Original source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43614661 (19 points, 7 hours ago, 6 comments)
I recognize this was likely sourced from a PR agency working for a security product meant for global employee verification but I can attest they are addressing a real problem.
We're a startup so I don't think the end goal was to scam us per se but more to get money or more likely build credibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceijkZQI1HM&pp=ygUZUm9iIGEgY...
How do you choose between a well qualified legitimate candidate and a extremely well qualified 'appears to be' legitimate candidate?
These people are presumably not advertising themselves to be from Pyongyang.
> Nowadays, Leggio told Fortune he won’t even set up an interview with a candidate who seems promising on paper unless they agree to one final step.
“Say something negative about Kim Jong Un,” Leggio tells potential job candidates, referring to the third-generation authoritarian Supreme Leader of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Through research, Leggio learned insulting the DPRK’s Supreme Leader is forbidden, and North Korean citizens could face serious punishment for showing anything less than reverence.
“The first time I ever did it, the person started freaking out and cursing,” said Leggio.
The job seeker subsequently blocked Leggio across all social media platforms. Now Leggio makes the same request before every single interview. Other startups and founders he knows are asking the same thing of job seekers, he said.I am afraid they are a lot more cynical than we give them credit, though.
Legitimate? Seems unlikely, given the state of affairs in North Korea
That's not true, there are only two types of North Korean people you'll meet, either those that have defected and escaped North Korea or those that are agents of the state of North Korea.
There are very few defectors in existence and once they escape they're given full South Korean citizenship. This article is not about those people.
The vast majority of North Koreans outside North Korea are not defectors, instead they are controlled state assets. There are no North Korean people outside the country that are free citizens. Every single North Korean authorised to leave the country is working directly for their government often to raise money for the regime, to steal IP, to infiltrate for some nefarious purpose.
Having one of these North Korean active assets in your company is extremely dangerous, your business is now at risk of leaks, theft, or worst something being modified like added vulnerabilities that could be exploited later in cyber attacks.
So no, this article is not racist at all and really has nothing to do with the recent political situation.
Given that background, I personally find it unsurprising that they're having success and AI tools are just making it that much easier
Like if the person says “the carrot harvest was terrible last year and the uniforms are very itchy, it’s like he’s correctly but annoyingly prioritizing other things” they might be a spy.
I mean that is a silly example but you get the idea hopefully.
They would have to be impersonating real people if pretending to be Americans. Unless these companies aren't doing the most basic background checks beyond just looking at resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Pretty weird and seems not too difficult to prevent...
> In the IT worker scheme, once someone involved gets an interview, North Koreans use remote-desktop tools to help coach people through the Q&A with a recruiter.
> Aidan Raney, founder of Farnsworth Intelligence, posed as an American willing to help North Koreans to investigate the issue for a client who almost hired a fake engineer. During the course of two video calls with three or four people who all said their names were “Ben,” Raney learned the details. “The Bens” would handle all the upfront work for him—creating a fake LinkedIn profile to verify his new identity for U.S. recruiters, formulating a bio, and sending it out to dozens of job postings with a new Gmail address they set up.
> The Bens even modified Raney’s headshot to a black-and-white photo so it wouldn’t resemble his usual picture, Raney told Fortune. If Raney got a job, he would show up for meetings, like a morning stand-up or scrum, and go about his day while a North Korean engineer handled the workload. Raney would be allowed to keep 30% of the salary but had to transfer 70% to the Bens using crypto, Paypal, or Payoneer.
> “What they were trying to do was use my identity to bypass background checks, and so they wanted this fake persona they created to be extremely close to the real-life version,” said Raney.
> The Bens got Raney an interview, and while it was ongoing, they used a remote-desktop application to set up a notepad on Raney’s screen so they could write out responses to the questions from the interviewer, Raney explained. And it worked: Raney got a verbal offer for a job with a private government contractor that paid $80,000 a year.
> He then had to immediately turn around and tell the company he couldn’t accept the offer and apologize for claiming their time.
I am certain there are good people in North Korea but it would be hard to figure folks allegiances. A lifetime of propaganda can really do something to the mind.
Hack a hospital to give a birth certificate for a new born baby (easily within NK’s reach), and then mail the documents for a SS card. In eighteen years have an agent take the GED and SAT, and score well enough to get into state school. Then graduate and apply to the list of target companies you want to infiltrate.
You’d have to go pretty deep into someone’s identity to unearth this sort of approach. Probably not enough for a military clearance, but enough for anything not directly defense related.
This is a full-remote startup and they have now added a mandatory in-person interview to their recruitment loop.
Amusingly, in their case, using local job boards did not help: they got candidates pretending to from Poland or Serbia, yet not speaking the language.
A little sad to see how each episode like this casts more doubt and uncertainty into full-remote interviewing.
May I suggest you may have meant ‘there are probably people who in the deepest of their heart disagree with state policy’.
If the state can execute your family on a whim because somebody stepped out of line you keep generally those sentiments well hidden.
But _liking_ the policies of the state where you live in is generally not considered a vice. So if a person who disagrees with the NK state is ‘good’ this implies people who agree NK state are ‘bad’ and I don’t think that’s the right framework when discussing large populations of nation states.
The evidentiary standard on reporting goes basically to zero if it's about NK. Outlandish claims are to be taken at face value and not interrogated, because of a "lifetime of propaganda" in the US, since the Korean War. Yes, that is linked with racism. The evidentiary standard in the media on other European countries for example is much much higher. For the most part, the racist narrative follows that places where white people are good and free, and places where non-white people are dangerous and bad. Classic racist rhetoric.
With regards to the specific points the article is making: "The FBI reported the money funds nuclear weapons and operations". Is a laughable fearmongering hypcrocrisy. part of Every tax dollar in the US goes towards funding nuclear weapons and operations. But good luck trying to get reporters at Fortune to be self-aware of their hypocrisy. That's the propaganda: bad when they do it. Good or neutral when we do it. Uncritical re-printing of statements from government agents (FBI). A reporter with an evidentiary standard would ask for evidence before printing that. Last I checked there was only one country that has actually used a nuclear weapon. Objectively, I would say that country is far more dangerous.
Are you disputing the evidence from other specific named private citizens in companiess that are reporting this happening, such as Michael Barnhart and Jamie Collier of Google, Bojan Simic of Hypr and Emi Chiba at Gartner who are confirming they have experienced the same activity in their firms? How about the evidence from Aidan Raney, a private security researcher, who reports he personally infiltrated one of these scam operations?
Furthermore it’s not just unsubstantiated claims by US agencies, the article also refers to two successfully prosecuted court cases in which they had to present evidence to secure convictions.
Your criticisms are aimed at US reporting, but the United Nations reports the same thing.
The ideology each state has nothing to do with the risk coming from employing people who can be compelled to follow such rules.
Calling out the regime’s control and the risk posed by state-backed cyber ops isn’t some “classic racist rhetoric”, it’s acknowledging reality. This is a country where you can be executed for watching the wrong movie. Pretending that’s morally equivalent to U.S. hypocrisy is lazy relativism.
Yes, the U.S. has done awful things. Yes, our media should be more critical. But no, I’m not going to pretend North Korean IT operatives raising money for a weapons program isn’t a serious issue just because the U.S. also has nukes. That’s not nuance, that’s deflection
The moral issue aside, anyone who accepts less than 200% is a sucker. Otherwise it’s better to just get a real job.
My thoughts on this as an Australian software engineer: how could they possibly “order” me to “install a backdoor”? To change a production system, I need an issue in the issue tracker, I need a PR, I need a colleague to review and approve it-if I’m not allowed to call it “install backdoor at Australian government’s demand”, what am I going to call it? How am I suppose to justify it to the reviewer? How do I respond to their questions? How do I convince them to approve it? “I’m sorry I’m not allowed to tell you why this PR is needed” is not going to get it approved
And in the (I think highly implausible) event the government did order me to do such a thing-first I’d insist it was impossible (due to the kind of internal controls I’ve already mentioned), and if they wouldn’t accept that answer, then I’d resign rather than do it. I don’t think the law can stop you from quitting your job, and once you quit, you are no longer able to comply with any such orders.
It seems to me like one of these laws which has disturbing wording but is going to be very difficult for the authorities to utilise in practice.
(Disclaimer: of course I don’t speak for my employer, etc)
Besides, if we wanted information about Fortune 500 companies we'd presumably ask the US intelligence services or directly infiltrate their network from an Australian office. Many of them have a pretty big attack surface from the Australian perspective.
TLDR; hire Australians.
pro-Russians will try to weasel and twist themselves into pretzel justifying Crimea annexation. Pro-Ukraine will have the opposite answer.
similar thing in USA: try to force any US public figure to condemn genocide in Gaza or apartheid in Palestine... and you will be deported, canceled, and debunked on the spot.
or try to ask any US public figure to condemn any of the US wars, or the way US public was led into supporting them and do the math on who picked up the tab of the war...
They aren’t “infiltrating”, they’re doing the work and building your products
Its the most benign thing ever and more akin to violating work authorization than IT security issues or economic sanctions
Elites I am guessing can probably afford to be a bit cynical in private. And people interviewing at these companies are probably closer to being elites than peasants. But if they are monitored, showing any dislike or disloyalty in public is probably not something they can risk. Even if it means tricking the “dirty American capitalists”. There would have to be an unofficial nod from above “you can do it, just don’t overdoit”. Say “the harvest was bad” but say nothing about the uniform being itchy. Our dear leader sowed them with his own hands!
I suppose one difference is that I can fight the government legally on the issue and am more free in many ways to resist, especially as I'm not employed by the state.
But I do agree, on the scale (0-1?) of how much your government can take away your liberty (when you haven't committed a crime) and compel you commit crimes, most western countries probably sit around 0.01 to 0.05 maybe, North Korea sits around 0.98 to 0.99 and Australia probably 0.4
Thanks for bringing that up, Australia seems to be the test state for how many draconian laws a "free" society will bare, and it is terrifying.
It's just kind of pathetic to see westerns claim to be the free-est free people of the whole world, without showing any form of understanding as to why NK is the way it is. This country's apparent paranoia and distaste for anything westerner is totally unrelated to the national trauma imposed by an imperial power coming from abroad, right guys?
So, I'm not a fan of North Korea (is anyone?), but this is definitely racist rhetoric. One thing that helps me see whether I'm saying something iffy is by replacing the ethnic group I'm talking about, and replacing it with another. If the resulting statement is either silly, deeply offensive, or obvious scare mongering, typically it means the original statement is worth reconsidering.
As for how they'd force you, just like any intelligence agency, they'd start with carrots. They'd offer you money, or the chance to feel you were serving your country (both are free to the Australian government, and likely more effective than a double ration of wheat). They'd have you do very innocent, justifiable things at first. They'd work their way up to higher demands. If you got cold feet, they'd tell you you were in too deep. They'd then consider the sticks. They'd threaten to expose your spying, or release some other compromat. They'd arrest you or a family member on a he-said-the-cops-said enemy-of-the-people crime like drugs, child pornography or terrorism, and make it clear that only your full cooperation would see a release.
Nobody thinks the Australian government relies on this kind of thing as much as NK, and the checks and balances of a democracy make it too expensive to do this at an industrial scale. But you'd be foolish if you thought the state doesn't have these capabilities, and the complete willingness to use them for matters of national security, and the ability to make it "legal", perhaps by pardoning people or not cooperating with any court.
It's tricky to weed out spies, if they are American ("Tell me a bad thing about Donald Trump"), Australians, Chinese, Russian or North Korean. That's why you have recruiters doing background checks.
The only difference b/w western countries and eastern countries is in the freedom of speech. Though, the alien enemies act , and the canadian who got arrested for no apparant reason in USA.... yeah, I mean , the difference is close to 0.
US could definitely put a law where it can say that freedom of speech is harming the country by speculating in the stock market and now it needs to curb freedom of speech.
And I won't be surprised 1 bit
I suspect that's a lie told by the Chinese, but even if it were true, it wouldn't change the fact that it's a country under Chinese occupation. Attempting to justify empire doesn't mean they aren't an empire.
Anyway, let's set that aside and return to your question:
> If so, can you name at least one country under Chinese occupation, or one Chinese protectorate?
If you won't accept Tibet as occupied by China, consider North Korea as a Chinese protectorate.
The situation in the rest of China is a lot more complex. Most of warlords joined the PRC (sometimes through negotiation, mostly through surrender) when it was clear that the ROC - the competing but less centralized imperial power - had lost. The program of Han settlement, Sinicization and ethnic repression that occured in multiple waves (most acute in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and some areas of SW China) was an imperial project.
Externally, there is the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979. While the reasons for the conflict were multi-faceted, one of them was that Vietnam had broken Cambodia out of the Chinese sphere by deposing the Khmer Rouge.
Recently China has been building bases and shaping countries' economies and political systems around the world. Arguably they have already made the Solomon Islands a protectorate and a few African countries are also moving in that direction.
The people on the receiving end of the US military industrial complex won't agree to your assessment. NK and China have never nuked a civilian city, never genocided civilian population with "strategic carpet bombing", and they never occupied one, never bombed one into the stone age, never caused millions of refugees
The fact that this meme stil lives in western mind just shows how pathetic and detached from reality is western anti-CCP propaganda. Propaganda should contain truth, to be credible, otherwise it ceased to be effective
NK and SK constitute separate ethno-states (due to different culture, socio-political env, upbringing), despite being very close genetically.
It got to the point that each nation's name is different, South Koreans are Hanguk, while North Koreans are Chosun
You've got some facts wrong. The "California Republic" was a tiny rebellion against Mexico whose goal was to join the US. The Texas Republic also asked to join the US (and was turned down the first time).
But if your point is that the US is as much an empire as China, I agree.
I dunno why but I think I'm gonna trust people who used to be the victims of colonial domination and looting over the recidivist offenders of the said colonial domination and looting when it comes to Asian history.
Also NK is a Chinese protectorate as much as the USA is a Republic.
When I mentioned modern China, I referred to the PRC, so after (most of its) national reunification.
I fail to see how anti-terrorist repression in Xinjiang is akin to any form of imperialism. Otherwise they wouldn't celebrate those cultures on TV and during huge national events. This applies to Mongolia too.
If the situation in China was similar to the genocide in Palestine, then those cultures and their people would be suppressed and not supported nor promoted.
"Don't trust him, he's from Israel"
https://libertyinnorthkorea.org/learn-nk-challenges
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/what-happens-to-you...
Fair enough, but then you can't claim that the US involvement in Korea was imperial.
> When I mentioned modern China, I referred to the PRC, so after (most of its) national reunification.
Why do you set this as a cut-off? Is an empire no longer imperial once it has conquered all its provinces? Besides that, what happened in Hong Kong? Was that not an Empire aligning its rebellious province by force?
> I fail to see how anti-terrorist repression in Xinjiang is akin to any form of imperialism.
I was mostly referring to the many purges between 1949 and 1976. While most of the millions killed in them were Han Chinese "class enemies", not pro-independence ethnic minorities, it was nonetheless part of the central committee solidifying total control of the country.
Since you mention it though, I'll just ask you: Are the various Uyghur councils and international NGOs just covering for terrorists? Did they fake all those official documents and the satellite pictures? How can you handwave what is happening in Xinjiang, yet be so concerned with Palestine? If you want to engage in some victim blaming, were the daily rocket attacks not terrorism?
Yes. https://www.yahoo.com/news/hermit-kingdom-north-korea-became...
The article, and linked sources, cite evidence from 6 named private citizens, each that have personal experience of multiple cases of exposing actual North Korean infiltrators posing as citizens of other countries to try and get tech jobs. Including one guy who infiltrated such a team of North Koreans. Then there are two successful convictions in court of US citizens aiding and abetting active cells of infiltrators.
So, these are not at all hypothetical and they're not just unsubstantiated claims by US agencies. In fact this issue is also reported by the United Nations.
https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...
https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...
What do you base this on?
The state is a coercive institution, but seeing how Australia is a liberal democracy with a constitution I would want to see some actual proof of threatening families.
That one weird trick to get the North Korean NPC to malfunction!
But I’m sure that the NPCs who honestly believed that the North Koreans honestly believed that they found a unicorn will think this is both hilarious and completely true.
"But it's true!" is in my opinion a poor response to accusations of prejudice. "Black people are criminals" "That's racist" "But it's true, look at the statistics!" It doesn't make the original statement any less racist.
This is starting to feel like a flat earth discussion.
Yes, the allegations of genocide against the Uyghur were fabricated. Pure CIA fiction. After all, neither Muslim nations nor the UN are denouncing or investigating Chinese anti terrorist policies as genocidal, unlike a certain totalitarian dictatorship that likes to portray itself as the Hebrew state and who happens to livecam and brag about its demonic acts on TV.
North Korea is famously one of the most closed-off countries in the world. Its Western-aligned neighbor is officially still at war with it. But at the same time people will make assertions with certainty about what North Korea is.
North Korea is an unreliable narrator. So are South Korea and America because they are hostile to NK. And people in the West don’t trust whatever countries are aligned with North Korea.
That’s the discrepancy—speaking boldly about the most closed off country in the world. Like documentaries and travel videos? Travel videos will be cherry-picked because of the government’s[1] policy of stalking and sheepherding all their tourists. That’s just one example from the NK side. We can also get into Western outlets making up NK fairytales based on no NK sources at all.
> This is starting to feel like a flat earth discussion.
Asking what level of information you have on a very closed-off country is comparable to denying a scientific fact that has been hypothesized for millenia, empirically proven probably for centuries, and can probably be empirically proven by an amateur scientist mountaineer?
Oh yeah? Have you got any more tired cliches up your sleeve?[2] “Oh hush” to quote a HN user.
[1] Or the regime if you prefer
Your entire comment boils down to: “We can’t trust any sources, so how dare you have an opinion.” That’s not skepticism, that’s intellectual paralysis dressed up as nuance.
And yes, invoking Flat Earth was apt—because entertaining every counter-narrative, no matter how unmoored from reality, in the name of balance is exactly how we ended up with people thinking the Earth is a disk.
But by all means, tell me more about the utopia behind the DMZ, if not hush too. You have said a lot of nothing.
What a world we live in. You cannot even call NK a repressive regime without folks jumping to point out how wrong you are. Maybe you need to go through the test your self and denounce the supreme leader.
It is typical western chauvinism and it is embarrassing to read you try to pretend it isn't.
Yes, I’ve seen videos, read books, listened to defectors, and followed reports from Amnesty, the UN, and others. You? You’re just here to sneer at the idea that anyone outside North Korea could possibly know anything. That’s not humility, it’s nihilism in a moral disguise.
You say I “know nothing” about North Korea. Maybe not everything. But I know enough to not reflexively defend a regime that starves its people while building monuments to a cult of personality. If that makes you uncomfortable, good.
Gotta call a spade a spade sometimes, sorry bud.
>Yes, I’ve seen videos, read books, listened to defectors, and followed reports from Amnesty, the UN, and others. You? You’re just here to sneer at the idea that anyone outside North Korea could possibly know anything. That’s not humility, it’s nihilism in a moral disguise.
This isn't even an argument. You read things? Wow, me too. I read NK is awesome. They are trying to sustain their nation. Your repeating of biased western propaganda uncritically is the nihilism.
> You say I “know nothing” about North Korea. Maybe not everything. But I know enough to not reflexively defend a regime that starves its people while building monuments to a cult of personality. If that makes you uncomfortable, good.
I never even defended them. Just pointed out your ignorance and racism. Cheers. Nice edit btw.
The racist card is boring and over used. Build a backbone and a real opinion.
We have decades of reports regarding NK please go elsewhere with your conspiracies.
The next point would be juxtapose the lifetime of propaganda with your complete and unwavering certainty about the state of mind in the hermit kingdom, but you don’t seem quite ready for that.
Now to your reply here. There’s too many muddied points, too many strawmen to go into in detail without boring you in turn. So I won’t. But notice that I haven’t even defended North Korea. In fact one of the points I made was how they will sheepherd tourists. My comment was 80% epistemological, as you say. And your response? Talking about “the Utopia” of the DMZ? Oh wait, that’s exactly the phrase you brought up to someone else[1] and they too never ever said that North Korea was a great place to live (only that the narrative was “racist”).
So why go into these epistemological sleep study sessions? Because as evidenced by the conversation in [2], you (but also serving as an example because this is far from unique) will dismiss people who question the narrative of the OP, namely “The FBI reported the money funds nuclear weapons and operations”. This is perfectly germane to the topic: is this a thing of concern or is it a convenient narrative? You dismiss that as a “conspiracy” in your reply and waffle on about “sure, other countries do bad things, but NK worse”. Your dismissal has got nothing to do with the topic, though. The topic is not if NK is a fantastic place to live, a “utopia” or whatever. The topic is if they did something that other countries don’t do.
[1] Not that they will necessarily believe or be on the same page as what the government says but we can stop here.
Defectors are “outliers”? Of course they are—it’s a police state. That’s how tyranny works. You don’t get a representative sample when dissent gets you killed.
You’re not offering insight. You’re drowning basic truths in a flood of words to avoid saying anything with weight. At some point, skepticism becomes cowardice.
Say less. Mean more.
What you are describing here is something any country could do – yes, it is conceivable that Australia's intelligence agencies could use bribery/harassment/threats/blackmail/etc to turn Australian citizens into unwilling spies – but the same is true of the UK, the US, France, Germany, whatever.
The thing that people are calling out Australia over, is a law which says a court can order someone to install a secret backdoor, and furthermore order them not to tell (almost) anyone about it. [0] And I'm sceptical that law could be used in the way you describe – e.g. "They'd offer you training on how to bypass the controls" – the law says a court can order you to install a backdoor – it doesn't say it can order you to attend a training course on how to "bypass controls".
Keep in mind, while proceedings are under seal, you are allowed to retain a lawyer, and your lawyer can make legal arguments before the judge, and can appeal the judge's rulings. IANAL, but would a judge rule that a power to order someone to install a backdoor extends to ordering them to attend a government-run training course on how to deceive their employer? Even if a judge did rule that way, would the appellate courts uphold the ruling?
Or, similarly – "They'd get you to exfiltrate the code and the product roadmap" – does a legal power to order someone to install a backdoor, extend to a legal power to order them to hand over generalised confidential information of their employer? Or similarly – "They'd have you do very innocent, justifiable things at first" – does a legal power to order someone to install a backdoor, extend to a legal power to order them to do "very innocent, justifiable things" which don't in themselves directly contribute to installing any backdoor?
And, as I said, if your lawyer can't talk the court out of it – resign. Will a judge hold that a judicial power to order to the installation of a backdoor extends to ordering a person not to resign their job?
Get a medical certificate saying you can't work. Get yourself admitted to a private psychiatric hospital on the grounds that the stress of this secret government order has caused you to have a nervous breakdown / panic episode / suicidal ideation / etc. (I think if I ever were issued such a secret government order, it really would have that kind of extreme detrimental impact on my mental health, I wouldn't be faking it.) I think a lot of psychologists/psychiatrists/etc would be very sympathetic to your plight. What's a judge supposed to do if they have a psychiatrist testifying that you are medically unfit to comply with the order, or return to the job which the order is associated with?
[0] You are explicitly allowed to tell your personal legal counsel.
This refers to the edit that the sibling comment made from:
> Thank you for finally bringing your silly antics to a conclusion.
To adding four more sentences (ending with “We have decades ...”). Which seemed weird given that the first sentence was thanking OP here for bringing the “antics” to an end.
And apparently OP then made an edit in kind.
What? You can't be serious. Of course the state ideology impacts the risk of the state acting ideologically.
The US is very similar to the french Empire after the 1st Republic. It cloaks itself under the name of Republic, but isn't one itself. It's an evil country ran by evil people. The only difference is that Americans get to chose the Emperor every 4 years, whilst knowing no matter who is in charge, very little will change.
Of course its people aren't inherently evil or anything. But the propaganda is intense and permanent, so Americans unfortunately behave like little emperors themselves. This applies to most of Europe too, naturally.
That's why sometimes, I wish to pray to a higher power to spread class consciousness to the whole masses of America and Europe, but am also aware I'm part of the issue, and that it's wishful thinking.
What I am surprised about is that the same people who criticized other countries for doing X will not criticize their own/allied country doing a variation of X. I believe that we in the free West have a duty to keep our democrackes and we do that by not copying rules from the like of North Korea and by not constantly creating tools that help abolishing the division of powers.
That means when I critique Australia for that law I do so on the moral ground that Australia should know better, while North Korea is more or less openly evil.
I am a big fan of fixing our own problems instead of pointing elsewhere where it is even worse.
But I learned that there is a big group of people who think that pointing out that there is dog shit on the carpet makes you somehow a traiter and not someone who wants to live in a country without dogshit on the carpet.
There’s also no point in fretting about cowardice. Critiquing a poor Asian country from an apartment in Europe/America/South America won’t get you harmed.