North Korea Won't Let Olympic Athletes Accept Galaxy S7 Phones

Megalith

Megalith

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One of the perks to competing in the Olympics is free swag, with one of the pricier items being a brand-new Galaxy S7 from Samsung, an official sponsor. Unfortunately, if you’re a North Korean athlete, all you are allowed to bring home are medals.

When asked if she had received a smartphone, North Korean athlete Kim Song I shook her head without a word as she left the stadium on Tuesday after beating a Singaporean player in the women’s table tennis quarterfinals. Some South Korean athletes from the country’s national team who have competed against North Korean athletes in the past said that North Korean managers and coaches often confiscate gifts given to their athletes during international competitions. Smartphones would also raise the suspicions of a North Korean government that takes great pains to control citizens’ contact with the outside world.
 
One of the other problems in bringing those smartphones back to Sweet Home would be charging them. Half of North Korea's power consumption would be directed to the task, and this would mean that the citizens of the Great Leader's Empire would have to suffer two weeks of power outage every month in the capital (the only place with electricity in the country), instead of usual one week.
 
So the North Koreans won't take anything home.

Edit: Google just showed me that DPRK has 5 medals!? I'm not sure I'd want to bring a medal home. It would make you a political target. Or maybe they make you compete and lose to Fearless Leader.
 
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NeoNemesis said:
For the sake of their athletes, they shouldn't be permitted to participate in the games.
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Not like it matters much...DPRK citizens are typically lied to about how great their country is doing.

I think I remember one case, where interviewed by English language media, DPRK street-goers were excited and couldn't resist rubbing it in about DPRK beating USA in the World Cup football...something that has never happened.

When you don't have good news, invent it. Rule #3 of politics.
 
It's probably better to live your life through a lie, than expose yourself to truth and then spread it around, resulting in public execution by Dear Leader's firing squads.
 
Mistral said:
It's probably better to live your life through a lie, than expose yourself to truth and then spread it around, resulting in public execution by Dear Leader's firing squads.
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Pretty much. I know suicide among defectors is pretty high in SK. A lot of people just can't come to grips that their (and their families) entire existence has been a lie. I mean, all you really gotta do is imagine a loved one dying in NK from something that's a complete nonissue to us and it just goes downhill from there. Major issues like malnutrition, diseases, exposure, etc are serious concerns for them, but we don't think twice about it. Then you've got their prison camps people are dying doing menial labor that we've automated over 100 years ago. They're out there with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows working to death while we've got specialty vehicles the size of buildings moving and harvesting materials, controlled from comfortable chairs in air conditioned buildings. Tough pill to swallow.
 
pretty much there is a twenty mile wide line on the ground that you should not cross in Korea. most people don't have a safe way to wander though north Korea so I have to wonder if some of there athletes would leave north Korea if they could figure out how to get their families out. Most of South Korea is a mix of heavy urban areas that look like most other cities in first world nations and then areas of farms and rice paddies farms, there tropical jungle and deciduous forest mix. It is the warm current side so the tropical plants and trees grow further north. But when people say they don't get to take gifts home, remember north Korea and south Korea hate each other... Samsung may be a mix of Japanese and Korean tech.

The point is you have countries like Switzerland where everyone goes into the military and has been moral outlook and discipline. Basically they have less crime for two reasons, one they can protect themselves, and two their values make them better people. The North Koreans they go into the the military at young age and I don't happen to know how old off the top of my head but the first stage in indoctrination. The give each kid a stick, and the kids have to hit the same spot on burlap dummy. If they hit wrong the instructor hit them. If they fight back they are beaten, until they killed or follow orders. maybe eight years old. I don't know I did not ask I was lost and pretending that I knew what was going on. When I tired and get bags under my eyes a lot of Asian's get really confused so I just acted like I knew what was going on until someone say which way was south Korean then I walked off like I there. No one asked any questions. The thing is most of them are so beat down about asking anything other than what they are told by the time they can think if they see a green uniform most don't ask questions.
 
Well, I know this Chinese gal, well educated, and she has explained some things to me that seemed at the time, difficult to believe. She told me that the Koreans are actually just the original Han Chinese, that those people crossed the mountains into the Korean peninsula and broke away from the rest of China. I asked my wife about it and she was pretty serious in refuting this claiming that Koreans are not Chinese and that they have simply always been the Korean people. But the other day she came back, she said she was thinking it over and perhaps that Chinese woman is right and that long ago the Koreans were possible the Han Chinese.

Something else she said, was how much power and influence China has over both Koreas. Even today, with South Korea having the 10th largest economy in the world, they have great respect and fear of China.
 
Extra-Titanian said:
Then their families get thrown into a prison camp for 3 generations to be worked to death.
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That absolutely sucks, but man I woud be soo gone. Maybe they test how much they love their families before joining. I remember on the history channel that every person who flew SR-71 blackbird had to at least have a wife. The reasoning was so that the flyer would always have something to live for, and would fight to save the plane until the end. Lucky none of them crashed.
 
lostinseganet said:
That absolutely sucks, but man I woud be soo gone. Maybe they test how much they love their families before joining. I remember on the history channel that every person who flew SR-71 blackbird had to at least have a wife. The reasoning was so that the flyer would always have something to live for, and would fight to save the plane until the end. Lucky none of them crashed.
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They used to fly over Korea while I was there. The first time I heard one I almost shit my pants. First you'd hear the boom which was a boom like no other echoing off the mountains almost reverberating. Then, like a tsunami, a wave of rattling windows rolled by following the plane. There has to be someone else here that has heard it.

There was nothing secret or stealthy about where those planes were flying. It had to have been a slap in the face for our enemies knowing those planes were flying right over their homes and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it.
 
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