It still blows my mind that North Korea exists and the amazing amount of brainwashing it takes to stop people from stopping and thinking
'wait, this is bullshit!' or maybe there is some kind of underground movement brewing that we don't know about?
Possibly, but not likely. North Korea's intolerance for dissent of any kind borders on cartoon villainy--even complaining to a neighbour about the lack of supplies in your month's rations can get you sentenced to years of hard labour in a gulag. AND your entire extended family, too. There are government plants and microphones for spying all over the place and people are actively encouraged to narc on friends and loved ones for saying anything bad at all about the government or the Kims or showing any kind of affection for anything that ISN'T North Korean. All of which are punishable by anything from years in a gulag to immediate execution.
It's likely everyone there knows that things in North Korea are TERRIBLE no matter how much brainwashing and propaganda they're force-fed from birth. Even in Pyongyang. Otherwise people would not take the risks they do to escape. About two thousand North Korean refugees arrive in South Korea every year, and countless others are still mired in other countries, especially China, trying to sneak or barter their way to begging asylum from Japanese or South Korean embassies, and others who try to get across the border and never make it. The risk is terrible, but thousands of people make it every year. Those are not the actions of people who aren't aware that their country is a horrible, terrible, awful place.
