this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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My SO is Korean and we get this all the time. I don't even think it's always a joke, some people just honestly don't understand how restrictive N. Korea is...
I still dont really get the issue. Yes its much less likely that any korean would be from the north, but there absolutely are defectors from the north that live in the west. This is just like people calling themselves "american"... Like bro just properly state the name of your home country, then people wont have to ask you.
Nobody will be confused if you tell them you’re American
i remember when i was 8 one of my friends told me he was american and i asked whether he was from north or south and i was so proud bc i knew there were two of them and he looked at me like i was a fucking moron
They might not be confused, but if you're not from the US, they'll be wrong (spoiler: America is a continent, usually broken down into North, Central, and South America (and Latin America, for hispanic countries and Brazil. Other subcategorisations of "America" the continent might exist))
I'm Canadian. We know America is the entire continent. We still don't want to be called Americans. The US can keep that.
Yes, defectors exist, but they're so vanishingly few that it makes no sense to ask. Average defectors are something like 1-2k/year, and by comparison, about 16-17k S. Koreans immigrate to the US every year. So the chance that the person you're talking to is from N. Korea is incredibly small, not only do very few people actually escape N. Korea, they likely largely stay in S. Korea, where they speak the language.
"Korea" is the proper name for both countries, the "North" and "South" descriptor comes from other countries to disambiguate them. The official name for S. Korea is "Republic of Korea," and the official name for N. Korea is "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." So if you're wanting people to fully state the country they're from, you'd probably be more confused because both countries' official names include "Republic of Korea." But you'll likely never talk to someone from N. Korea, so the whole question is moot. If they say they're from "Korea," 99.9% of the time they'll be from South Korea, and if you live outside of S. Korea, it's probably like 99.999%.
A certain demographic being rare/small does not strip them of their right to existence in peoples minds, i get where you are coming from, but there is also zero hurt being done by asking this. There might not be super much of a point in asking, but looking at someone like they are a moron for asking it, is completely unjustified.
I'm guessing people from South Korea get a little mad being asked this all the time.
There are around 100,000 north koreans working abroad. It's not so unreasonable of a question as you'd think
Looks like it's mostly Russia and China, with unconfirmed estimates for other countries. This is in violation of UN sanctions, so it's highly unlikely that you'd meet a N. Korean in countries that respect UN sanctions.
South Korea, on the other hand, numbers in the millions. So if you live outside of Russia and China, there are millions of S. Koreans vs probably a few thousand N. Koreans. It's not even close.
Plus about 50,000 have managed to defect over the past 30 years.
150k is about 0.000183% of the world population
Ok, that's more than twice the population of Wyoming's capital. If I don't ignore that Wyomingites exists then there's no reason to ignore that North Koreans exist outside of North Korea