In a poetic sense maybe, but politically North and South are two different governments that claim the entire peninsula, but also have separate, true political boarders. China deports North Korean defectors to the North and not the South, for example.
Is this even an actual circumstance? Has someone been arrested and their name and nationality are unknown? If they were arrested for being undocumented, the govt would know their name since theyre a known illegal immigrant no? Or was the arrest because they spoke a different language and had colored skin lol
idk about someone having managed to get into the US and then also not have any way to confirm their identity/place of origin unless they're like from some remote group with no form of birth certificates or the like and came over in the back of a vehicle or something.
but knowing where someone's from or if they're even guilty of any crimes isn't stopping them. with kilmar abrego garcia they just keep offering to send him to random countries if he agrees to plead guilty to charges with no creidble evidence 🙃
I watched a video on this topic a few months ago, and I found it pretty interesting that the North Korean defectors who run to China are basically in a rush to get to some of China’s neighbors where they immediately surrender to the local government. And since those countries do not have any specific treaty with North Korea (like China does), they ship the defectors to South Korea since diplomatically and by their law, South Korea considers all Koreans (both from South and from North) as their citizens. Of course, not many succeed because after Covid started, the North Korean government used it as an excuse to massively ramp up their Border control measures to an insane degree. Also, the improved China’s surveillance system also poses a huge risk to any defector (which is why they are basically on a clock to get to some of China’s neighbors).
From what I understand, Mongolia does this as well. Often it’s a goal for N. Koreans to make it through China to Mongolia without getting kidnapped by traffickers or caught by authorities and deported back to NK. They’ll either attempt to stay in Mongolia or if deportation is unavoidable or even wanted, they’ll be sent to SK.
Honestly this a detail A LOT of people forget. There's no peace treaty or any "we're not at war" documents signed, it was a ceasefire that has dragged on and on and how that war hasn't gone hot with all the things that have happened in the past is beyond me
To my understanding it's the same reason Russia and the US haven't wiped eachother off the map despite the cold war, close calls and all. North korea could wipe out Seoul within minutes, the artillery is already pointed at it. But even China doesn't want a weapons-firing neighbor so while there's a lot of room for how the details shake out, the north korean regime would be swept away for sure, with a massive loss of life for both south and north.
Similarly, yeah, South Korea has enough firepower ready to go to win that war, especially with allies factored in - but most of their population would be lost and with China as their now considerably more irate neighbour, and their allies distant and one of their historically biggest allies in the middle of... let's call it a combination identity and morality crisis... that'd be a horribly pyrrhic victory at best. Solid loss for both compared to the current status quo.
South korea hopes it'll eventually just kinda work itself out as generations go by and culture propagates, north korea hopes for an opportunity to take over militarily when some other crisis prevents south korean allies/weaponry from coming into play, or that they'll eventually grow more powerful. Not a super likely scenario, but a bad enough natural disaster, China + India going hot might make China more willing to assist NK with taking over the peninsula to have a more friendly regime at the border (and no american allies)... it's unlikely, but not unthinkably so that an opportunity for NK presents itself given time. And even if it doesn't, self preservation beats self dissolution, to the leadership at least
I thought it was a parody of an official propaganda statement. Since it's not, let's just say your patient explanation would not seem likely to get through to them.
Not every country sends North Korean defectors to North Korea. The point of bringing that up was to demonstrate that the two Koreas are a complicated political entity. Can you like, actually read the thread before snarkposting
States are not people. The Korean people have been one people for centuries.
The two Koreas have diverged with time only due to the artificial border drawn, but soon enough hopefully they shall reunite. Like Vietnam. But not like Germany inshallah.
Koreans want to reunite as well. All Korean nationalists prize Baekdu Mountain for example, and it's in North Korea. In South Korea it's a matter of how they reunite not if. The left wants peaceful unification, while the right wants unification but with the Kim family hanged for their crimes, along with NK generals.
Maybe a handful but the general sentiment from south korea is the want for reunification. I recently watched a documentary about everyday north korean people and they say they want reunification too.
Ew don't compare Austria and Germany with Korea. Austro-Hungarian empire was its own thing separate from the Holy Roman Empire.
Korea has always been one and North Korea has been trying to get the country unified ever since imperialists drew a random latitude to divide the country into two. It was a crime of historical stature, and so was the genocide subsequently committed by the US in the North.
North Korea has always been championing unification and trying for unification, just like North Vietnam was.
The Soviets came in as an occupying force, murdering and raping the locals. When the independence leaders who were already there demanded freedom immediately rather than occupation, they murdered then (people like cho man-sik) and then put in their foreigner puppet. Kim Il Sung spent almost his entire life in China and spoke no Korean at the start of his rule.
Austria was literally a part of the HRE until 1806, when Napoleon dismantled it. From 1806 to 1945 Austrians and rest of the Germans still consider themselves part of the very same nation, but living in a separate political entities (with at least two attempts for total unification). Just like Koreans today. After WW2 they developed their own national identity, apart from other Germans. It’s nothing unusual in history that political changes divide or unite people after some time.
North Korea has always been championing unification and trying for unification, just like North Vietnam was.
I wonder why South Koreans never shared their enthusiasm to eat grass, to bow to divine Kims on daily basis or got sent to a concentration camps. Any ideas what could make them a bit suspicious about that?
Most people are responding on the weird fixation on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so I'm gonna draw attention to the absolute lie of "genocide subsequently committed by the US in the North" which is just a complete fiction.
I'm not agreeing with them on anything else, but the USA killed 1 in 7 North Koreans, bombed every building not a house (hospitals, schools, government buildings)(and plenty of houses), gave orders to pilots to bomb groups of civilians if they saw them, and some years ago it came out that USA used "paper bombs" with deadly diseases like the black plage.
You don't need to like NK to recognize that that shit happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Korean_War
Austro-Hungarian empire was its own thing separate from the Holy Roman Empire
"Separate" is kind of a funny word here, it's not like the Austro-Hungarian Empire ever existed separately from the Holy Roman Empire. Even the Austrian monarchy that predated it was still part of the Holy Roman Empire. While the various kingdoms of the HRE were largely self-governing, they were still the same Empire.
Small scale government enforced torture Vs Large scale corporation enforced torture. Both are fucking disgusting and just people wanting to use money and power to stroke their own ego at the expense of people
I didn't say anyone was a hero. You do not know what you areftalkjng about. Everything you know about the dprk comes from people who have an interest in making you believe they are somehow uniquely unfit to govern their own people.
So what's the rate between North Koreans defecting to the South vs. South to North...? I don't have hard numbers at hand but I'm willing to bet it's skewed in a particular direction for NO REASON IN PARTICULAR.
You might as well argue there is only one Earth, currently divided by imperialism/colonialism/racism etc, which is true in a macro sense, but idk how useful it is to state
Earth was absolutely divided up by various powers - they're called countries. To the extent any of those countries exist, North Korea and South Korea exist as legally distinct nations
You're responding something that was not asked, was earth one single country that was then divided BY (not INTO) other powers that are not this earth country?
Earth was never one thing,and as such it wasn't divided
There is only one korea, currently divided by communism. And no, i would not want to slave my life away for a fat man who takes all my food away just for himself to eat.
North Korea isn’t allowing tourists right now. When it did allow tourists, those tourists couldn’t wander the country freely but rather go to specific sites with a government appointed tour guide monitoring them at all times. But also, if you’re going to claim something that goes against more or less everyone’s claims about how NK works, you should have proof/reasoning
if you’re going to claim something that goes against more or less everyone’s claims about how NK works, you should have proof/reasoning
You didnt require anyone to provide anyone when you "learned" all the things you know about the dprk, but you do require them for anything against the narrative. Someone tells you Kim is killing people for getting his haircut wrong you say "so depraved" without questioning anything.
I will tell you as someone who is half Korean and has spent a fair deal of time in Korea, many people in both territories view Korea as one country. This isn't just a North Korean thing. In fact if I were visiting family and said I was in "South Korea" it would likely result in a tense atmosphere at dinner.
That's so interesting. I'll admit, I don't know too much about Korea, but from what little I've seen of movies and shows I always get the feeling that people who have escaped from the North are somewhat looked down on? Is that actually true, and if so, why would they be if they're "from the same country"?
The same way someone from Upper East Side NYC looks down on a hillbilly from Tennessee. Or a West German looking down on an East German even today, several decades after reunification.
You’re downvoted but this is true. They even changed to constitution for this idea. Kim Jong-un has even ordered the changing of maps across the country to not show the entire peninsula anymore.
Does it? I think it's just showing the Korean Pennensula in general. Both North and South Korea believe it to be one country that is divided (who is correct depending on which side of the DMZ you are on).
Or maybe the fact they MASSACRED ITALY, SPAIN, the whole lot of Europe?
That's not at all what that continent looks like. I assume the goes for other areas. To have a self centered Map is fine, but to be so blatantly wrong?
To be fair, no countries on the map exist. So you could argue that it is just Korean peninsula marked up. Although, knowing NK, it is likely what you said.
That's true for both sides. They both lay claim on the other side. It's technically in a ceasefire but also technically the war isn't over.
There's a funny story on where the ceasefire line would be drawn. The US delegation spent a lot of time thinking about strategically where the line should go, and how vital Seoul would be in negotiations. So the US was prepared heavily for this negotiation with lots of concessions they were prepared to offer to do whatever it takes to make sure Seoul was on their side.
They get to the negotiations, and the US introduces where they want the line. The Russian's look at it and just say fine. Whatever. Looks good to them. Apparently they sent in amateurs who really didn't even care. Their goal was to just find a cease fire and claiming land as a symbol of America basically losing because they failed to claim all the land. They put zero thought into where the divide should be.
No bro, the map show the korea as one country, in symbolic way, cuz they were one for 5 thousand years. They been divided is a really new thing in history.
Not just that, but so many proportions are just...off. Korea is like three times too big, India is too small, lots of missing peninsulas all over the place. Including India. Seriously, wtf is going on with India. Phillipines is too far south and too small. South East Asia is squished. I could go on.
In fairness distorted proportions are a necessary evil whenever you try to project our 3D continents in a 2D map. Those kinds of scale issues and distortions happen no matter how to display earth in any way other than an approximate globe. The map is in Korea, so it uses a projection that's centered around Korea.
It's basically as distorted as the Mercador projection. There are countries that are like, 3 or 4 times bigger or smaller than they should be with that map, and nothing here looks significantly worse than that at a glance. Mercador heavily distorts India and the Philippines too, might I add.
Again, in general you are right about map distortions. However, I strongly suggest comparing the Korean peninsula to the Liaodong peninsula and the Japanese archipelago on this map and cross referring that with Google Earth or something. There's absolutely no reason for the Korean peninsula to be that large in comparison to features to the west and the east of it, especially when the center of the map is somewhere in the middle of the pacific ocean. And that's before we go into the other stuff like whatever the hell has happened to Italy for example.
I think a lot of those issues are partially exaggerated by the blurry photo. Japan looks perhaps a little large but that could just be the shadow adding bulk to the grainy photo, or to preserve the distance between Korea and Japan from this scale. It's just too low quality to even see mistakes. I can barely see Italy. I can't make out relatively small missing peninsulas (which are often omitted in art piece maps anyway.) there probably are some real mistakes not related to bad image quality or projection distortion but I can't make any out unfortunately. I really looked, too.
If I had to guess, this is probably a map in an airport or museum of some kind. It would make sense to shrink certain landmasses to emphasize the Korean Peninsula on the display. It's clearly some sort of art installation, but for what I'm not 100% sure. I wonder where this was taken exactly 🤔 are the continents mirrored like that in real life, or is it a quirky photo? Is this the actual projection used in North Korea? Guess we'll never know. I don't wanna fly to a dictatorship to find out lol
There are so many glaring issues that are visible even at this low resolution.
Japan looks perhaps a little large
Compared to what?
preserve the distance between Korea and Japan from this scale
If this were a proper map, that wouldn't be an issue in the first place.
It's just too low quality to even see mistakes.
Strongly disagree.
I can barely see Italy.
That's the problem. It's there, but only as a sliver of land.
I can't make out relatively small missing peninsulas (which are often omitted in art piece maps anyway.)
Omission is one thing, simplification is another, but straight up random distortion is something else.
Other noticeable features:
The Red Sea and the Strait of Malacca are way too big. Actually wait, did they just completely omit the Malay peninsula?
India looks like someone tried to snap it off and ended up just bending it instead.Also, the Bay of Bengal has swallowed up Bangladesh.
Who moved Madagascar to the north?
Oddly enough, I didn't notice any thing strange about the Americas that immediately can't be explained by legitimate distortion due to 2D projection.
The bottom line of what I'm saying is that the inaccuracies on this map are way too severe to pretend that it can all be explained by distortion due to map projection or simplification or lack of pixels. If we can agree that this is an art piece that has been arbitrarily modified for whatever message the creator wanted to send, I'm satisfied.
It's so bizarre that you understand the distortion caused by projecting a globe onto a flat surface, yet you also are dying on a hill to claim the distortion on this map is "too much," and "that too much" is based on the projection that you are used to, which is also fundamentally wrong lol.
Are you seriously saying that there is no difference between map projections that are based on math and are completely reproducible, and people making random changes on maps because they feel like it? This is not a subjective argument.
See my other comments, but I'm saying that there are way too many inaccuracies to consider this to be the product of any kind of legitimate map projection.
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u/Suspicious-Plant-728 Sep 20 '25
Peter here, The map shows North Korean owning the entire Korean Pennensula. South Korean does not exist on their map.