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207 points jimhi | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.956s | source
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jimhi ◴[] No.29827641[source]
In 2018, I got connected to 5 refugees who escaped North Korea to the USA. What surprised me was all 5 were able to escape by different variations of saving up enough money to bribe people along the way.

The only way to save up money for their ages (16-23) was to become "entrepreneurial"

EDIT:

If you are interested in North Korea, check out the stories by some friends of mine:

Charles - North Korean refugee turned programmer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziqq5gUXu8g

North Korean Spy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rLqYXTaFI

Girl with parents who worked in the government whose whole family escaped https://www.youtube.com/c/Pyonghattan/videos

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FpUser ◴[] No.29828771[source]
Back in the 80s when I was a scientist in the old USSR's Academy of Science we've had few Koreans in our lab. I think they were studying in the Universities and later had somehow managed not to return to Korea.

They were all insanely nice.

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aspenmayer ◴[] No.29828857[source]
Did they prefer USSR to DPRK?
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FpUser ◴[] No.29829049[source]
Trying to imply they were the same? Make a wild guess. While not a shining citadel of freedom USSR in the 80s was infinitely better than North Korea. Their words, not mine.
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aspenmayer ◴[] No.29829379[source]
No implication at all, I was simply curious. I think in the West we assume that the communist experience was bad, but I have no frame of reference for this, as I wasn’t there at the time. Then comes comparing between communist regimes, which is farther removed from my experience.

I wish the CIA would’ve let democratically elected communist regimes alone, like Vietnam or certain Latin American countries. It just grinds my gears I guess. We claim to support democracy, except when we say that they’re holding it wrong, or doing it wrong. Who are we to say that?

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stickfigure ◴[] No.29829742[source]
We have modern Venezuela as a ripe example.
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1. aspenmayer ◴[] No.29830282[source]
I’m not sure that is the same. Would you consider Venezuela a democracy?