• Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      Hah, got me there.

      I did actually meet a North Korean once when I spent a fair bit of time in Seoul during a study abroad program, but she “defected” as a child (read: smuggled into the South via China by some Christian group) and didn’t really have much recollection of what life in the North was even like. Definitely not many though!

      • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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        28 days ago

        One of my parents was in North Korea multiple times in the 80s as a tour guide from the Eastern Block, I remember hearing the stories about it when I was a child.

        Cameras being taken, poverty housing blocked off with walls, fake buildings and rooms, US soldiers watching them from the other side of the DMZ “negotiation building”.

        I always took these stories for granted, and didn’t realize for a long time how special and unique these experiences were. When I tell my Western EU colleagues they always drop their jaws.