A North Korea Researcher Says You Can Trust 38North and DailyNK
It's time for a deeper dive into the propaganda machine of DPRK 'citizen reporters'
A new anti-DPRK propaganda account showed up on TikTok that is gaining a lot of attention (a suspicious amount perhaps?) and of course, western libs are eating up every ounce of it. ‘Danny’, or right_hand_arm_man (an obscure reference unrelated to the DPRK) claims to be a former north Korea researcher, and is here to tell us why the DPRK is bad.
Now, I fully suspect that this researcher worked for a CIA-influenced anti-DPRK think tank, but I cannot, as of yet, prove it. But, essentially all anti-DPRK propaganda machines are connected at least in some way to the CIA, so if she truly was a researcher I’m almost certainly correct. She definitely doesn’t stray away from parroting pure CIA propaganda, so let’s debunk it.
I will admit, the main reason I want to fully dismantle this propagandist is because she messed with the wrong person. Not me. ZoeDiscoversNK. ‘Danny’ amusingly made an 8 part series on TikTok ‘calling out’ ZoeDiscoversNK for being ‘propaganda’ while unabashedly using CIA propaganda to ‘prove’ it. Well, it would be amusing if it wasn’t so unbelievably pathetic.
ZoeDiscoversNK is a DPRK tour guide who posts videos of normal, everyday things happening in the DPRK and it drives libs CRAZY. They will see a video with hundreds of DPRK citizens just enjoying life and unironically say that they’re all paid actors. Her account was actually the reason I started making TikToks in the first place, eventually amassing the small amount of followers that led me to create this Substack. Before actually making my own TikToks I was frequently in the weeds with ignorant western libs who were polluting Zoe’s comments with… CIA propaganda. There wasn’t much pushback there, aside from Zoe herself (who is excellent at countering western lib nonsense, by the way). My first few TikToks were video responses to comments from her videos. So, you don’t mess with Zoe without waking the bear (me).
I already made a few TikToks debunking some of ‘Danny’s claims about Zoe (first part here), so I won’t get into that in this article. I have been blocked by ‘Danny’ on both of my TikTok accounts for simply asking what think tank she worked for and for her to clarify why she thinks a certain source (which we’ll get to) is reliable. Someone mentioned me in her comments, and this is what she had to say:
First off, I haven’t seen any right wingers who say the DPRK is a paradise, but to each their own. This is what these propagandists do, though. They try to make you seem crazy by straight up putting words in your mouth. I have never once claimed the DPRK is a paradise. I haven’t seen any other leftists say that either. We just don’t think it’s the comic book villain that the CIA, and by extension ‘Danny’, make it out to be. It’s an impoverished country (due to brutal decades-long US/UN sanctions), battling against western capitalist imperialism as best they can. Simple as.
‘Danny’ says I should look at NK state media and satellite imagery to change my opinions on the DPRK. Well, I have. State media doesn’t prove any of the more egregious claims these propagandists make, and you can’t see torture from space. But, we’ll get into that.
She also said I should watch her video. So let’s do it. By the way, this is the one where she blocked me for the second time for questioning one of her ‘reliable’ sources. Here it is:
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It’s titled ‘How we get (reliable) information about North Korea’. You won’t believe what she considers to be reliable! I’ll transcribe the parts I’m addressing:
In this video I want to talk about how to get reliable information on North Korea and I’m gonna give you guys some resources so you can look into it for yourself and make up your own mind.
We both know that not a single western liberal watching this video will try to independently verify anything. Come on. She goes on to recommend that everyone should read DPRK state media. There’s a few problems with this. First, I always find it interesting how certain propagandists will tell you to read state media to confirm the ‘bad’ things but others will call you out if you try to source state media to debunk the CIA propaganda. Which is it? Can we trust state media or not? I never link to state media of any kind because it will be inherently biased. It can be biased in either extreme, by the way.
Second, she is seemingly implying that state media is a primary source. It isn’t, at least not when translated into another language. If you read DPRK state media in English, it’s been translated by a human. That human can have biases, narratives to push, or a paycheck to justify. We’ll get to a specific example of this later. Sometimes it’s even just run through Google Translate. Never fully trust a Google translation, there is an art to translation that only a bilingual (unbiased) human can perform.
But either way, state media does not confirm any of the most egregious claims about the DPRK, like torture and executions for mundane reasons. Which is the most prevalent, damaging propaganda. Moving on.
Another great resource is satellite imagery… You can go to this website (https://38northdigitalatlas.org/) to see it mapped out building by building.
This is a fun one. Like I said, you can’t see torture from space. You cannot show an overhead view of a building and say that torture happens in it. Well, you can, but it’s not actually proof of anything. These propagandists claim that the satellite images back up defector testimony. Once again, there are several problems with this assumption.
The main issue is that defector testimony is never open and transparent, is never subject to cross examination, and is never done under oath. There is no penalty for lying. In fact, the opposite is true, there is a huge benefit to lying:
South Korea boosts reward for defectors from North to $860,000 - BBC
Most defector testimony is obtained by the ‘Korean CIA’, in closed sessions. Defectors that arrive in the South face a mandatory 3 month stay in a KCIA facility. They are brutally interrogated, first to ensure they aren’t spies from the north, and then to extract whatever usable propaganda they can get. From the above link:
The purpose of the interrogation is two-fold: to gather intelligence about North Korea, and to weed out any North Korean spies who may be posing as refugees.
This is obviously why it can’t be trusted. For instance, an interrogator can point to a building on a map and say, “Another defector told us they torture people in this building. Is it true?”. This is called a ‘leading question’. We would know for sure whether or not leading questions and other scummy tactics are used in these testimonies if they were open and transparent. But they aren’t. Since they are conducted by an enemy of the DPRK, we must assume these tactics are used.
From what we know about the KCIA, they aren’t afraid to follow in the actual CIA’s footsteps and use torture to get what they want. The threat of torture, or the use of it, can obviously lead to false defector testimony.
So, I took ‘Danny’s advice and checked out this satellite imagery. It actually took quite a while to find any ‘prison camps’. This is the first one I found:
Yes, folks, this is the ‘reliable proof’ found on satellite imagery. The top right corner says ‘Public executions here’ and just points to a blank space of nothingness. There are no sources to explain why they’ve marked this spot. Just the label. Southwest of that, there’s a label for ‘Shin Don-hyok Home’. I don’t know if it’s just a typo, but it seems to be referring to Shin Dong-Hyuk and his story of life in ‘Camp 14’. A story which was… recanted:
North Korean defector changes story after seeing father in video - The Guardian
How compelling. A randomly labelled map based on false defector testimony. Yikes. This is why defector testimony needs to be done under oath (and why satellite data is useless). If Shin actually had the threat of punishment, he probably wouldn’t have lied, and wouldn’t have made a bunch of money on a book featuring his lies.
So, why would this map include labels from retracted testimony? Because it’s published by a biased organization. When you first navigate to the map, you are faced with this splash image straight out of 2008:
38 North comes from the Stimson Center. Guess where the majority of their funding comes from? One quick trip to their website will tell us exactly that. This is a bit of a theme for this article, by the way. Debunking anti-DPRK propaganda simply from the information that these propagandists put on their own website. Let’s take a look at the Stimson Center’s ‘Funding & Finances’ page. It starts with this blurb [emphasis added]:
As a research institution educating government officials, the media, and the public at large on international affairs issues, we have a responsibility to ensure that our work is free from conflict or bias. One way Stimson does that is through public transparency. On an annual basis Stimson releases a complete list of our donors and funders as well as information on the financial health of the organization as a whole. Together, this information gives the public and those who use our work confidence in our financial independence.
This is actually a propaganda method commonly employed by the US government. As the Washington Post revealed way back in 1991:
NOBODY WAS rude enough to say so during last week's confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates to head the CIA, but the old era of covert action is dead. The world doesn't run in secret anymore. We are now living in the Age of Overt Action….The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.
There is a greater risk to the CIA doing covert operations than overt operations, like their funding of the Stimson Center. If the Stimson Center hid their funding, and someone uncovered it, they would be in trouble. If they reveal it themselves, they won’t. It’s that simple.
Here’s why it works; it has the power of decades worth of red scare propaganda behind it. The vast majority of westerners already believe that the DPRK is bad because they’ve been told that since birth. So when a company like the Stimson Center, through their subsidiary 38 North, releases blatant propaganda, people don’t question it. Even though this is who funds the Stimson Center:
This is a non exhaustive list, they have a lot more funders that are probably very biased as well. I just grabbed the most egregious ones straight from the Stimson Center website.
For governments, we’ve got the US, obviously. Multiple different departments, as well. the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Navy. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is part of the DoD, by the way, they gave $300k. The US gave them over a million dollars. We’ve got the country I live in, Canada, giving a whopping $1.4 million. Love that my taxes go towards anti-PRC and anti-DPRK propaganda, so fun. There’s also Germany, Japan, south Korea, Taiwan, Norway, Australia, and Qatar. All enemies of the PRC and DPRK, of course. There’s also just NATO there, straight up.
Then we’ve got defense contractors. Typical. These corporations thrive off of the US, and capitalism in general, having an enemy. Both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman fund the Stimson Center. Next up, a couple of think tanks. CSIS, and Unikorea. CSIS is funded by several defense contractors and several hostile governments like the US, Japan, and Taiwan, and Unikorea is operated by Chosun Ilbo, who Wikipedia describes as right wing, conservative and anti-communist currently, and formerly far right and Pro-Empire of Japan. You know, the empire that brutally ruled over the Korean peninsula for decades, using Korean women as sex slaves.
Finally, the Stimson Center is funded by a few capitalist, American mega corporations. The Walton family, who owns Wal-Mart, gave them over $400k, and Meta/Facebook gave them $15k. Do you see what I mean? The Stimson Center claims that being transparent about this proves they are ‘free from conflict and bias’ and ‘financially independent’. It quite literally proves the opposite though. They are beholden to nine hostile governments, a ‘defensive’ pact consisting of thirty one hostile governments, two defense contractors, two western-biased think tanks, and two mega corporations. They cannot go against the interests of these biased parties, else they lose the vast majority of their funding.
To sum it up, no, ‘Danny’, the 38 North Digital Atlas is not a ‘reliable’ source on the DPRK. Let’s move on. ‘Danny’ says:
These are two other very good resources (Rimjin-Gang and DailyNK). They run information smuggling rings in and out of North Korea, and they not only smuggle out information, but photos and videos, so we have concrete proof of what they’re saying.
This is blatant misinfo. Yes, Rimjin-Gang smuggles photos and videos out of the DPRK. But once again, they never prove the most egregious allegations, which is what libs love to parrot. They mostly show unsatisfactory living conditions (which can be found in every capitalist country by the way) and pictures of emaciated people during the Arduous March in the nineties. They regularly imply that people are still starving like they did back then, but they don’t have any new evidence to prove it.
I’m not gonna go picture by picture here, so let’s focus on the information smuggling. The DailyNK utilizes the same methodology as the CIA operated Radio Free Asia, they exclusively use anonymous, unnamed sources. We are expected to take this information at face value. Western libs will of course do that, but us rational people won’t.
Here is DailyNK’s latest accusation against the DPRK, from only two days ago (Aug. 7th):
N. Korea uses prisoners as labor force in its contract manufacturing activities
Here’s the source [emphasis added]:
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a source in North Korea told Daily NK last Tuesday that some 20 to 30% of North Korea’s contract manufacturing activities — including wigs, fake eyelashes, beadwork, hand-knit hats, clothing and tablecloths exported to China — are produced by inmates at North Korean prisons, including prisoners at forced labor camps and political prisons.
Utterly useless. Zero tangible evidence. Every single DailyNK article is like this. Here’s another:
Five inmates at political prison camp publicly executed for causing a “disturbance”
Five inmates at Susong Concentration Camp (otherwise known as Camp No. 25 in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province) were executed by firing squad in broad daylight in mid-May, according to a source in the country on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
and another:
N. Korean political prison camp guards trained to treat inmates as sub-human
“Soldiers managing political prison camps are involved in the guarding of prisoners, production activities on the part of prisoners, and overall management of the facilities, and receive specialized training in their respective fields,” a reporting partner in North Korea told Daily NK on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
It’s quite a convenient cop-out, if you think about it. These propagandists have hammered home the falsehood that north Koreans are always on the verge of being executed and their identities must be protected at all costs. Once again, western libs eat it up. They live for this shit.
I will admit, this alone isn’t even enough to dismiss the DailyNK as pure propaganda. But just like the Stimson Center, their own website will prove that for us. First stop, the ‘Collaborators’ page.
Right there, in plain view. The National Endowment for Democracy funds the DailyNK. The NED is the subject of that previously mentioned Washington Post article, by the way. The ‘sugar daddy of overt operations’, as it’s called. Read more about the NED here:
Now this, this is enough to dismiss DailyNK entirely. Not for western libs though, of course. So let’s dig deeper. Other entities on this page are the Transitional Justice Working Group, another NED funded organization. The TJWG actually extracts a lot of testimony out of defectors, by the way. They’re funded by a CIA cutout. Yikes. DailyNK also ‘collaborates’ with a think tank called CADAL, which is “currently carrying out projects with the National Endowment for Democracy”.
Enough of this page. Let’s check out DailyNK’s FAQ page:
Where does Daily NK get its funding?
A large portion of Daily NK’s funding sources is in the public sphere. One of our biggest donors is the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and information about NED grants Daily NK has received can be found here.
Link left intact. It shows another ‘radical transparency’ source, the NED’s list of grantees. DailyNK’s parent company, Unification Media Group, received $760,000 from the NED in 2021. DailyNK admits it’s their biggest donor. Meaning, without the NED they probably couldn’t operate. Meaning they are beholden to the goals of this CIA cutout.
Who are Daily NK’s reporting partners in North Korea? In China?
Daily NK has spent years cultivating a network of sources in North Korea. For security reasons, Daily NK is unable to reveal the number of sources it has in the country…All Daily NK sources in North Korea are anonymous given the difficult media environment in North Korea, which is ranked one of the most draconian in the world.
Once again, very convenient. An organization beholden to the CIA that can only use anonymous sources.
Does Daily NK use information obtained from at least two reporting partners in its articles?
Daily NK strives to corroborate its stories as much as possible. While many stories use information from at least two sources, there are exceptions: certain news stories can only be confirmed by one particularly well-placed reporting partner. Due to security concerns, Daily NK is typically unable to share much information about the social status, location or other identifying details concerning its sources.
None of the three articles I showed above had two reporting partners, by the way. They were all single anonymous sources. They don’t seem to ‘strive’ that hard. Either way, it’s not like having a second anonymous source would prove anything, since the DailyNK itself is extremely biased. Again, they can’t even give a shred of info about their sources. Convenient.
Are there examples of Daily NK reporting that has been confirmed by other sources?
Given the difficult reporting environment in North Korea, it remains close to impossible to “independently” confirm many stories. However, Daily NK has a record of accurately reporting on many stories mainly through confirmation from North Korea’s own state-run media outlets or South Korean government announcements. Some examples of stories confirmed by other sources after being published in the Daily NK include:
Here’s where it gets interesting. DailyNK gives some examples of info they leaked that have been ‘proven’ true after. Now, I should mention that I don’t doubt that DailyNK actually has ‘reporting partners’ in the DPRK that feed them info. I just think they either make up the most egregious stuff or find someone willing to lie for a nice paycheck. In their list of ‘proven true’ stories, none are of any real consequence. They’re all mundane, useless reports. Except for one, which we’ll get to.
They include school closures/reopenings for COVID, Kim Jong Un visiting a city in the Ryanggang Province, someone being fired, an election being held on a certain day, the DPRK sending mushrooms to the South (woah, calm down, that’s big news), and the First Lady of the DPRK attending a dinner.
DailyNK wants us to think that since they’ve been proven correct on some of their mundane leaks, that the more egregious ones must also be true. You would have to be an idiot to believe that. They did, however, sneak in one egregious claim that was ‘proven’:
Set up of buffer zones on the Sino-North Korean border: Daily NK reported on Sept. 4 (in Korean, Sept. 7 in English) that North Korea had set up “strict security zones” on the Sino-North Korean border with shoot-to-kill orders. Gen. Abrams, commander of United Nations Command, confirmed this on Sept. 10.
DailyNK announced that the DPRK had ‘shoot-to-kill’ orders for a COVID border lockdown. It was confirmed by an UN General. Confirmed, yes, but not proven. Let’s take a look at the video:
It’s timestamped to 18:32 in case it starts at the beginning. Gen. Abrams… just says that the DPRK would shoot-to-kill people on the border. It’s just a statement. Not backed by an actual source or actual fact. He likely got that information from Rimjin-Gang, who, funnily enough, was mentioned by ‘Danny’ alongside the DailyNK.
Here’s the problem. Rimjin-Gang mistranslated a ‘Border Protection Order’ from the DPRK. Here’s proof [emphasis added, links kept intact]:
North Korea’s mistranslated ‘shoot-to-kill’ border protection order - East Asia Forum
According to Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) sources, border troops had received orders by 5pm on 25 August about the implementation of buffer zones at midnight…An important part of these measures was, according to one North Korean source, the drastic warning that anybody trespassing within one kilometre of the border would be ‘shot dead’ (sasal).
This narrative of a ‘kill zone’ has been continuously invoked by RFA based on this single testimony and was not questioned by other media — apparently because it confirmed the perception of the North Korean regime as brutal and inhumane. But other available information reveals a more nuanced picture…
In early September, Daily NK released further information…According to their sources, the announcement only stated the threat of being ‘fired at’ (sakyok) unconditionally or without warning in those buffer zones. This nuance was lost in the Daily NK’s initial English report, released on 7 September, which translated it as ‘shot’. The error was quietly corrected weeks later.
Daily NK’s Twitter account stated on 25 September that its own reporting did not suggest a ‘shoot-to-kill’ order was in place and corrected all English reports shortly after. But only one English article explicitly noted the correction.
A full transcript of the order was first released on 26 October by Rimjingang…Rimjingang continues to translate sakyok as ‘shot’ like Daily NK initially did. The full text revealed that the order differentiated between ‘unconditional firing on any person’ entering the zones without approval or violating regulations in the border area and ‘firing without warning on any person that trespasses into our riverside’ of the border rivers.
This difference between firing ‘unconditionally’ and ‘without warning’ — which Rimjingang translated both as ‘shot on sight’ — could be understood as an unimportant variation in wording. But Daily NK reported in September that firing was not actually unconditional and came with warning shots: when two smugglers were spotted near the border, a border guard first fired three blanks at them, then used live ammunition because they did not stop moving.
This directly contradicts the RFA source’s claim that the order required all border guards to carry live ammunition only. In fact, the Ministry’s announcement explicitly states that those entering the buffer zones must always carry proper authorisation papers, making it obvious that they would not be ‘shot on sight’.
So, what DailyNK’s FAQ page says about this is quite misleading. First, they weren’t even the first to report on this supposed ‘shoot-to-kill’ order, the CIA operated Radio Free Asia was, with their own anonymous sources. DailyNK tried to backtrack on their initial mistranslation by editing their article and tweeting that they never suggested a shoot-to-kill order. Yet, this FAQ page specifically mentions that shoot-to-kill order.
Rimjin-Gang obtained an official report and also mistranslated it, which is what I was alluding to earlier in this article about translations. Did Rimjin-Gang mistranslate for nefarious reasons or simply by accident? Either way, this is why translations are not primary sources and should not be taken seriously.
The shoot-to-kill order mistranslation was debunked by…. DailyNK from their other reporting on the use of warning shots. Did they just assume no one would look into this, or have they not updated their FAQ page to issue the correction? Either way, this does not help to bolster their image, at all.
Next on the FAQ page, DailyNK starts cherry picking the parts of their Wikipedia page that offer praise, and ignore the parts that criticize them:
What kind of things are people saying about Daily NK and its reporting?
…
Note: These quotes are taken from Daily NK’s Wikipedia page.
I cannot believe this, what scumbags. They present several quotes, mostly from other anti-DPRK propagandists. Let’s look at what they left out [emphasis added]:
As Benjamin Silberstein of the Foreign Policy Research Institute has cautioned, "Daily NK and Radio Free Asia...often publish stories based on a small number of sources inside North Korea. While claims by such sources typically cannot be independently verified, it is reasonable to assume that if several reports point to the same phenomena, such as increased arrests for possession of foreign culture, these reports speak of a broader dynamic and not just isolated events. At the same time...[the outlets publish articles based on]...sources that cannot be independently verified."
Not exactly high praise. DailyNK actually shows a different quote from Silberstein on their FAQ from further down the wiki page which is not necessarily praising them either:
Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein…has said in regards to the news outlet’s reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic in North Korea that, “Grassroots reporting by indispensable outlets such as Daily NK, with sources inside North Korea, have reported several instances of fever-related deaths around the country after symptoms seemingly similar to COVID-19.”
It doesn’t say that these reports are true, just that they exist.
Lee Chan-ho of the South Korean Ministry of Unification warned in 2010 that the "flood of raw, unconfirmed reports" from organizations including Daily NK "complicates efforts to understand the North."
That’s the point of anti-DPRK propaganda though. It’s about quantity. Not quality. Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks. They don’t want to understand it, they want clicks and money from propagandizing about it.
Sewoong Koo, the founder of Korea Expose, has written that "Daily NK often relies on anonymous informers in the North to run critical articles about the regime, and its track record on accuracy is spotty at best."
Burn.
Meanwhile, the Joongang Ilbo ran a story that commented, "Daily NK, a website run by North Korean defectors in the South, has put out questionable reports in the past, which mainstream media outlets in South Korea have cited, only to find out they were untrue."
I wonder why they didn’t include this? Lastly [emphasis added]:
The OECD…report notes that, "Although UN-related international organisations, a large number of South Korean authorities and several NGOs sometimes report statistics on North Korea, their reliability and mutual consistency is also questionable, due to restrictions on visits and lack of data sources (Table 1). While information from North Korea defectors is often used to make up for data shortages, using witness accounts and interviews has pitfalls, including sample bias (Mimura, 2019), limited means of verification and inaccuracy of memories (Song and Denney, 2019). It is essential to bear these limitations in mind when interpreting the numbers quoted in this paper, which alongside official publications also draws to an unusual extent on press reports."
Even the OECD thinks that exclusively using anonymous sources is a bad idea.
Our final stop on debunking the DailyNK by using their own website is a media kit (PDF warning).
The path to international recognition, however, has been rocky. Professionals, politicians, and activists operating in the highly politicized North Korea field smeared Daily NK's staff, which includes former pro-NK loyalists, while limited support inside South Korea stymied development. Yet despite these unresolved challenges, Daily NK's cache among major news agencies has grown and grown thanks to big story after big story.
So, you’ve proven that getting ‘big stories’ at any cost will give you a direct benefit? These ‘big stories’, of course, are all based on anonymous testimony. I wouldn’t have admitted this, it doesn’t look good. You were viewed poorly at first, then after stimulating the brainwashed, anti-DPRK masses in the west with mostly-likely-fake stories, you’re taken seriously?
So How Is Your Organization Funded?
U.S. Congress passed the North Korean Human Rights Act in October, 2004. Woefully marginalized for reasons related to South Korea's ideological conflicts, limited secular civil society, and comparably underdeveloped charity culture, North Korean human rights (NKHR) activist groups found their first major benefactor in the U.S.
Love how the answer to the question of funding is started by "US Congress". Groups like yours found a benefactor in the US because you have similar goals, to lie about the DPRK. You want to do it for money (there’s a lot of money in anti-DPRK propaganda) and the US wants to do it, well also for money I guess, this propaganda lines the pockets of the defense contractors that run the US government. Having an enemy to fearmonger over means the average citizen won’t protest their taxes being used on more bombs and jets and various murder devices. But also, the US wants to demonize communism at every opportunity so the peasants don’t realize there’s a better alternative to capitalism and start putting rich people’s heads on pikes.
Daily NK relies on life support from the U.S. taxpayer in the form of annual National Endowment for Democracy (NED) grants. The shared interest in promoting and safeguarding democracy has allowed for the foundation of a digital press agency that would not have otherwise existed in South Korea's restrictive, sensationalistic, and biased media landscape.
See that, people? They once again iterate that without the CIA-cutout NED funding them, the DailyNK could not exist, making them beholden entirely to the CIA. Case closed?
I almost forgot this entire article was about a TikTok account. I guess it’s been more of a debunk of DailyNK and 38North. Remember kids, next time someone tells you they’re a north Korea researcher, just know that they almost certainly are a simple cog in the US propaganda/imperialism machine. This one, ‘Danny’, proved that by trying to tell us that we should trust 38North, who is funded by dozens of governments hostile to the DPRK, defense contractors, and mega corporations, and DailyNK, who is funded by a CIA cutout and exclusively uses anonymous, totally real sources.
Now subscribe, or I’ll mark your house as a prison camp on Google Maps with zero evidence: