Hey guys, I see a lot of misconceptions about North Korea underlying a lot of the tweets on it, and I think it's important to understand what makes this country different before you form an opinion on the Virgil situation.
North Korea is essentially a prison masquerading as a country. People are not allowed to leave, they aren't allowed to travel out of their own towns without permission, they're not even allowed to think their own thoughts aloud.
If a North Korean verbalizes a thought not in line with the regime's propaganda or commits some other perceived crime, they risk not only being sent to a prison camp, but also having their entire family sent there *and* the next two generations being born, living and dying there.
(The book Escape From Camp 14 is about how someone born into one of these camps escaped. His crime? His father's brother committed a "crime" against the regime.)
You can be punished for watching a foreign movie, talking to a foreigner, for basically doing anything that doesn't show 100% loyalty to the Kim family. There is actually a loudspeaker in every North Korean home that spouts North Korean propaganda all day.
I see people saying it's not a crime to help the North Korean people. But the only way to help North Korean people is in secret. Any public activity between North Korea and a foreigner is with the dictatorship, NOT with everyday people.
The regime craves outside relationships with foreigners because it legitimizes them. And it NEVER lets everyday North Korean people interact with foreigners, because that introduces the possibility that the citizens would have proof that everything the regime tells them is lies.
(In the book Without You There Is No Us, the author, who was there as a college teacher, was often asked about NYC and life in the US. She had to lie constantly herself, so as to not expose the regime.
During the persistent blackouts in Pyongyang, which has terrible electricity though it's the best electricity in NK, her students asked her if NYC had regular blackouts too. They had no idea that NYC is the city that never sleeps!)
I see tweets saying that acts like Virgil's could bring "peace" between North and South Korea. Um, "peace" between the two governments requires the continued imprisonment of 25 million people in North Korea.
(Because remember, even the North Koreans who don't live in prison camps are not free.)
I see people saying a talk in NK could help the people against the government. But an approved public talk means you are interacting with the dictatorship, giving them knowledge that helps them. And what do they do? They oppress 25 million people and they've done so for decades.
As mentioned before, if you want to help everyday North Koreans, it has to be in secret.
Other than some mundane communications with Virgil, I do not know him. But for someone who seemed to be fascinated by NK, he seemed to have almost no understanding of it. Either that, or to have a very cavalier attitude about contributing to the suffering of 25 million people.
Also, if your curiosity is piqued, there are a ton of great books on North Korea. This is a great list -- some of these I've read and others are on my to-read list. Thanks for listening. nymag.com/strategist/201…
Last points on this before I turn in. I see a lot of people being like, Free Ross/Free Virgil. It’s not logically consistent to want to free Ross and also want to free the guy helping the dictator who locks up people along with their family and the two generations after them.
I also see people saying sanctions hurt the NK people. That may be so but Virgil was allegedly helping *the regime* avoid sanctions. And if you think the regime is going to get money from cryptocurrency and turn around and feed its people, then you know nothing about North Korea.
A few more thoughts: let’s say Virgil could have educated everyday North Koreans on cryptocurrency. He would likely have to start such a presentation by explaining what the internet is.
One of the American professors at a NK university teaching the sons of the elite wrote about how she could not reveal to them what the internet really was. And these were the least oppressed North Koreans!
Then, let’s say that they know what the internet is: how would they access it? Interacting with the internet (again, unlikely they know what that is), like accessing any other information not provided by the government, is prohibited.
Owning the kind of device you would need to access it is is prohibited and likely something that could get you sent you to a very scary place.
On top of that, if Virgil has done this, he would have faced a MUCH, MUCH scarier punishment than what he faces now.
So, again, to assert that what he was doing could have helped the North Korean people displays a lack of awareness of the realities on the ground.
A few defector stories that have stuck in my mind might help illustrate: one defector went to China just for one night for some reason (I can’t remember why) but she knew it was just going to be temporary because North Korea was the best country on earth, as she had been told.
She gets there, and in the morning, she sees a bowl of freshly cooked white rice on the ground. She is absolutely amazed. A bowl of warm white rice was the stuff of dreams in NK, something you might eat only once in a very, very long while.
She is absolutely bewildered as to why this is on the ground. A dog comes running up to start eating out of the bowl.
(Oh wait, the story is coming back to me — I think she was a doctor and went to China for medicine or something.) But the moment she saw the dog, she realized dogs in China eat better than doctors in North Korea.
Another one: a North Korean man was watching the “news” on North Korean TV. The segment was about strikes in South Korea and about how unhappy South Koreans workers are and how awful their lives are and showed footage of the striking workers.
A North Korean man watching this news segment noticed that one of the South Korean strikers had a ballpoint in his shirt pocket. A ballpoint pen was an unimaginable luxury to him.
To see this “unhappy” South Korean worker so casually carrying such a precious object made him realize the government’s propaganda was all lies. That made him decide to defect.
I read these stories long ago and don’t recall the sources so if I’ve gotten any facts wrong, I apologize but the general gist of the stories remains.
Oops, I broke the thread (the perils of tweetstorming on the subway and sidewalk!):
