Apparently North Korean Universities have access to the real internet, but there is only a dozen or so computers connected to it, and for every computer there is a government official sitting in a room next door seeing what the person using the computer is seeing....and probably taking notes. So researchers can visit any sites they like...but as soon as you start reading something anti-NK you are very likely to get arrested.
Sorry but I have to ask, where do you get this from? Have you personally experienced this or are you simply repeating the party line?
Not to be negative or discredit you, but you use word like "apparently" "probably" and "very likely" which is immediate indicators of hearsay or fear mongering.
Not that I have any idea what NK is like, never been there. But I do live in a country that suffers from huge misconceptions about the conditions here, hearsay and fear mongering. The entitlement to judge other absolutely astounds me sometimes, not to be applied to you yourself off course.
Had the OP shared a link such as this I would probably not have responded, and I didn't quite get the following vibe from the talk:
"and for every computer there is a government official sitting in a room next door seeing what the person using the computer is seeing....and probably taking notes."
As for "personal experience": I come from a country which used to be communist, and when you wanted to make a telephone call, you had to go to a nearest post office, ask for access to the telephone, and first they would connect you with an agent who would listen in to what you were saying, and only then you would get connected to where you needed to call. Everyone knew about this surveillance. I have absolutely no reason to suspect that NK doesn't do the same thing.
No offence taken, but what party? I mean, sure, I could spend several thousand dollars and go to North Korea myself, but if journalists from various countries and from various news outlets report the same thing....then I think we can safely assume it's true? I wonder, what kind of journalistic evidence do you support then? And the country is Poland.
I don't really care to continue this line of debate too much longer, and it may have already gone too far, as HN is not a political debating forum.
But I am very skeptical of anything reported in any of the big media outlets[1]. Off course you have to get your news somewhere, I am just very sensitive to the background narrative, be it Western, Russian or Korean.
So the "party" line I am speaking about is how certain countries are always branded as the "bad/corrupt/terrorist" countries, but from first hand experience many of these countries are inhabited by people just going their own way. And the Western / Russian / whatever media very quickly forgets their own transgressions and that of their countries.
Well, it's very convenient to start a discussion and then say you are not interested any longer. We are having a civilised discussion - so let's discuss. And North Korea is interesting because going there is really not an option for 99.99% of us - so we have to rely on reports. And like I've said - things like food shortages or media censorship are reported by literally every journalist who has been to North Korea - doesn't matter if they are Polish, British, German, American or Russian. If you are starting from the point of view that CIA controls media worldwide, then there is literally no point in reading any news what so ever. But at the moment I do not even know what sort of point you are trying to make - that NK does not have censorship, or that computers connected to the Internet are not monitored by government agents? We have several sources that say they are - and what is your counter argument? That we cannot trust these sources? That would be a very interesting allegation to make, but unless you provide some rationale for your argument that's all they are going to remain - allegations.
Also - you are linking an article that uses RT as its only source? RT being so pro-Russian and pro-Russian propaganda it's not even funny - and that's the only source?
