Editor’s Note: Dictatorships become especially dangerous when they unite. We are a publication with a clear mission: to resist this trend and tell the stories of people who risk their lives to stand up against criminal regimes.
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When Jihyun Park first escaped from North Korea, she was most surprised by the everyday rice, eggs, and meat that she and her brother were treated to in a house at the Chinese border.
“In North Korea, they didn’t have enough food, and nobody shared food with other people. But in China, a person who didn’t know me shared food with me,” Jihyun told The Counteroffensive. “That was the first time I saw this different world.”
Jihyun tried to escape North Korea for 10 years, but the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un would not let her go.
Russia is taking a page out of North Korea’s playbook and using the same methods to establish power in the recently-occupied Ukrainian territories. A growing humanitarian crisis is taking place now, with residents lacking access to vital necessities such as water, while officials silence the opposition of anyone brave enough to speak out.
Since the Korean War, North Korea has built an open-air prison for its people, based on propaganda, intimidation, and isolation. North Korea has turned into a hub of backwardness, brutality, and heightened militarization, where people face forced labor and a lack of food.
Compare this: Just last week, the first cholera incidents occurred in the Donetsk region due to the inaction regarding the water shortages of the occupation authorities. The flower shops in occupied Donetsk are even holding promotions – when you buy flowers, you receive 5 liters (1.3 gallons) of water as a gift, so that the flowers don’t wilt due to the difficult water supply situation.
Video from Instagram page of a flower store which holds promotions with water as a gift.
After the paywall:
How Jihyun escaped North Korea;
Humanitarian catastrophes and propaganda under North Korea’s regime
How Russia created a humanitarian crisis in the occupied Donetsk region
Education as a main tool of propaganda to force silence from childhood
