Jackson Jambalaya

no wonder they have mistakenly shot their comrades in arms!

here is how you know these people are spouting bullshit. the DPRK has a flourishing black market for flashdrives smuggled in. They spend more on them than food. They see whatever they want.

But they know it when they see it-

The last thing Kim wants is soldiers returning home with tales of the outside world and all it has to offer, even if that glimpse into the outside world is from a Russian perspective. I imagine very few, if any, of those soldiers will live to see North Korea again.

Gonna be mayhem in those DMZ barracks. Hope somebody smuggled in some KY.

Wonder how many are going to defect when they are ordered home.

New Korean saying, "you can make a thousand to five thousand dollars a day, but first...."

I’m having a tough time deciding whether to trust the troll who posted at 9:38 or a Financial Times correspondent. Hmmm… I think I’ll go with the latter. Yes, the DPRK has a black market in flash drives, even though getting caught with one risks execution. North Korean citizens probably do watch the occasional blue movie on a flash drive, but that’s very different from completely unrestricted access to see any of the many fetishes, kinks, or flavors of porn available. So no, 9:38, the Financial Times is not spouting bullshit.

They don’t have porn in North Korea according to this “usually” reliable source?

FYI porn is banned in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea as well. And in South Korea they have to sign in with a government-issued ID to access the internet. Porn is heavily censored in Japan.

I just checked Gideon Rachman's "Early Life" on Wikipedia and it is right on the nose. As I expected.

Debbie Does Da Nang - (and/or Pyongyang ... or whatever)

Eerily similar to most Americans that are surprised what they learn if they venture out beyond the border

I read that those soldiers are being lured over to the other side with hot meals and warm beds.

Sorry, but there is nothing funny about N Korea and Russia teaming up. They will take Ukraine. We're next. Trump is already talking with Putin, who he thinks is his friend.

9:38 is right that there is a big market in flash drives, but mostly with South Korean content (and mostly TV at that). Some with Chinese content. Both countries are not porn-friendly. It's still technically something that can get you killed, but the modern NK state is a lot like all of Korea was 100 years ago in terms of how internal politics work: you try to gain status by serving an older, more powerful person well (in business, in society, whatever) and the older, more powerful people vie for the loyalty of the promising young people. As you move up the ladder, you distribute rewards to those below you and try to gain your own sphere of influence.

One of the rewards is having the police ignore your minor transgressions. And as long as you pose no threat to the regime, you will likely get off fairly lightly if punished at all. It's still a totalitarian state, but Kim Il Sung was the last Dear Leader to have comprehensive control. The current regime has a few power centers and they don't all get along.

If you want a wonderful depiction of how power struggles in this situation play out, watch The Death of Stalin, which is a wonderful movie. Funny as hell. Jason Isaacs (you might know him as Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter movies) delivers the performance of a lifetime as Field Marshal Zhukov.

Hardly a "friend." "Stay close to your friends and closer to your enemies."