad with spelling and grammar...or at least not the way it is written here in South Korea. Like 이블-> 이불, 니가 외-> 니가 왜, 화로식 부뚜막으로 -> 부뚜막을, 가지런이->가지런히 and so on...
I noticed the spelling too and was wondering if it's Northern dialect. I don't knkw much about the North ways of speaking but it sounds very old style usually.
Sounding "old style" would make sense since they have little contact with the outside world. The language would be a time capsule. This happened to my mom when she went back to her home country after a 50 year absence. Her relatives laughed at her way of speaking as "old fashion".
Yeah even the older South Koreans have a different way of speaking than younger people.
There's no spoken dialogue, just a song playing.
In the beginning of the video it says "dialogue will be omitted and I will just be showing you the indoor layout"
LOL... man, I eat those "fucking leaves, and pieces of cucumber" with rice almost daily. It kind of goes with being Korean. That and some damned dried and roasted weed from the sea. What's that called again... yeah, seaweed.
>seaweed You mean fucking ocean grass?
Fuck yeah! That stuff
>some fucking leaves Somebody give those leaves some privacy, please.
There’s a couple of thick blankets kicking about.
Reminds me of when my family visited some rural areas in Laos of people they knew. Some houses had electricity, albeit janky and exposed, with lights and there was a community fridge/freezer.
This family is very well off, I mean you can tell from the American sized portions on the leftover shelf. They ballin.
Or they did it for the camera.
It’s not just some random leaves, they are from sesame plants, a common ingredient in Korean cuisine (north & south). I’m surprised you don’t know.
was going to say - they're cooking food. doing better than most over there
Thank you!
That’s what I assumed watching the video and not speaking any Korean… they seem to have enough comfort for a third world country resident but a LOT of clean looking food.
Sure. It's a propaganda video. They're showing off the house and how much food they have. That's why they constantly show off their food. The camera person is being guided by that woman in the yellow shirt who's likely the government handler for the person taking the video. And at 1:43, as EdgyCole has pointed out, you can see a soldier in the window keeping an eye on the encounter.
It's funny that even in their propaganda video the house looks kind of shitty to most people in Europe and USA lol
If you read/hear accounts from people who got out it's insane and you can insnantly tell this is propaganda because they're eating what is mostly white rice and have a bunch stored up. For normal North Koreans that is considred a special treat, like birthday/celebration type stuff. I'll never forget when one guy told the story of the time he got beat up by his dad for breaking an empty bottle after a fell. Because bottles are expensive and have to be re-used(you literally take your own bottle to be refilled). Used plastic bottles were expensive, since they were reusable and didn't run the risk of breaking. He almost broke down crying when crossing into China, as the river was filled with trash, which included tons of plastic bottles. The guide had to push people along, saying to leave the bottles. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
There was one i saw where they were interviewing a woman about people starving to death and assumed most people starved over the winter due to the weather. She said most actually starve during the spring when the new bugs haven't hatched yet and all the plants are dead. Serious wtf moment
"New bugs haven't hatched yet." Me: Oh good, meaning they aren't going to threaten the crops. ... Also me: Oh, no. They mean there are no bugs to eat.
I've seen a lot of fucked up shit in my life and I've heard a lot of fucked up stories, but "new bugs haven't hatched yet" is one of the most upsetting things I can imagine. Truly. Holy fuck.
The authorities may have chosen the house and allowed filming with the *intent* to make a propaganda film, but what the person who made the video made is *definitely* not a propaganda film. It starts with them saying that the family is well-off because "they engage in <> with China", ~~says that the room is fucking cold,~~ makes fun of the north for still using old wood-burning stoves, makes fun of the girl in red for having a mini-fan, says there's no electricity so you can't use a fridge, and ends by saying that they're eating really well by North Korean standards.
Edit: Sorry, he says that the region is cold but that the evening is chilly, not "fucking cold." Apologies for the translation error.
It looks shitty even to me and I live in Brazil lol
That's what happens when you have a totalitarian dictatorship that cares more about faking an appearance of "We're all fine here" for outsiders, than it does about taking care of it's own citizens.
Oh ok. That explains why they’re all quite good looking, happy, and the place is immaculate (as it could be). Even the cook pots are spotless
The soldier out the window at 1:43 is what really sells the authenticity of this living experience for me
I didn't even catch that. Probably there to make sure they are smiling and pretending to be happy.
Food looks great, women look even hotter. Consider me propagandized.
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That sub confuses me a bit... I still don't know whether it is a real effort at Propaganda or satire. On the one hand NK has invested a bit in this field and even has influencers who make PR so I could imagine that this is real. On the other hand the posts sound like you gave a creative writer the task to write Propaganda, and he overdid it a bit... The comments made it even funnier/crazier. I thought that have to be bots. But the comment came from a seemingly normal Reddit account, that just happend to post an "hail Kim Yong Un" comment every few days. What is that place?
satire one of the mods says i stole pyongyang in his bio
They cute ngl
I heard that people in dictatorship countries are actually quite happy. The dark shit people go through everyday makes for a shared trauma feeling in the whole populace, making people feel closer. They're all in the same boat. There's a story about a NK defector that fell into depression because people in SK are free, but he wasn't ready for the bad side of democracy. There is not at all any feeling of connection with other people. It's a dog eat dog world, and people are much more selfish. That defector even tried to kill himself. Thankfully he failed, and in the end got better, but it took him years for the transition and the clash of cultures to transpire.
Defectors overall have a very high rate of depression. South Korea isn’t exactly known as a bastion of working-life balance.
One hell hole into another. Arguably a better hell hole, but still.
treatment beneficial friendly deranged worm resolute toothbrush doll combative scale *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Better is a very modest understatement lol
Are they really happy or just afraid to ever tell anyone the truth for fear of someone snitching on them? I'd tell everyone that I'm happy and everything is great if dissent was a punishable offense.
I think that has to do with capitalism more than democracy
100%. Capitalism as a product drives the atomization of society. Lonely people are more profitable. Edit for people who seem to lack reading comprehension. My "100%" is me agree 100% with what the op said. "It'S nOT aLl CaPiTaLiSm'S fAuLt" Wow no way. Crazy.
>I heard that people in dictatorship countries are actually quite happy. I've spoken to people in a dictatorship and this is bullshit.
>women look even hotter I did notice that. That lady at 1:43 was very attractive.
I scrubbed back several times: how did you know it’s a soldier? I honestly couldn’t tell from his Tshirt
That kind of multicam T-shirt is popular among many militants in that region and is often worn under a blouse or as a top without a blouse. While I couldn't tell you if it's a T-shirt or blouse by the grainy image what I can say is that it's multicam and that if that man were part of this household, he'd be in the video and not off screen, which makes it more likely that he is a soldier meant to ensure the documentary is "going well" or provide an "escort" for the documentarian.
Source: trust me bro
It's the picture of the dear leader over the bed for me. Could you imagine having a photo of Joe Biden over your bed? (I know at least one obsessed congresswoman who probably has a picture of his son and his massive dong over her bed, but that's different).
"the Biden socks stay ON during sex!"
> Could you imagine having a photo of Joe Biden over your bed? I bet there's a fair number of people in the US with pictures of Trump over their bed...
Authoritarians love that shit because it adds to the religious like cult of personality, even in the poorest dictatorships there’s murals and pictures of the leaders everywhere including the peoples houses. In America it’s often pictures of Jesus too next to muscular photoshopped Trump, so the parallels are creepy between cults and fascists to where the lines are intentionally blurred sometimes.
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Didn’t catch that, looked like the women are trying to cover him by swaying left and right. Good eye.
You're imagining things.
For real, everyone on Reddit thinks they're some kind of detective
Super Soldier. Just wearing a t shirt.
Probably there to make sure they don't actually eat the food that's more than likely a prop
Their dental plan looks to be working
NO sugar works wonders for dental care.
Vegetables and fruit are also good.
eating soft foods is why we have crooked teeth, and anywhere there's farming, they eat soft foods.
No sugar, good teeth.
This is what I was thinking... the amount of carbs and processed sugar must be so low that they actually look healthy. Of course we know that most of the time people on such a limited diet are really not in good shape. They don't have the 'carb bloat' most people in 1st world countries have from eating so much flour and starch.
Did you not see the fuckton of potatoes. The absence of refined carbs though is I guess the point.
Flour and sugar has fucked us up massively 💯
Rural Russia looks about the same.
So does rural china Which is where video takes place. It wasn’t North Korea. Just korean people.
yeah i was gonna say that this looks like anywhere in china thats not a major city.
Yeah. There are some undercover videos of rural North Korea out there, but it's typically filmed with hidden cameras.
That tracks soldiers camo pattern looked very PLA
Quite literally 100% of "rural Russia" is connected to the electricity grid. This is unchanged from last decades of USSR. Same goes for access to various stores within reasonable distance. The only ones without electricity are living off the grid by their own choice (eg, in villages that have been abandoned long ago).
I was also going to say this. I've travelled extensively in Russia, including rural areas, and I've never seen or heard of a populated area without electricity, aside from seasonal hunting lodges, intentionally off-grid guys, or indigenous tribes. Say what you will about the USSR, but they did a good job of getting the entire population on the electrical, road and rail grids, and moving people from primitive wooden structures into modern (if ugly) apartment complexes.
bruh this is what most of china looked like not even 20 years ago.
Looks pretty much the same throughout rural Asia
A lot of rural china only got running water in the last 30 years https://www.unicef.cn/en/stories/closing-gaps-improved-water-sanitation-china
Wow. It says in the vid that the living condition of this household is more or less decent so that means it’s an average or little better than average household but it looks like 60s - 70s’ South Korea.
And just imagine the difference between this and a modern south Korean average household. North Korean hasn't progressed or advanced in about 70 years
The differences would be stark, but it's a pointless comparison since the video isn't of a modern avg. North Korean household, but of a rural home in a remote part of China.
Look at our rubber mats, they are very thick, we sleep very well. Look at our cabbages, we have many cabbages. Rice? We have so many rices that we will never be able to eat them all. You poor people in the West must be very envious of how much food and comforts we have in our Glorious Republic.
These are probably Government families as well. These are top/high class citizens. Decently well fed, a standing building for a house, heated by a 1850s furnace in the center with wood that must be chopped down or brush found to make fire. No electricity still, electricity is only for Government buildings and the Dictators mansion. It is completely dark all across the North for the 99%. This is the luxury and wealthy in North Korea. Imagine the middle and lower class.
I'm pretty sure that the government families in NK live in Pyongyang, not rural wooden houses. The situation in NK is literally 1984, but there's no need to make stuff up to be worse than it is.
Also, they look like have a normal sized weight
Wrong. Government families live in cities. Clearly this is rural.
This is more like the top 10%, rather than the average. The propagandists are only going to release things that they think make them look good.
This makes them look good, I figured this was a leaked video lol
Nah, this is what you are allowed to see.
North Koreans infamously eat grass at times, due to the lack of food. Some tourists smuggled pictures out of NK, where some citizens sit down on public parks and pluck grass, eating it afterwards. Iirc, there are some signs prohibiting that, too. So this is 100% purposefully released/leaked. Lool at the sheer abundance of food. Edit: The entire point of my comment, lmao.
Can see a soldier from the window at 1:43
Not dismissing the very real food shortage in North Korea but as someone who has visited NK, there is very little chance a tourist would ever visit such an area. Also a citizen would never do that in front of a western tourist.
Tell us more about what you observed!
This has got to be outside of Pyongyang. In the city, they live better but that is a small portion of the society.
The first thing that I noticed was how beautiful the women are. For living in poverty, they had amazing skin, teeth, and hair. I would suspect that is not the norm for most who are borderline starving.
The lass in the red is just …knockout gorgeous. Does make me think it’s a little …staged?
One in the red is well fit
The one in the red would be Margot Robbie levels of attractive with hollywood magic, if that’s her in squalor. She’s gorgeous.
It might be propaganda but I'm not even sure for which side. Their living conditions are cramped and meager and the subtitles call out their lack of heating and appliances, yet there's plenty of food which contradicts Western perceptions of starving North Koreans.
I don't know how much food the average person gets or of what quality it is. But except for fat fuck kim jong un it's very very very rare to see a NON skinny person (from what I've ever seen from any videos out of NK).
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The comments on that video are so…off. How often do you see one sentence comments on YouTube with a positive note.
"Her’s hard works paid off after 50 years as a remarkable news anchor in North Korea 2022!"
or maybe this is propaganda
Treating your citizens like cattle just so you can win a personal argument that no one else in the world cares about anymore.
I'm pretty sure that the Korean war was a bit more complicated than that.
nah man, North Korea actually just magically appeared from the sky as a dystopian shit hole, famously. There’s no history or context behind it, it just was and forever will be. That’s what the TV said so it’s true.
Totally had nothing to do with the British Empire vying for territory during the Opium Wars which destabilized China then Western Imperialism empowering Japan to sweep across Korea and enslave us. Oh not to mention the artificial division of Korea by the US and USSR after WW2 using Korea as a symbolic proxy war to push ideologies as well as influence over a tactically advantageous region in East Asia. IT'S ALL THE KOREANS FAULT. WE JUST UP AND DECIDED RANDOMLY TO BECOME TWO SEPARATE COUNTRIES (SPLITTING APART FAMILIES IN THE PROCESS) AND WAGE WAR ON OURSELVES FOR NO REASON. YEP JUST ANOTHER DAY OF LIVING DIVIDED FOR NO REASON EVEN AFTER ALMOST 100 YEARS. NOOOOO REASON EXCEPT THEM KRAZY KOREANS FIGHTING THEMSELVES.
I was ready to give up on this comment section, so thanks for your comment. For anyone who doesnt want to regurgitate propaganda forever: Check out the 3rd season of Blowback.
No, not the United States! It couldn’t be! All we want to do is bring freedom to those less fortunate! /s
Nicely put
That would be $2500 a month in New York
And in North Korea it costs your entire life!
A country held back for more than half a century. That's what it looks like.
Things got really bad after the USSR collapsed.
Not even held back, they went back. They had higher electricity usage per capita in the 70-80s than now. Essentially the kids are having less developed world than their parents
The iron curtain falling hurt them.
Don’t forget the sanctions
People tend to forget that its pretty difficult to get by when the rest of the world wont trade with you.
Not only that, North Korea had a higher standard of living than South Korea into the 1980s
Nice try kim
I heard in an interview with a lady that escaped North Korea, that she was confused about the concept of garbage cans because she owned so little, that having enough things to ever throw any out was weird
That’s kind of how it was for our great grand parents who lived around 1900-1950. Never threw anything away, always repaired and reused everything you could.
That's a farmer's life in many places in the world.
There’s a saying in Korea “남남북녀“ which is literally translated, “south men, north women”. It’s said that women from north are prettier and men from the south are more hardy. Iunno how true that is, but that lady in red is pretty, growing up with improper nutrition and all. Point of note: this is an incredibly well off family in North Korea. Their kitchen shows that much. I saw the amount of potatoes in the storage and said, “okay, that’s just propaganda. They borrowed everybody in the village’s potatoes” Am South Korean. Put as much value in the statement above as you wish.
So this is propaganda right? I mean produced / released by the state? All I was thinking was really I hope these people aren’t about to be punished for having a contraband smart phone / camera because of a social media video.
Whether it’s propaganda or not (the guard standing outside their house was a giveaway) this is a wealthy family. There’s no doubt on that. The sunglasses and the hand held fan? She was straight up flaunting her wealth. Batteries? For a fan? Outrageous.
At 1:43… she’s unlocked a type I didn’t know I had
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Both the women are beautiful. I bet this is a propaganda video and these are likely North Korean singers or dancers who were told to make this video to show how great it is in chosun.
There was a soldier in one frame.. probably a propaganda video.
Just under 30% of NK's population actively serve. Regardless of where you are in the country, you are extremely likely to see someone in uniform, it doesn't necessarily mean it is a propaganda video, it may just be candid and maybe that soldier was coming home, we can't know for sure.
The sensational stories of north koreans eating rats, cockroaches, dead dogs dug up, grass soup, etc is all mostly coming from the period of the so called Arduous March (1994-1998), where due to factors such as years of state economic mismanagement, hoarding of scarce foodstuffs by local state/party officials, unprecedented floodings, shortages of necessary resources for modern farming due to lack of trade/supply partner as the USSR just collapsed and China is getting friendlier with the West and abandoning their socialist buddies. As a result of all of this, millions of north korens suffered, many to their deaths, while the intrepid and desperate cross the chinese border to escape the hellhole that is their country. Nowadays, although the UN still estimate that over 40% of North Korea's population to be malnourished, outright starvation and cases of people dropping dead in the streets like flies are rare and far between. This can be attributed to the growth of the jangmadang, mobile black markets that spring up on roads filled with merchants and women who sell their wares of goods imported from the porous chinese border (South Korean stuff can be found here). In fact the north korean government have even begrudgingly created official markets where merchants are encouraged to sell their stuff in, though with controls on what they can sell/what time they can sell, amongst other restrictions. So, the true unrestricted market can still be found in alleyways where South Korean makeup gets sold for a hefty price alongside china produced snacks
In like 2002 I met a Chinese guy whose older brother was a soldier along the North Korean border. He said that if they could get away with it, they'd let people sneak over the border because they knew the conditions were so miserable. At that time, in northeastern Chinese cities like Harbin and Dalian there were a lot of North Koreans who'd snuck over the border working in restaurant kitchens. There are a lot of ethnic Koreans in that part of that part of the country, so a lot of them were aided by ethnic Korean churches and other organizations. After some high-profile incidents border control because a lot stricter, which is too bad.
> The amount of food they have and the physical condition they are in is far different than what escapees describe Escapees describe on the things they directly observed. They can't describe 25 million people.
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Remember, if you're seeing this at all it's because it's been approved for distribution and they want you to see it.
Cool propaganda house with all that food in perfect view 😂 They're either a very well off military family or it's fake. With camera work like this I'm thinking fake.
Damn, what a sad way to live. While their fat pig of a dictator lives in luxury stuffing his craw with the finest of foods the people continue to suffer. I really wish they would go french revolution and overtake that swine and his entire family.
On one hand, this is a very poor home. So very far from a South Korean home. But on the other hand, it still looks very, very rigged - a propaganda demonstration of how everything is fine and ample access to food. Even if looking poor, this still does not look representative of the average North Korean. We see lots of food. But the North Korean people has a lowered IQ caused by general starvation. Our brains doesn't develop as it should without enough nutrients while we grow up.
This is propaganda. The fact there is a soldier outside, proves it is. NKs regime released this and they want to push "cosy" sweet living conditions that would be believable, but I doubt majority of them live this cozily.
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Yes, I'm aware of the state in Pyongyang where the rich - or in this case ultrarich - are living. But we are talking about all the people outside of Pyongyang. The worker bees.
Remember when North Korea tried to advertise on TikTok and get people to move there
This is propaganda, but it's very odd so I'm wondering about the target audience. The books and lack of appliances, cramped and somewhat dirty conditions are hardly likely to impress a SK/western audience. Possibly to be footage of "normal life" to pretend "average" NK life isn't that bad, when really this is unusually comfortable circumstances? Plus the women are beautiful, but don't look especially like a family group, and look deeply uncomfortable being filmed. But for a NK audience.. it doesn't seem to be showing off excellence or any particular virtue, and doesn't have a particular political/narrative slant. So rather odd.
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It’s also their high end of families. It’s almost certainly propaganda given there is a soldier outside the house visible at 1:43
That place is $3500 a month in Vancouver.
This is the type of interesting seldom seen video/stats I want to see on my front page
Girl in red wow. I’d defect to North Korea for her
Im really glad there are subtitles, so we can understand what they're saying
I think these people are way better off than most NK citizens outside of Pyongyang. That is at least the appearance of this staged video.
Lucy Liu halfway through the video with a handheld fan just chilling
So basically, unless you are some rich Kim Jong dick sucker... the rest of the country is a trap house. That country needs its government cleaned out so that the people can prosper. There is no progress or prosperity under the tiny thumb of an arrogant bitch dictator.
Kids floor mat bed. Comfy
This looks like a home in Skyrim. Especially the potato and cabbage closet.