Demand For ‘The Interview’ Is Shooting Up In North Korea And Its Government Is Freaking Out

Please, /r/Cyberpunk. For a subreddit that prides itself on media skepticism and corporate scrutiny, we can do better than this.

Here's the discussion of this article over at /r/NorthKoreaNews, the subreddit dedicated to serious discussion about North Korea. Some key points to take away from what people have mentioned in that thread and my own thoughts:

  1. Free North Korea Radio has a bad track record of reporting. Their mission is noble but they're also known for completely fabricating stories in order to destabilize the Kim regime.

  2. How is there going to be high demand for a Hollywood blockbuster that was released on VOD not even a week ago? This would be ludicrously expensive on the black market.

  3. Being caught with South Korean dramas is one thing. Smugglers have infiltrated the country and brought them in over the course of decades. It's so rampant that the DPRK government had to change its internal propaganda. The sentences for being caught with dramas have been dramatically reduced. But material like The Interview will definitely take you and your family straight to the gulag. Why would there be a "high demand" for an extremely expensive black market item that can doom your entire family? This is like saying the United States has a "high demand" for pharmaceutical grade heroin cause reasons.

  4. I keep up with North Korean news and affairs because I'm personal friends with activists that are deeply involved in the reunification movement and actual North Korean defectors. I have never heard about Rich Klein until now and I don't understand why he's being treated as a credible source to speak on North Korea. If you want to discuss North Korean propaganda, the guys you'd want to talk to are B.R. Myers, Andrei Lankov, and Patrick McEachern.

/r/Cyberpunk Thread Link - businessinsider.com