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/c/pyongyang - a comm for webpages hosted in DPRK aka Democratic People's Republic of Korea (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 months ago by [M] to c/pyongyang@hexbear.net
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!pyongyang@hexbear.net is comm for posting links to websites hosted in DPRK aka Democratic People's Republic of Korea, known as North Korea in the West. Pyongyang is the capital city of DPRK. The purpose of the comm is to try observe the DPRK perspective.

DPRK is heavily sanctioned and censored by the West. There is a lot of misinformation spread about DPRK, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. An example of positive misinformation would be all the twitter accounts making up fake Kim Jong Un quotes. Negative misinformation would be like all of the articles posted by RadioFreeAsia, a US-funded propaganda site.

There are websites hosted in DPRK that are accessible internationally. DPRK owns the .kp TLD. Every website that ends with .kp is hosted in DPRK. Linking directly to websites hosted in DPRK could demystify the western perspective of DPRK.

some info about the .kp TLD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kp

The concept of the comm is simple. Visit a DPRK website, find something interesting to you, post the link to the page in this comm. Optionally screenshot the page and/or archive it with an archive website.

To combat western narratives, all posts on the comm should contain a link to a .kp website or archive of a .kp website, either in the URL field or the Post body field. Users would be welcome to comment their own opinions, but posts should be based on DPRK websites.

Here is a current list of websites hosted in DPRK. https://archive.is/RT91h

These webpages tend to post new stuff daily, so the comm should never run out of content. The DPRK website list has a broad range categories. There's a recipe website, an architecture website, an ebook website with juche theory books, an animation website with DPRK animated videos, and more.

The two news sites in DPRK that I read are KCNA and Rodong Sinmun. They have the tendency to post new articles daily at 6 PM eastern time. The articles tend to be deleted after 1 year time, so it is good to archive the page if you find something interesting.

Also, the korean language website of the websites sometimes have additional pages not available in the english version. You might have to use the browser translate function.

Additionally, DPRK has shown rapid development over the past couple years. On June 18 2024, DPRK signed a trade agreement with Russia, which I believe gave DPRK expanded access to new technologies.

Untrustworthy Sources: RadioFreeAsia (RFA), NKNews/KCNAWatch, DailyNK, Rimjin-gang, 38North

all 10 comments

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[–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

While it has non-Korea sources, and a couple of the links have died, it may be worth linking the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea megapost somewhere like the sidebar.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Thanks, I'm in the process of writing the sidebar, making the banner and sub icon. I'll link to it.

    This is another good document that I've found. The document is made by Madeline Pendleton. People have different opinions about Madeline but the document is decent. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fPJjTYGBo4QRuafFkbWTA8imbpr-QP3tD_946Yv_v3A/edit?usp=sharing

    An interesting organization that I've seen is Nodutdol. It's an organization made of Korean diapora in US and Canada who are generally supportive of DPRK. They've used the slogan 'US out of Korea'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodutdol

    With that said, I still would like the comm to focus on webpages hosted in DPRK.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    kim-salute I’m always hesitant to click on docs links - if you’d be willing to mirror the current content somewhere (doesn’t need to be directly to this comm, I get wanting to keep it focused on Korean sources) I think others would probably appreciate it too.

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    • [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago

    Here are some posts that I've made in this past linking to websites hosted in the DPRK.

    DPRK troops marching in moscow.
    https://hexbear.net/post/8457616

    Xi Jinping in Pyongyang
    https://hexbear.net/post/8720735

    Kim Jong Un and daughter and government officials at a gun range.
    https://hexbear.net/post/7917537

    DPRK condemns Israel's attack on Iran
    https://hexbear.net/post/7813201

    South Korea spy drone shot down while in DPRK airspace
    https://hexbear.net/post/7302452

    These posts are examples of interesting things that I found on DPRK websites, interesting to me at least. The purpose of the comm is for users to post things from DPRK websites that are interesting to them. I think other users could find interesting things that I may have missed or not understood.

    As some other people may have pointed out, many people have a negative view of DPRK, likely due to US propaganda campaigns. I don't expect every user to have a positive view of DPRK. I hope that every user (especially users visiting from other instances) would have an open mind and I expect every user to follow all of Hexbear's rules. Hexbear rule 4 disallows posts or comments "containing transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, ableism, zionism, anti-veganism, or trivializing COVID. No self-described or obvious fascists, conservatives, or reactionaries."

    If you have any suggestions for the comm or questions about the comm, feel free to comment on the main thread.

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    [–] 3 points 2 months ago*

    in addition to websites, you can watch live KCTV broadcasts by opening https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/countries/kp.m3u in vlc or other media players

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    [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    Might be a good idea to include links to basics of the juche idea, as it's one of the most widely misunderstood subjects under the Marxist umbrella. Understanding the Korean socialist project requires an understanding of the juche idea and Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

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    • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago

    I made this DPRK poster into a temporary banner. If someone has something better, it can be changed.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20231108225314/http://kcna.kp/kp/media/photo/q/cc188f534dfdf8b66b0ab93a317004ed.kcmsf

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    [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago*

    There's a possible scenario that you found some interesting DPRK photos on twitter, reddit, or some other social media website, or even a western news site. There is a high likelihood that those images originated from a .kp website, especially if the images have a KCNA watermark.

    To find the .kp page associated with the image, you first have to approximate the date of the photo. I have done this in the past by doing a reverse image search and finding articles in western media with the same photo. If the reverse image search doesn't work, you can try to do a web search with a description of the photo. If that doesn't work either, I guess you could use the date on the social media post.

    Once you have an approximate date of the photo, you can look at archive.org snapshots of KCNA and Rodong Sinmun for that date to find the article associated with the image. Replace YYYYMMDD with the year/month/day of the date of the photo to find an article for the photos that you found. August 09, 2026 would be 20260809.

    https://web.archive.org/web/YYYYMMDD/http://kcna.kp/en

    https://web.archive.org/web/YYYYMMDD/http://kcna.kp/kp

    https://web.archive.org/web/YYYYMMDD/http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/

    https://web.archive.org/web/YYYYMMDD/http://www.rodong.rep.kp/ko/

    For KCNA, you have to click on the camera button to view images on the article. I think Rodong Sinmun embeds the image into the page.

    You may then use the archive of the .kp webpage as a post on the comm if you wish.

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    [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago*

    I think this would make a good banner image if anyone knows how to resize/reshape it while maintaining the elements. It's a poster published by DPRK on December 7 2023, celebrating the launch of a reconnaissance satellite.

    It has a DPRK soldier, a space rocket, DPRK flags, a few workers, and a crowd of people.

    I think the banner max height is 240 px. With a width of like 1000+.

    source https://web.archive.org/web/20231207055652/http://kcna.kp/kp/media/photo/q/ed7da01c88fa9c27a494e8852cde17d202b447bf91f5f2e3c4868e8ca2083e82.kcmsf

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