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[–] 6 points 6 months ago (4 children)

A) It's perfectly possible, Literacy rates are generalized to adult populations, if you teach every single child reported as being alive to read, then every single child you have accounted for will be able to read. Is it possible there are feral children in the woods of North Korea that exist? Sure. Is it possible there are some 90+ year old deserters living in the mountains of NK that never learned how to read under the imperial government? Sure. Is it likely? No, not really.

B) Fun fact with those 'labor camps' (aka prisons on par with the US, not a high bar, sure, but on par with them.) No evidence has ever been found by UN investigators that 'generational' punishment has happened. Ever. Not one single survivor has testified to this under oath in international court. Not one single log book has ever been found, not one single visit to the prisons has ever revealed this. This is mostly a myth created by the South Korean Government, who pays defectors for life (or imprisons them for life) depending on how willing they are to tell stories about their life to international media. The defectors that disagree with the SK narrative are usually imprisoned for life (legally they are all enemy combatants/rebels according to SK law, even the civilians, they have no rights). The ones that agree get media contracts they have to fulfill, or its off to jail. This is often why their stories are so over the top and make no logical sense.

See: Yeonmi Park as an example of someone whose entire life story has been debunked multiple times, and who has become a meme because of how incredibly easy it is to debunk any thing she has ever stated about North or South Korea. I mean the lady literally said it's illegal to criticize the North Korean Government in South Korea...

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  • [+] -3 points 6 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    While conditions like that can and do exist, you are vastly over estimating their prevalence in small populations, or vastly overestimating the total population of NK.

    Additionally Kim Jong Un is not the head of state and never has been, and given he's not voted on by the public it's never been claimed he has won an election by that percentage.

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  • [+] 1 point 6 months ago* (3 children)
  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    Wtf does population size have to do with it? It’s a percentage of any population, unless you think smaller populations are magically more mentally and physically fit

    ...Statistics. The number of people mentally impaired enough to no longer be able to read, which is a ridiculously intense and rare mental disability, is close to 1 in 100 million. There are not 100 million North Koreans. All 'common' disabilities would still allow literacy to international standards.

    But totally not the head of state. Would you also like me to specify that Starmer isn’t technically head of state?

    So why'd you post a paragraph of a position Kim Jung Un DOES NOT HOLD, according to your own information? He's not the president. He's not the head of state. He is the head of the military, appointed by congress. There are no public votes for any title he holds. His position is voted on by congress, which is voted on by the people.

    His role beyond his military duties is mostly ceremonial. He does not appoint officials beyond military roles, and given it's not a military junta by anyone's claim...

    'Single Party' also doesn't mean 'single choice,' it means 'singular goal.' If your goal is something other than communism, you're not allowed to hold elected office in any communist country. Just like communists are not allowed to hold political office in the United States, and fascist party members aren't allowed to hold office in Germany, theoretically.

    The 'Single party' is communism. There are multiple factions on how to achieve that, which generates the multiple candidates which are on the ballots.

    Edit: also this photo has nothing to do with voting. Please stop reading 'RadioFreeAsia,' they are not a news source.

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  • [+] 0 points 6 months ago* (2 children)
  • [–] -1 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Gonna go ahead and discard any further discussion

    That does track for you people.

    Raw numbers have jack shit to do with it, you should probably go back to stats class if you think they do. The odds of 20+ million people all being literate is vanishingly small, the only reason to accept that statement is believing the probability of NK press lying to be 0.

    Except statistics are pointless in a vacuum. If you have a chance of 1 in a million, it is vanishingly unlikely that 100 chances hits that one in a million. This is especially true when speaking about disabilities, most of which are genetic (which means most populations do NOT have the same chances), most of which do not impair literacy. Period.

    If you have an accurate accounting of the population, and an accurate method of ensuring that population becomes educated, then grats, you get 100% literacy in a small enough population.

    The exceedingly few disabilities that would cause illiteracy, literally only a handful of which exist period and the total number of humans that have them is less than 7 figures world wide, do not occur in most populations frequently enough to apply to ANY GIVEN GROUP of people under 100 Million.

    Practically no disability stops literacy entirely (that isn't unbelievably expensive to keep the subject alive), and the few that do, again, are so impractically rare it'd be surprising if there are a handful of those individuals on the Asian continent.

    It’s shocking you’re going to bat for NK without even understanding the basic political landscape. He is the PRESIDENT of the State Affairs Commission. Which part of those duties sound any different than any other president or prime minister? Pedantics over title (President/Chairman, NDC/SAC) or the specific electoral process does not change the powers of the role.

    If Irony were a disability you'd be disabled.

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