Where do you get your information, blackmask? North Korea is basically a closed country, except for certain districts of Pyongyang, or under government supervision. Those who’ve been allowed to wander the the acceptable parts of Pyongyang have noticed quite a few sewer people, and the streets flooded with homeless, raw sewage and general filth. There was the also the massive famine in which Kim called an foreign aid. And why are you taking propaganda as ridiculous as ‘let’s cut our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle’ as a genuine measuring stick of public opinion?

I’m the last to say anything good about Americans, and the first to make polemical statements about what a hole you people live in, but seriously, wtf?

Before you post on MCS again, I would appreciate it if you cite your sources on this, because I’ve never read anything of the type and I’m wondering where the hell you’re getting this prosperous, happy North Korea from. Also, I’d like you to talk to a few people who’ve lived in dictatorships, and see if they were as happy with their leaders as government propaganda would have suggested.

@theblackmask: You seem to have misinterpreted my ‘before you post again’ statement. I was politely trying to tell you ‘Lurk moar post less, newfag’. You see, I post here as much or more than anyone else, and 90% of my posts are America-bashing. Even lurking for two or three days, you probably could have figured out that I’m not American, that I despise the country, and its press. See, if you had lurked a bit more and posted a bit less, you wouldn’t have looked like such a pathetic Newfag.

My own objections to North Korea come from personal experience, and the experience of my family. I was born in a dictatorship, I have lived in another dictatorship, and two countries that were recently-fallen dictatorships. I had a long term relationship with someone who spent most of her life in a dictatorship and moved to a democracy only after her family vanished during a war. My family was killed or ruined by the Military Dictatorship in Brazil (a rather moderate one, by world standards): We lost everything we ever had and I had cousins, aunts and uncles who simply disappeared, and I’ve heard only the same stories from others who have had experiences in dictatorial states. I have a complete and total antipathy for totalitarian governments as a whole based on what they simply can do, even if they haven’t. I could never support even the most successful, happy dictatorship.

Which by all accounts except yours – and none of my sources are American, as I do not read American news or watch American television or live in America- suggest that North Korea is one of the most closed, unhappy, famine- and poverty-stricken dictatorships in the world right now. Why, my friend, should I believe you, when you can’t even conduct the modicum of research it would require to get my nationality straight?

I’m getting owned a lot lately. I think I’m losing my touch.

Win conceded, Magnus. Win conceded.