But she wasn’t talking about herself, in the post ‘they’ is referring to DPRK society. In your grandma example it will be the equivalent of your grandma saying nobody in USA knew what sex is. remember yenomi left DPRK when she was 14
I agree with you the fact that she was 14 (rather young) is a factor. She might not have been aware what other people knew or didn’t know, like maybe her same-aged friends in her village or something were never told about sex, but their parents knew but didn’t talk about it. That sort of thing. Some people if they live in this kind of conservative bubble they may be surprised even as adults to see gay people. Maybe it’s because of my age but I remember when even in America people were shocked even as adults to find out about certain things because the society they grew up in didn’t have a place for them. Yes some people are just naive and not worldly. Hard to relate to especially now if you’ve had the Internet since birth.
I just don’t think in this case she’s lying but her experience has an explanation, like her age as you mentioned.
Propaganda isn’t just lies, like you said for all we know she might just be explaining her experience. the problem is trying to project that to an entire society for malicious slandering. in isolation we can’t find any malice in this statement, but there are plenty of other instances where we know for sure that she lies about DPRK. the most infamous being the ‘train pushing’ on JRE.
This is why we shouldn’t take anything defectors say on face value because it comes in two parts - ‘experience’ and ‘narrative’. experience itself doesn’t have to be a lie. but the narrative they package with that experience can be malicious. For example certain parts of yenomis stories about poverty are likely true. but her narrative that it’s because of the ‘evil’ DPRK government is false.
But she wasn’t talking about herself, in the post ‘they’ is referring to DPRK society. In your grandma example it will be the equivalent of your grandma saying nobody in USA knew what sex is. remember yenomi left DPRK when she was 14
I agree with you the fact that she was 14 (rather young) is a factor. She might not have been aware what other people knew or didn’t know, like maybe her same-aged friends in her village or something were never told about sex, but their parents knew but didn’t talk about it. That sort of thing. Some people if they live in this kind of conservative bubble they may be surprised even as adults to see gay people. Maybe it’s because of my age but I remember when even in America people were shocked even as adults to find out about certain things because the society they grew up in didn’t have a place for them. Yes some people are just naive and not worldly. Hard to relate to especially now if you’ve had the Internet since birth.
I just don’t think in this case she’s lying but her experience has an explanation, like her age as you mentioned.
Propaganda isn’t just lies, like you said for all we know she might just be explaining her experience. the problem is trying to project that to an entire society for malicious slandering. in isolation we can’t find any malice in this statement, but there are plenty of other instances where we know for sure that she lies about DPRK. the most infamous being the ‘train pushing’ on JRE.
This is why we shouldn’t take anything defectors say on face value because it comes in two parts - ‘experience’ and ‘narrative’. experience itself doesn’t have to be a lie. but the narrative they package with that experience can be malicious. For example certain parts of yenomis stories about poverty are likely true. but her narrative that it’s because of the ‘evil’ DPRK government is false.
Good comment