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207 points jimhi | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.843s | 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. sudosysgen ◴[] No.29831356[source]
Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private, for profit economic activity and employement than France.

It's meaningfully a socialist economy, just an insanely corrupt mixed-market economy with a government pretending to be socialist to keep power.

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2. throwaway0a5e ◴[] No.29831620[source]
> Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private, for profit economic activity and employement than France.

Is that supposed to reflect well on Venezuela or be a slight at France? Because Venezuela isn't exactly doing to hot in the economics department right now.

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3. sudosysgen ◴[] No.29831768[source]
It's not supposed to reflect well on Venezuela, nor supposed to be a slight to France. I'm just saying that Venezuela is not an especially socialist economy.

Here is a source:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/private-cons...

Compared to:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/private-consump...

As well as

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/public-consu...

Compared to:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/public-consumpt...

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4. throwaway0a5e ◴[] No.29831900{3}[source]
That makes more sense.

I thought you were claiming that the overall dollar amount was larger.