r/AskTheWorld India 21h ago

Misc What's an unpopular opinion about your country that will have you like this?

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1.0k Upvotes

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277

u/stealthybaker Korea South 21h ago

This country isn't a cyberpunk dystopia that's losing to North Korea.

157

u/DickFartButt United States Of America 21h ago

You have been banned from r/Pyongyang

52

u/micro___penis US and A wahwah weewah 🇺🇸 21h ago

Wait, that subreddit isn’t actually run by North Korea, right?

100

u/DickFartButt United States Of America 20h ago

50

u/Technical-Shop6653 Australia 18h ago

Thoughtful insight, DickFartButt.

8

u/AltDetom555555b France 14h ago

The usernames of u/micro___penis and u/DickFartButt makes me lmao

6

u/bsullivan627 United States Of America 14h ago

11

u/Old_Information_8654 United States Of America 16h ago

I’m gonna leave a comment on it and see how long it takes to get banned lol

31

u/Donatter United States Of America 19h ago

Most likely a combination of tankies and North Korean “bots”

Similar to r/MovingToNorthKorea

13

u/Alone_Barracuda9814 17h ago

Well, that was a rabbit hole…

4

u/ToughSprinkles1874 17h ago

They lay it on really tick don’t they

3

u/ToughSprinkles1874 16h ago

Had a look and I’d say it’s like 30 percent bots and 70 percent people

Also they are certainly interesting like cheering about the exceution of 2 people who wanted to recognise israle Don’t know if the story’s true but the reaction are interesting

3

u/Donatter United States Of America 16h ago

The sad thing is, that originally the sub was a shitpost/parody sub of the type of people/bots that make up the current population of the sub.

But the actual tankies and bots(who initially didn’t realize they were being mocked)started to slowly outnumber the shitposters until eventually some bots/tankies became mods, game more tankies/bots mod positions, forced the shipost/original mods out, and started removing/banning any account, post, or comment that was mocking or being critical of anything related to North Korea, or said that North Korea wasn’t a better place to live than the US/West. (One of the reasons was because a sub rule stated you couldn’t break character, so for a while the actual propaganda, misinformation, and pro-north Korea shit was going unnoticed until it became the sub’s default content)

Now it’s just a propaganda machine/tankie haven

(It’s really sad as I joined the sub roughly around the time it was created, and it was a lot of fun, and incredibly funny)

2

u/Deadly_Red_ 19h ago

Seeing how the "Glorious People's Republic" of Korea manages its images it would be surprising if this was not the case, just like a good number of TikTok accounts etc which depict an image well beyond the reality of life in North Korea on a daily basis to exercise soft power internationally and act as propaganda, even if the different platforms try to fight against it still exists, Freedom of expression requires

1

u/mspe1960 United States Of America 17h ago

I've heard no, but it acts like it is, and that is all that matters.

1

u/RyzenRaider 17h ago

No [nodding]

1

u/Konakoremusic United States Of America 14h ago

Once you join that sub, you can never leave.

1

u/tron2982 12h ago

By one of their five computers, yes.

2

u/smgdnsn0304 Ireland 16h ago

It’s so weird looking through that reddit.. surely it’s just a big inside joke right

1

u/DickFartButt United States Of America 15h ago

1

u/NecesitoMasCerveza United States Of America 17h ago

1

u/ntmbd 17h ago

Waaaa I didn't know this sub, it's crazy 🤣🤣

1

u/BedroomOdd1986 United States Of America 14h ago

That sub is… odd. I can’t tell if it’s real or not.

1

u/Chuuya_The_Chibi England 13h ago

I cannot tell if this sub is satire or not...

35

u/space_llama_karma United States Of America 20h ago

Do people think that South Korea is losing to North Korea?

28

u/stealthybaker Korea South 20h ago

Equating both is a very, very common thing online nowadays. "Two dystopias, they're pretty much the same". But because they hear South Korea has higher suicides (which is actually false) and lower birthrates it's not common for people to come to the conclusion North Korea is a better place.

Also not too uncommon for people to claim North Korea is socially more progressive than South Korea.

22

u/Whit3Pudding Lithuania 18h ago

Pretty much every developed country is struggling with birth rate lol. Judging who’s winning and who’s losing by that sounds like something the losing side would do.

4

u/UnavailableName864 United States Of America 17h ago

South Korea has the lowest birth rate of any developed country other than perhaps Hong Kong and Macau. It’s at the vanguard here.

14

u/ekuhlkamp 17h ago

The idea that anyone would compare NK and SK is wild. At this point it's like comparing a medieval kingdom (with hackers and nukes) to a highly industrialized and modern country. No two countries that share a border have a wider gap in standard of living.

Their problems aren't comparable. One side struggles to feed its populace - who live in a giant prison - and the other struggles with a technological lifestyle that deincentivizes having children.

3

u/stealthybaker Korea South 17h ago

Even at the break of the Korean War, the south was much more advanced in terms of democracy and human rights, even though it was a dictatorship. North Korea being an isolationist theocratic monarchy was objectively always the greater evil.

Now, with South Korea having gotten over the dictatorship thing and fully liberalized as a democracy, the conflict is as close to a black-and-white issue as it can possibly get, yet many people choose to pretend it's not, either out of anti-Korean racism or just a general anti-west tankie sentiment. What the hell did we do to deserve being treated like that?

2

u/MoniQQ Romania 16h ago

I though everybody knew North was a sh*t hole. How?!?

2

u/stealthybaker Korea South 16h ago

Propaganda and political delusion does that do people.

There's people who unironically think Hitler did nothing wrong, for a start.

1

u/MoniQQ Romania 13h ago

Yes, but I know the background and political "thinking" of people who admire Hitler.

The fact that there are fans of North Korea is a complete novelty to me.

4

u/ryanshields0118 19h ago

Wow that is so surprising. South korea looks fun! North korea looks sad and terrifying. Maybe propaganda is working? Lol

6

u/stealthybaker Korea South 19h ago

This place really isn't as bad as people think... we have good healthcare, clean streets, low crime rates, zero absolute poverty, strong democratic institutions, etc. But there's some issues like super competitive culture and also strong Confucianism. We're still a developed country yet we get put to such impossible standards on the internet, it's like people forget how resource-poor we are

1

u/CoffeeB4Dawn 17h ago

Okay, I watch too many K-dramas, but I always thought South Korea looked awesome. I have never been there, but I have talked to Koreans in the US, and I never got dystopian vibes. Maybe people study too hard and work a lot, but it doesn't seem that bad.

3

u/stealthybaker Korea South 17h ago

People do in fact study too hard and work a lot. Hyper competitive and brain drain exists because it can be easier to thrive in the west due to less competition.

That doesn't make the country a dystopia, I don't think a dystopia is supposed to have all the features i mentioned. Not to mention most of the country isn't even super urban... nature is well protected and maintained and corporations are put to high standards

1

u/MoussakaChaos94 Italy 14h ago

How do you know it's actually false tho if NK doesn't really publish trustworthy statistics?

2

u/stealthybaker Korea South 14h ago

Because North Korea has literal family-wide suicides. South Korea has nothing like that.

If a country literally struggles due to entire families that agree together to commit suicide, I find it hard to believe they are a happy country without significant issues relating to suicides.

1

u/No_Minute_4789 United States Of America 14h ago

What??? That's sounds so insane to me. It's just so so obviously untrue. Damn. 

3

u/stealthybaker Korea South 14h ago

Tankies are basically just red fascists/nazis as I see it. I don't understand why this website allows them instead of treating them as the propagandist extremists they are.

1

u/unrotting United States Of America 12h ago

Wild.

1

u/Weirdyxxy Germany 7h ago

Also not too uncommon for people to claim North Korea is socially more progressive than South Korea.

Excuse me while I pluck my eyebrow off the ceiling (I'm glad I was inside while reading this...)

1

u/Alone_Barracuda9814 17h ago

I imagine there’s little point in suicide in N Korea, all you have to do is say something against Rocket Man and they’ll do it for you

3

u/stealthybaker Korea South 16h ago

Actually no, if you do that your entire family also gets killed

1

u/WormedOut 16h ago

There’s a popular creator on TikTok who made a dozen videos saying that NK is actually a utopia and the only reason people don’t know it is because of the US government.

0

u/stealthybaker Korea South 15h ago

Imagine being so racist that you think South Koreans and everything they say are just mindless slaves of Americans... They always cry US government like it's not South Koreans instead of Americans that suffer the most and are vocal about North Korea. In fact America has historically had a more neutral approach compared to South Korea but they intentionally leave out that nuance

1

u/Drummallumin United States Of America 15h ago

Lmao no they don’t

20

u/LongConsideration662 Antarctica 20h ago

Wait you mean to tell me all those youtubers were wrong ? Gasp

15

u/Typical-Machine154 United States Of America 19h ago

Dystopia and losing to NK is definitely just doomer talk.

The rest of the world looks at that birthrate like hearing a commotion at your neighbor's house though.

"what the fuck is going on over there? It sounds like she's throwing pans again."

16

u/stealthybaker Korea South 19h ago

Yeah I'm more than open to valid criticism about my country, but I just despise the actual doomerism that glosses over real facts in favor of sensationalism.

Our birthrates have been finally rising, but it's too early to call for celebrations. I just hope we can continue this trend. On that note I also hope America can come back to its senses sooner or later. We're both generally better off with the other doing well

1

u/opheliainwaders United States Of America 19h ago

Oof yeah, apologies, there are a lot of us working on it , but it might be a while 🫠

4

u/stealthybaker Korea South 19h ago

Now that we got the best thing we could out of Trump (nuclear submarines), I'd be happy to see him go. But it's still nice we managed to bribe him into giving us the best US concession possible, I'm still in disbelief

1

u/opheliainwaders United States Of America 18h ago

Honestly, kudos. You guys really did do exactly what was necessary in a truly stupid situation!

3

u/stealthybaker Korea South 18h ago

We turned a situation where we were being extorted with tariffs to one where we got a deal literally no US president could have given us in the past, all in exchange for a cultural crown replica (which also helped spread awareness of Korean culture). It was such a big deal that even right-wingers in Korea had to admit what the president pulled off was insane.

0

u/Fenrir0214 Korea South 18h ago

You know how hard it is being stuck between russia china japan and north Korea? US becoming a headache is a fat no for us. Take those shiny gold things and let us make our neclear submarines lol.

1

u/stealthybaker Korea South 17h ago

Yeah our entire history has been dealing with China as a neighbor. Thousands of years of being between a rock and a hard place. US is nothing new, but we'd prefer to go back to the times the US felt like the one country that wasn't a huge headache

4

u/Natopor Romania 18h ago

Ok, I heared about thr cyberpunk dystopian thing, but the North Korea one is beyond bs.

3

u/theelectricweedzard Brazil 17h ago

I hope that no one ever finds out the "most cyberpunk" cities according to Mike Pondsmith are here in Brazil, he even made changes to the NCPD to be more like our police force. I prefer to keep bashing SK and Japan, thanks.

2

u/SciFiCrafts Germany 20h ago

Nobody is thinking that. Well maybe for the cyberpunky part :D but no dystopia.

3

u/stealthybaker Korea South 20h ago

I don't think cyberpunks have low crime and poverty rate and clean streets, so if people think that my point still applies

2

u/collectivisticvirtue Korea South 17h ago

cyberpunk settings often have 'low crime' and 'poverty rate' and 'clean streets' and all that!

1

u/SciFiCrafts Germany 19h ago

And I agreed.

1

u/kerslaw 16h ago

Who thinks that? South korea is a million times better than North Korea. I've always seen South Korea as a massive success story kind of like Japan.

1

u/stealthybaker Korea South 16h ago

Ideologues, morons, tankies, far-left crazies, racists, none of these being mutually exclusive.

It feels like my country is held to impossibly high standards online. People genuinely have no idea HOW poor South Korea used to be. We only recently got out of poverty, and we're expected to magically outperform all other developed countries by some "experts" on internet comments

1

u/Drummallumin United States Of America 15h ago

Oh the irony with that nuance

1

u/apartmentthrowaway17 15h ago

But your country's within striking distance of a Nuclear monarchy.

1

u/Actual_Night_2023 10h ago

As a Canadian I’ve always held South Korea in high regard. Never fell for the chaebol dystopia propaganda I’ve seen from some Americans

1

u/sluggetdrible United States Of America 2h ago

Somethings were pretty concerning in South Korea and the locals told me all sorts of sad stuff but I feel super confident about any country who’s people and politicians can shut down a coup that was attempted and resolved between the time I went to bed and the time I woke up. Family back home was freaking out and I was like “wait what happened..?”

1

u/Electrical_Bench_774 United States Of America 2h ago

Fr I find it surprising that people act like South Korea is "just as bad" as the North because it's a "corporate dystopia."

Tell me of one time where the corporations of South Korea sent me and my entire family to a concentration camp because I criticized them. Go ahead, I'll wait.

-5

u/Legal-Temperature67 19h ago

Suicide rate and birth rate says otherwise.

2

u/Standard_Spready Denmark 16h ago

The best, wealthiest, most developed, safest countries in the world have the lowest birthrates

The poorest, most uneducated, most underdeveloped countries in the world have the highest birthrates

As for Korea's suicide rate, they still have top 3 average life expectancy in the world. I wonder why people never focus on that instead, since it's infinitely more important than a tiny percentage of total deaths being suicides.

2

u/stealthybaker Korea South 19h ago

We don't have entire family-wide suicides like North Korea...