DarbyDear

It only winds up being suicide by border guard if someone is trying to escape, not so much so if someone is trying to get in. Not too many people want to go to North Korea if they can help it.

I wonder if his angle is to be taken in by North Korea in the hopes of being used as a poster child for North Korean propaganda. Considering he was on his way to getting flown back to the states for further disciplinary action after getting out of a Korean prison, he might assume that’s his best bet for a decent life since he might be assuming North Korea will pamper him so that they can use him to talk about how terrible the U.S. And South Korea are.

Back when I was in Korea, people that wound up in a Korean jail usually didn’t get shipped back to the states; it was more likely they’d be stripped of rank, locked down to the military base, and put on permanent detail for the rest of their time there (think "spending any free time scrubbing toilets and picking up trash around the base).

Things like serious assaults on local nationals could land someone a flight back though, so it’s very possible that whatever he did was bad enough that he thinks his life would be over if he went back to the states, so I guess that might be his play. How it’s going to pan out for him is another matter though - he may be treated well by the North Korean government (from what I’ve heard they tend to pamper their foreign mouthpieces to keep them placated and compliant), or he may wind up a bargaining chip for foreign aid from the U.S. depending on how low their resources are.

Mind you, I’m hardly an expert on the relations and current situation in North Korea, just a guy that was stationed over in South Korea for a few years in a non-intelligence capacity, so take all of this as idle speculation.

There’s also the criticism that I’ve seen multiple times about “having to write an essay to be allowed in” when 1) I wrote maybe 3 sentences total for all of the questions, 2) it’s kind of a bare minimum vibe check to make sure you aren’t going to raise hell, and 3) even setting all that aside, anyone from an instance that is federated with Beehaw can interact with us so it’s not like they’re missing out on anything. It’s literally people being upset at nothing if they really are interested in participating in the community in any way. They just resent the smallest of obstacles (which aren’t even obstacles since, again, you can still interact as a member of another instance). It just reeks of bad faith arguments that can be discarded out of hand.

If you and your partner enjoy RPG’s, I highly recommend Divinity: Original Sin (and Divinity: Original Sin 2, though we haven’t finished that one yet). Very story-driven, the tactical combat is a blast when you get into strategizing and collaborating, and there are all sorts of non-combat shenanigans you can get up to as well (the second even more so than the first).

I did a small write-up off my understanding here, but that’s coming from someone that’s only dabbled in both and I may have missed some stuff.

Count me in the “support” column. Beehaw has always been very open about what it is and isn’t, and all of the people who are bringing up how freedom of speech is more important than anything can find some level of explanation in Gaywallet’s post/essay “Beehaw is a community”. Beehaw admins/mods don’t have the tools to moderate more even-handedly, so the decision to defederate for now and re-assess when more resources are available makes perfect sense to me. I’m also in the camp of “smaller and higher quality is more important than growth at any cost.” This is how you can have a community where dissenting voices are allowed, such as how I’ve seen opinions I personally disagree with allowed to be discussed in more detail than they probably would be elsewhere. I also saw a post by someone that I believe was from one of these instances (it was either deleted or isn’t viewable due to the defederation), and it was pretty clear that they were purely operating in bad faith - essentially saying that the users here are silenced and oppressed by heavy-handed moderation. For context, they also made a post elsewhere that shared information that essentially boiled down to “North Korea actually isn’t bad, it’s all imperialist propaganda!”

In the end, the federated nature of Lemmy means I can just create another account elsewhere if I feel the need to interact with the defederated instances. Jerboa (my main way of using Lemmy) makes it pretty quick and easy to add multiple accounts, so it really wouldn’t be much of a hassle.