Shadowing Practice: What’s ACTUALLY Happening in North Korea - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Testing one, two, three, four, five.
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If you point a camera at the earth, 600 kilometers above the surface, it's pretty mesmerizing.
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But pointing at the Korean Peninsula and you'll see this.
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South Korea is ablaze, but North Korea is almost totally dark.
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You've got this little point here for Pyongyang, the capital, but it's mostly a void.
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The Black Void tells a story of how the 25 million people live in this secretive kingdom of North Korea.
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But as the sun rises, we get to fill in the details, we get to see more.
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We get to see cities designed to control.
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We get to see an unfathomable amount of military installations, many of them burrowed into mountains where they protect nuclear weapons.
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Where the over one million soldiers endlessly prepare for war.
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There's over 10,000 manned military installations.
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So air defense, bases, naval sites, you know, all that squeezed into Pennsylvania.
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We see factories, lots of factories.
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We see these little islands of dense housing, which are the homes of the workers who are assigned here.
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We see barriers, lots of barriers.
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Barriers meant to keep people in.
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And not just on the borders with neighbors, but also within the country itself checkpoints and barriers between provinces.
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I've been looking at every inch of North Korea because I want to understand how it actually works.
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I want to understand how the all-powerful leaders have designed this place and why.
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And I've been stumbling upon stuff that I never thought I'd see in North Korea.
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Ski resorts, an international children's camp, lots and lots of water slides, markets where people buy and sell things, schools and fields, fruit factories,
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Coal shipments, limestone mines, burial grounds, prison camps in the cities and the mountains, lots of strange looking buildings, stadiums and tracks, sports fields,
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empty roads and empty squares, Christian churches, a turtle shaped building, apartment blocks where rich people live.
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I mean you stumble upon some pretty wild stuff when you just scour every inch of the satellite map.
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I've also been talking to experts who spend their time looking at the map of North Korea, analyzing it day by day for decades.
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Their data has been really useful in all of this, And honestly, I'm starting to see North Korea in a totally different way.
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I think I've been exposed to a very specific version of this country.
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And that doesn't mean it's an inaccurate version, but it's just one version.
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Today I want to show you a deeper version.
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Now the map can't tell us everything, but I'm seeing how it can fill in the blanks in my knowledge of how this country actually works.
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Broadening my perspective on this most secretive kingdom in our world.
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So buckle up and let's get ready to look at this map.
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I mean this whole country is under one giant surveillance.
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And I guess while we're talking about surveillance, let's talk about the sponsor of today's video which is, has a lot to do with surveillance.
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Because all of us are actually surveilled.
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Whether we like it or not, I guess if we're on the internet, which you're on the internet right now so you're being surveilled.
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A very lucrative industry in today's world is that of being a data broker.
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People collect information about where you live, what you do on the internet, how old you are, what your birthday is, a million different things.
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And then they buy and sell that information on an open market, secretly, you don't know this is happening.
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They sell this stuff to advertisers, insurers, even those sketchy people search sites.
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And even though this sounds sketchy, it's all technically very legal.
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But you know what else is legal?
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Asking these data brokers to take your name off of their lists
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so that you don't get junk mail and robocalls and text messages and have your insurance premiums jacked up.
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So, Incogni is the sponsor of today's video and that is their entire business.
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I signed up for Incogni a while back.
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I gave them permission to act on my behalf to go out
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and make these requests for me because there's no way I could actually have the time to do it.
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A few years ago, I actually tried to do it myself and made a whole video about it and admitted defeat.
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That was before Incogni even existed.
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But now Incogni exists and so I use them.
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Here, I'm logging into Incogni to show you.
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Boom.
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I mean, check this out.
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They've given me this dashboard, where I just get to sit back and watch.
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Since I started in March of 2023, they have sent out 779 requests to get me off these data broker lists.
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And of those, 643 have been successful.
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643, that's a lot.
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I mean, you can even see the actual companies that they are requesting to get your name taken off of.
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There's a lot of them.
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This has been a very successful thing for me, and that's why I'm a big fan of Incogni and why I love that they come sponsor videos.
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Incogni just launched this new feature, the unlimited plan, where you can get removed from any site, data broker or not.
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So if you wanna get in on this, you can use the link in my description, get a big discount, it's incogni.com slash johnnyharris.
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If you use that link, you support this channel, like it's a good thing for me if you do that, and then you also get 60% off this plan.
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Don't forget to do that.
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It may auto-populate, but it may not.
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Use the link incogni.com slash johnnyharris.
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Thank you, Incogni, for sponsoring today's video and being a longtime partner of the channel.
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And with that, let's dive back in to the map.
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I mean, first things first, North Korea is a beautiful country.
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North Korea is usually viewed as, you know, this hellscape of a place.
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But it's actually really beautiful.
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Lots of mountains and hills and rare animals and everything.
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It's home to this huge mountain range.
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Among these rugged mountains, you've got this volcano, Mount Pek-tu.
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It's kind of a sacred spot for North Koreans.
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It's where their legends say their great leader, Kim Jong-il, was born.
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Incidentally, it's right on this border, actually.
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Half of Mount Pek-tu is on the Chinese side.
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China, North Korea.
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North Korea can get really cold and snowy.
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It's home to between 20 and 30 million people.
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It's about half as many as live in South Korea.
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And it was the war in the 1950s that created these two Koreas, and in the process turned what is now North Korea into dust.
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Today, North Korea is built around a few major cities.
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Here's the ten most populous.
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Some have ports, some are up on the border with China, and then there's this river city of Pyongyang.
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This is the capital.
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A lot of this had to be redesigned from scratch because the country was destroyed in the Korean War.
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The country itself is designed in line with this North Korean communist ideology of a human body.
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The great leader is the brain
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and then the members of his single party government represents the nervous system that connects his will to the masses.
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The masses are the bones and the muscle, the ones who carry out the work of building this country.
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The country is supposed to act as one, serving the will of the brain, the great leader.
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And what I'm seeing is that this kind of body configuration allows them to do some pretty unique things.
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First and foremost, military.
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Most countries spend like between 1 and 4% of their GDP on military.
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North Korea spends like between 20 and 25% of their GDP on their military.
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And we've got the data on what that looks like.
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Whoa, okay, settle down big boy.
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Oh god.
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Look at this.
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Oh my lord, look at this.
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I don't think I've ever seen so many yellow push pins in my life.
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It kind of reminds me of that map of like saunas in Finland.
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Places like a fortress.
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You can see that a lot of this is concentrated down here on their southern border.
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This is the DMZ.
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It's actually a four kilometer thick border and technically within this four kilometers, there's supposed to be no military stuff.
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That is if you don't count the thousands of landmines
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that are there left over from the Korean War and that North Korea continues to plant.
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But in terms of weapons, most of it is right here on the border of the DMZ,
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where North Korea has 900 artillery guns that are aimed right at Seoul.
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Seoul, South Korea.
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In the event of a conflict, these guns could fire 10,000 rounds a minute at South Korea,
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which would make good on their promise to turn South Korea into a sea of fire, which they often make towards their southerly neighbor.
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Now, reminder, it's not Not just North Korea.
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If we were mapping American or South Korean military assets, you'd see a lot of those too on the southern side, down here.
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But we are looking at North Korea right now.
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You've got underground bunkers, missile launch sites, nuclear reactors, airstrips, naval bases.
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So you've got the thousands of landmines, and of course, this little pavilion where soldiers from both sides stand meters apart.
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This is where the countries have their diplomatic talks.
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You've got a thousand observation posts, 300 checkpoints and roadblocks, tons of military facilities that support the soldiers here, and then of course tunnels.
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Man, you're going to see a lot of underground stuff here.
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North Korea is covered with these things, and this is just the ones we know of.
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One explanation for these tunnels is that during the Korean War, this country was basically flattened.
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Almost every building was turned to dust by American bombs.
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A huge part of the North Korean psyche is this paranoid fear of air power.
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They designed their defense strategy to be ready for if that ever happens again.
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So you have a lot of these fortified bases and tunnels.
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Some of them are for weapons storage, and some of them are for invasion.
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Like down here on the DMZ, they secretly dug a bunch of tunnels that are kilometers long, that go under the DMZ.
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This would allow them to move troops into South Korea very quickly actually went into one of these tunnels
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that had been discovered by South Korea.
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But these tunnels also have another purpose and in fact the military itself, a big portion of it, is dedicated to protecting one family.
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You'll see this in the capital.
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This is the barracks that houses some of the 100,000 bodyguards meant to protect the Kim family.
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This hill is like a giant bunker.
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It's home to a bunch of military installations, some of them deep underground, a lot of them connected through tunnels.
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And this is one of the many escape plans
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that the Kim family has in case of an attack They can escape on an armored train
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or in one of the helicopters that is stored inside of this hill There's rumors
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that there is another huge tunnel system on the northern border
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that would allow the Kims to sneak into China if they needed to.
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Just the amount of effort put into the security of the Kims themselves versus, you know, helping out your average person.
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I don't think people really realize the amount of security infrastructure that they have.
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But it's not all underground.
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The country is littered with 1500 guns and missiles that are meant for shooting down aircraft.
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A third of those, by the way, are concentrated around Pyongyang, the capital.
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Like, look at this one.
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Pretty funky looking from above.
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Here in the middle of this field.
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You've got the Air Force.
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The Air Force is one of their larger military branches.
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And then you've got their Navy, which has a bunch of submarines.
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A lot of them not totally operable, experts think.
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But in a recent video we made on submarines, we calculated at least 36 operable submarines hanging out in bases like this.
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Now look at their missile sites.
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Missiles, rockets, nuclear weapons are a big deal for this regime, especially the most recent leader, who, as you can see from this graph, has really ramped up the testing of all of this.
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These missiles have all kinds of different ranges
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but the longest ones can go 12,000 kilometers away and
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that puts a lot of the world in range including the United States.
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Many of those are up here in these mountain bases where they store these missiles and where they can launch them.
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But lately they've also been trying to send up non-weapons into space.
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This launch pad is where, over the last couple of years, they've tried to put satellites up into space.
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It's put a satellite in orbit.
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There's only about 11 or 12 countries around the world that have ever put a satellite in orbit.
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The military is core to keeping the Kims in power, which is why they often show it off.
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I love this video from The Guardian.
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Aaaaaahhhh They
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know when one of these things is gonna happen because there's like a replica of the Kim Il-sung Square,
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the big central square, where all of these soldiers get together and practice.
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And so whenever they see activity in that practice square, they know that they're getting ready for one of these.
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So the military is a very important part of keeping the Kims in power.
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It's used as propaganda, it's used as actual defense, and it's often used to actually build stuff.
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And you've got one of the largest militaries in the world, a million plus active duty.
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They're able to command that to do all sorts of projects, including construction projects, which we're gonna look at.
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One thing you'll see a lot of in North Korea is fences.
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And not to necessarily keep people from coming in, but more so to keep people from going out.
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They've spent years building a fence around the entire perimeter of the country, at least 1,400 kilometers, bordering China alone.
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Here's all the security outposts.
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I mean, this fencing goes through all kinds of terrain, including dug into the beach.
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And a lot of this was built recently as more and more people have been trying to escape.
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And then within the country itself, there are barriers that control people's movement.
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The country has checkpoints at the province borders to make sure people aren't moving around without permission.
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So yeah, a lot of people can't get out of North Korea, but some can.
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In fact, there's a whole network of IT professionals, North Korean engineers, who interview for Western tech jobs,
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get hired, and then pass money and information back to the North Korean regime, all without their employer knowing it.
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Okay, I'm about to try to conduct a job interview for the first time in my life.
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I reached out to David Wenski, a senior software engineer, and he responded to me three hours after I reached out.
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But I'm not actually hiring anybody.
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And I don't think David Wenski is actually who he says he is.
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This is a big rabbit hole that is very juicy.
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And my colleague Christoph went down that rabbit hole in a new video that's live right now over on his channel.
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His show is called Tunnel Vision.
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It's very good and this story about IT espionage and money funneling back to North Korea is incredibly wild.
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How deep Kristoff was able to get.
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So you should go check that out.
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The link is in the description.
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Okay, so a lot of this stuff probably isn't that surprising to you.
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This is the kind of stuff we see on the news, the stuff that gets covered a lot.
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The military, the missiles, the control.
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But now I want to get to the part of this country
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that really led me to this video in the first place, which is the stuff that we don't see very often.
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To try to expand my understanding of what it is like to live in North Korea.
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What is life like in these cities out here in the rural areas?
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How do they make stuff?
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Where do they get their food?
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Entertainment, community...
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Turns out that between defector testimony, state news, and the satellite map, you can actually learn a lot about this stuff.
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A lot of North Korea cities were designed from scratch after the city was turned into rubble because of the Korean War.
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And because of that, they have very unique design design
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that is meant to fulfill a certain objective that is in line with North Korean ideals of controlling people,
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unifying people, and continuously celebrating their leaders and the struggle of their continuous revolution.
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So many of us have seen the capital, we'll get to that, but I want to look at these other cities.
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A lot of North Korean cities are built around a big central square like this.
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A lot of them have these circles that look like they're hand-drawn.
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The square is kind of the middle of the city.
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Then you have these massive boulevards that kind of frame out the city.
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Now you'll quickly notice in a lot of these cities that these boulevards are pretty empty.
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You see a lot more buses than you see private cars.
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Oh and you see a mosque every once in a while.
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I tried to get to the bottom of what the deal is with these mosques.
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North Korea has a couple of these churches or mosques that are mostly there for optics, from what I can tell.
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More on that in a little bit.
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So yeah, you've got these empty boulevards, lots of empty squares that lead to these kind of grand spaces.
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Now, these spaces are often punctuated with some kind of monument.
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Here's one.
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Here we go, Central Square.
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I mean, we can go back in time too and sort of look at the historical imagery.
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Huge boulevards, often very empty.
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Oh, boom, look.
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Someone's visiting.
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So when you see people, you often see them in huge groups like this.
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At least that's what I've noticed from above.
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When there's people, there's a lot of them, and they're all very close.
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But oftentimes this stuff is empty.
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Oh, look.
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Here's a bunch of people lined up in near-perfect geometry on this square.
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Every major city has a stadium.
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Now, some of these are in kind of bad shape, but some are really nice.
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Sports is a big deal in North Korea.
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Some of the sports that are popular in North Korea, they do very well.
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So they're definitely in some areas sort of hitting above their weight.
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Yeah.
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Though defectors do report that sometimes a stadium like this one in particular has been used for public executions or public shamings.
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A big part of the control regime in North Korea is to publicly punish, to keep people in line.
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Okay, and then recently the government declared that every city needs to have one of these.
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Check this out.
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There are around 170 of these traffic parks, and these are new, but these are very important to North Korean cities.
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Remember all those empty streets?
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Like, most people don't own cars in North Korea.
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They go on buses.
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But recently that's kind of changing.
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There's even a car company that puts together like kit cars and sells them in North Korea.
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They're one of the few companies that actually advertise.
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And so because of that, there is more traffic in residential areas, which has led to more accidents for kids who are not used to dealing with cars.
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So this was an initiative to teach kids the rules of traffic to promote public safety for children.
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One thing that's going on.
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Okay, so those are some of the design patterns and kind of common ingredients in a North Korean city.
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But let me show you some specific cities because as we do that, you start to see how this country works, how its economy works.
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Ham Hong is one of their bigger cities.
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You've got your standard big, giant, empty squares with statues of the leaders.
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This is actually a big economic hub for chemicals.
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Here's an area that some experts believe is a chemical facility where they actually store this stuff underground.
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Remember how they love to put everything underground to protect it?
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These little white dots sort of represent that there is something buried there
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and potentially chemical weapons or other sensitive chemicals that they don't want the world to know about.
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You see these big industrial facilities, they make a lot of chemicals like fertilizer, pesticides.
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It's home to this pretty wild looking amusement park.
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I don't know what is going on with these slides.
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Now I've never seen it full of people even when I go to a weekday in the summer.
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But I want to show you this one factory.
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This is a really important building in North Korea because this is where they make vinylon.
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Vinylon is a fabric that you can make not with wool or cotton, but with coal and limestone, which is something they have a lot of in North Korea.
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So as a part of the push for self-reliance, North Korea produces this synthetic material called vinylon.
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They use it for uniforms.
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A lot of clothing in North Korea is made with this really tough, scratchy, durable vinyl on material.
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They use it for curtains, they kind of use it for everything.
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It's the North Korean national fabric.
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So this is their biggest vinyl on factory right here.
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And it's so important that the leader came to the reopening when they renovated this thing.
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So yeah, vinyl on is made with coal.
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They mine a lot of coal in North Korea.
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If you zoom into this port in Hamheng, you'll see really gnarly looking yellow pollution.
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But you'll also see ships, ships with coal aboard.
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You'll see all this coal getting ready to be shipped out, basically all of it going to China and potentially violating sanctions, but that's not what we're looking into right now.
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Let's go to another city, but this one is interesting.
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It's up north, right in the shadow of Mount Pektu.
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This is a nice looking city.
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It's home to this ice rink.
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It's got a ski hill up here.
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There's of course the required children's traffic park.
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This was a big construction project for Kim Il-sung.
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And it's meant to show the world that North Korea is open for tourism, especially here in the shadow of their holy mountain.
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And look, this thing went up really fast.
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There's evidence that to make this thing go so fast, they used this youth construction brigade,
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which is a bunch of young people who do construction labor for like 10 to 12 hours a day
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as a way to show their loyalty to the party and potentially move up in the ranks, to move out of their social class, which is something we'll talk about in a little bit.
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This district was pretty much empty before it started.
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And in the space of within a couple of years, or even a year, all of this was built.
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We don't know much about the construction standards, but they do build very fast.
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But yeah, when you control every human in the country, you can build this stuff really quick.
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Now, whether or not this is good quality stuff is another question.
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Like I've seen videos of some of these houses in the mountains that like have ice on the inside of the window.
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So we're not sure if this is, you know, good construction, but boy, they're building stuff fast.
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Okay, let me show you a few more of these cities.
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Okay, let's go to Chongqing, port city here on the East coast.
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It's gnarly industrial stuff going on here, home to these very cookie cutter looking homes.
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Here they produce textiles, rubber, steel, they build trains, they've got a big power plant.
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And you can see out here in the water, this is where a lot of shipping comes in and out of the country.
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Look at all these vessels.
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I mean, not a lot relative to most countries, but you know, got all this gnarly industrial stuff doing steel.
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You can see that they're shipping stuff out.
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There's coal, some of these minerals.
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A lot of mining happens, which, as we will see,
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usually is the work of political prisoners deep in the mountains working a life sentence of hard labor.
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But yeah, for now, let's just look at this.
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I mean some of this stuff just looks like a wasteland, but you know, that's industry for you.
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But then all of that steel production is happening right next to these tightly packed homes.
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Just endless, endless homes.
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You've got your required empty boulevard, traffic park.
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Here's their train station.
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Here's the big central square.
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This one's really or neatly designed.
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Let's see if anything happens if we go back in time.
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Oh, they just built this.
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This is 2020.
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Look at this thing go up.
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Looks nice.
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Statues of the two leaders, sports stadium, and if you look at these big blue roofs, you will see something that you wouldn't expect to see in North Korea.
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This is the home to a market where thousands of vendors buy and sell things all day here in the socialist,
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communist, anti-capitalist utopia of North Korea.
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So the story here is that back in the 90s, when the Soviet Union fell, North Korea was hit very hard because they were very reliant on aid from the Soviet Union.
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Mass famine spread throughout the whole country and this region was very deeply hit.
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So it gave rise to this really resourceful black market.
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Homemade goods, smuggled goods, sort of bartering, trading between a couple hundred thousand to a couple million people died during this famine.
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And the black market was the only way that a lot of people lived and still live today.
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So in 2008 the government tried to crack down on this.
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This is like very anti-North Korean, like letting people buy and sell and smuggle stuff in.
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This is like not North Korean.
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They cracked down and the mostly women merchants in this city protested.
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You don't see that in North Korea.
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They marched to the city government office and there was like a big confrontation
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and they basically said like we won't be able to live if you cut us off of this.
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Where North Korea has started to change has been the sort of underground economy.
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It has become somewhat tolerated under Kim Jong-un, these kind of illicit markets.
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And today, the government continues to let this happen.
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This one we're looking at with the blue roof is a big example of that, but it's not the only one.
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Not even close.
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These markets are now all over the country.
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So a lot of people get their stuff on this kind of black, gray, informal market, which has turned into a massive network of trafficking stuff in,
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usually from China, and almost always illegally.
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Individual smugglers that will bring stuff literally across the river that divides North Korea and China.
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Sometimes those trading companies will, in the back of the truck, in addition to the shipment, they're meant to be bringing in, bring a few other things in as well.
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And then that will kind of flow into the black market that way.
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Back in the famine days, it was just the essentials.
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It was just rice and corn, just basic food.
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But with time, it started to become a more sophisticated private market.
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And today you can get all kinds of cheap Chinese products.
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I mean China is like the manufacturing powerhouse of the world and they are right there next to North Korea.
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There's a lot of ships and trucks coming back and forth between the two countries, which serves as the arteries for this black market.
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A lot of these goods end up in these markets.
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Here's one in Pyongyang.
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There's a part of me that wants to do a whole video on these markets because they are very interesting.
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The whole informal economy of North Korea is something I might do a video on.
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If you're interested in that, let me know because man, I want to pull on that thread.
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But real quick, there's two things that I feel like I'm learning about North Korea because of this informal market system.
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Number one, North Korea's very survival is thanks to the presence of China.
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China, this massive manufacturer, rapidly developing country,
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is a lifeline for North Korea both in the formal trade as well as the informal black market.
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And the second thing
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that this kind of confirms for me is just how much the centrally planned communist government does not work.
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It does not actually work to allocate goods and services to the people.
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This country would not be able to survive without the black market.
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So in addition to China, the black market is the only way that a lot of North Koreans survive.
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But you can see how risky this can become, these informal markets, because the regime only works because it controls every aspect of people's lives.
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So these black markets are relinquishing some of that control.
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So every once in a while they crack down, they go in, they break up the markets, they They make sure to extract fees.
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They make sure that this doesn't get too out of control.
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Anyway, the markets are endlessly fascinating.
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One other thing you see in Chongqing is up here.
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This is a prison camp.
385
Prison camps always have economic activity attached to them.
386
And further up the valley, you've got this re-education camp deep in the valley.
387
For anyone who shows disloyalty to the regime, this one's for just over a thousand men who don't live in these homes, that's for like the officials,
388
they live within these walls and they spend their time mining copper and iron, cutting logs, making bricks and farming.
389
This is where we should talk about the prison camps, because this one that we just saw in the city, there's a lot of those, they exist in cities, some are just typical prisons,
390
some are re-education camps, but there are way bigger ones, and they're up in the mountains,
391
and they represent what I see as the most egregious version of North Korea's many human rights abuses.
392
What's happening inside of these shapes is some of the worst stuff we can imagine.
393
This is pretty upsetting stuff.
394
I'm not gonna go into like super detail, but let me just show you these four major prison camps, where they are, what they have inside of them, and who gets sent to them,
395
and why and how and everything we know.
396
You get sent to a prison camp for kind of anything.
397
If you show any rebellion or or disrespect to the party or the leader.
398
If you're a public official who messed something up, you get sent to one of these.
399
Just being accused of wrong thinking can get you sent to one.
400
And it's not just you and your family, it is also your children and your grandchildren that aren't even born yet.
401
This system detains multiple generations of someone they've deemed a political prisoner.
402
Now officially, none of this exists.
403
North Korea laughably says that they do not have any such political prison system, but here they are.
404
There's actually around 700 penal facilities.
405
Okay, now that goes from short-term detention sites, you know, that you're there for a weekend, to those massive, you know,
406
50,000 people concentration camp style sites.
407
And they have these names like Camp 14, Camp 11, and they're often on these huge tracts of land.
408
Here's one up in the north.
409
Like, this is like, we are deep in the mountains here, like look at this.
410
This is the prison camp.
411
There are guard posts and fences.
412
Some of these aren't completely fenced in 100%, but if you look closely, you will see fences here cut into this forest.
413
If you look real close, you can see a guard post.
414
And within these camps, not just adults, you've got a lot of children.
415
Any of them were born in the camp.
416
They know nothing different.
417
And what you'll see inside these prison camps is a lot of economic, productive activity being done through forced hard labor.
418
So like up here, you've got this coal mine.
419
That's a big one.
420
That's one of the reasons all this stuff's in the mountains.
421
Then you have a lot of farmland up here as well.
422
Livestock.
423
There's even a distillery here.
424
Maybe making some kind of hard alcohol to be shipped to Pyongyang.
425
Got a factory here.
426
You've got a school, probably for the guards' children.
427
The children in these camps are made to work from the time they are four to six years old.
428
And the work hours are 10 to 12 hours long for everyone in this camp, unpaid, forced prison labor.
429
The conditions are horrific.
430
People are on the verge of starving and often have to fight for resources.
431
But you'll also see that even within these prison camps, it kind of feels like a North Korean city.
432
It's like a little microcosm, a little mini version of the North Korean cities.
433
Like look, you've got a central square With a monument, you'll see murals of the great leaders.
434
You'll have these indoctrination centers, a school.
435
I want to know more about these schools.
436
It's like a little mini city.
437
These big ones, there's like 20,000 people who will live here.
438
They are fenced in for the most part.
439
Most people who come into this prison camp never leave.
440
The people who were born here will never leave.
441
These are life sentences, and it really gets its roots from the old Soviet days,
442
where so much control and power was wrought from just having the threat of this,
443
this thing that the UN has called a human rights abuse with no parallel in modern times.
444
Like this is a level of control and deprivation that doesn't really exist anywhere close to this degree.
445
20 odd million people that are basically prisoners to a system that they can't change.
446
This is kind of like a condensed version of that, a prison within a prison.
447
Now there's obviously a lot more study that's been done and visual analysis from satellite imagery.
448
In our sources, you can read some of the human rights groups' reports on this, where they've done sort of a deep dive and annotation.
449
I've just done a quick overview here.
450
And to contrast the prison camps, let's go to Wonsan, where I found one of Kim Jong-un's palaces.
451
We can really show you what Kim Jong-un does with this power that he's extracted from his people.
452
So this is Won-san, and up here, you've got your empty square with the circles, you've got a port, then up here,
453
you've got this international children's camp where kids from all around the world come to partake in North Korean fun
454
and sport every year.
455
And then right here is the Kim family compound.
456
Look at this, right on the beach.
457
It's got this private beach with all kinds of security barriers.
458
It's got all of these massive structures.
459
Big yard, a shooting range, and right here next to it,
460
of course, a railroad just in case the guy has to scurry away in case of an invasion or something.
461
So he's always got an escape plan.
462
So while the 100,000 North Koreans are imprisoned up in the mountains,
463
Kim Jong-un has his Residents here on the beach
464
You know I've known this I've known that North Korea is crazy
465
But to see the prison camps and then to see this is just it's fairly sickening to me So
466
when you're out here in rural North Korea like I've been
467
a lot lately you stumble upon a few weird things Check this out like
468
if you get this like this looks like maybe an anti-aircraft battery like a military installation
469
and maybe you're in this red, red earth then you get these like really peculiar looking housing blocks
470
that are just eerily symmetrical.
471
They're kind of everywhere out in the rural area and they are often built next to a farm.
472
I just I've never seen villages like this anywhere in the world from the sky.
473
They're just so clearly deeply planned but what I'm learning is
474
that this is how a lot of stuff gets made in rural North Korea, a lot of the farming.
475
Like look at this.
476
See all these houses?
477
All of these houses which look identical to each other, they're all a part of this factory.
478
This is a factory that makes.. let's find out.
479
Boom.
480
There we go.
481
Fruit.
482
This is a fruit processing factory.
483
Out here, way out in rural North Korea, and all of these homes are the people who work in the fruit factory.
484
Something Jacob pointed it out to me is that a lot of these are duplexes, meaning two families live here and you can see this is their backyard
485
and they have kind of a separator so they have this little plot of backyard.
486
This is their community.
487
You are assigned a job here and you work here.
488
I don't see a car anywhere on these roads.
489
You mentioned cars, of course you know private ownership of vehicles isn't really a thing in North Korea
490
so there's no no need for parking spaces.
491
You are living here and working here your whole life.
492
See some people biking, some people walking, but the other thing you see are these vast complexes of greenhouses.
493
Kim Jong-un has been going nuts on greenhouses, building as many as he can.
494
This was an airport for some reason, but over time, this airport got turned into a massive greenhouse complex.
495
Kim Jong-un has been doing this, and in fact, just a short time, this is 2022, And this is today.
496
Like man, they built stuff fast, it seems.
497
So one way that North Korea works is by just assigning people jobs
498
and having them live and work in the exact same place.
499
But man, I get really mesmerized out here in rural North Korea looking at the configuration of the housing.
500
Okay, but we have to talk about the capital.
501
I know everyone's wondering, like the capital, the capital, it's the most interesting.
502
I've been holding off because I feel like the capital gets so much coverage and I'm interested in these rural backwaters, but let's talk about the capital.
503
In order to understand Pyongyang and what it is, you have to understand this concept of songbun, basically the caste system for North Korea.
504
It's how they subdivide the people.
505
And once you're in one class, you're in one class, and your kids are in that class too, and you can maybe move up or maybe move down.
506
If your grandpa was like supportive of the Japanese or wasn't super loyal during the revolution,
507
then you are a part of the hostile class.
508
Like you are not to be trusted, you are not loyal, you will have the worst jobs, the worst opportunities, you will get the worst punishments.
509
The wavering class are kind of the middle ground and they are more trusted.
510
They're still on thin ice like everyone, but they have more opportunities.
511
They get better healthcare, they get better schools, better food.
512
But the core class, those are the top dogs.
513
They're party officials, they're the elites.
514
Those are the people who live in Pyongyang.
515
They live in a completely different world than the rest of the country.
516
The capital, which is a pretty wild looking place.
517
Here on Google Earth, they've put these little 3D renderings of like the big super wild hotel at the center of town
518
that actually looks really awesome and cool and wild, but it's totally empty.
519
At least that's what the reports say.
520
It's just a big piece of propaganda.
521
Part of it is that with these buildings, because electricity is so flaky in North Korea,
522
you actually don't want a high rise penthouse because if you're at the 30th floor and the power goes out, you're walking 30 floors of steps.
523
So the most desirable apartments, according to Martin, the expert interviewed, are the ones on the bottom floors.
524
Okay, so Pyongyang has big old stadium, monuments, big grand boulevards, lots of buses.
525
So much transportation happens on buses in North Korea.
526
And as you're rolling around here, you see a lot of like pretty peculiar architecture.
527
A throwback to Soviet era, when cities were laid out on a template and you had,
528
you know, brutalist architecture and everything and just rows of apartments and no real like suburban landscape.
529
Now these theme parks are empty, empty parking lots all the time.
530
It is like, you know, just a snapshot in time.
531
So we don't actually know, but I have never seen any one of these.
532
Although, check out this promo video from this water park.
533
You start to see that a lot of this stuff is built to show the outside world
534
that North Korea can do this, and to show fellow North Koreans that North Korea can do this.
535
That is a massive part of construction in this country.
536
It's not about serving the broader people as much as it is about telling a story.
537
So many sports, like sports, sports, sports, sports are a big part of North Korean culture.
538
Kim Jong-un's got his little signature buildings here.
539
Every leader has a different style and Kim Jong-un is just doing it with these curvy apartment buildings.
540
One thing you see here is churches.
541
There's a bunch of random churches in Pyongyang.
542
One of them is this Eastern Orthodox Church, which North Korea built for their good friend Russia.
543
Here's Vladimir Putin in this Eastern Orthodox Church.
544
Oh, but here's a Protestant one.
545
Founder of the country Kim Il-sung had a mother who was a Protestant.
546
And apparently she was a deacon here in this church.
547
So they restored this church, and it's sort of like a symbol that, like, look, North Korea believes in freedom of religion.
548
But they, to be clear, do not.
549
Religion is not widely practiced in North Korea for obvious reasons.
550
Now what I love about Pyongyang is it takes the whole like big boulevard, grand streets that are empty to a whole new level.
551
I mean look at this.
552
Here's where the great leader used to live.
553
This was their palace.
554
And coming off it is this big grand square empty and coming off that there's this grand boulevard that is
555
just so grand and so empty.
556
It goes down through this big beautiful roundabout,
557
keeps going through a tunnel to another big beautiful mostly empty roundabout.
558
There's a car, there's a car.
559
And now it enters into this massive grand like this is
560
you would expect a urban design like this in like Mexico City or something.
561
One, two, three, four, five,
562
six, seven, eight, nine, ten lanes going into this grand intersection for the four cars that are here.
563
I mean, it's mesmerizing to look at, right?
564
So anyway, that is the Grand Boulevard that leads up to this palace that the leaders used to live in.
565
The leaders don't live here anymore now.
566
Kim Jong-un lives instead up here.
567
See if I can find his house from memory now that I've been staring at it non-stop.
568
Boom, there it is.
569
Found it.
570
Okay, here he is.
571
He lives up in this big compound up on the hill.
572
This big boy.
573
This is his main residence in the city.
574
I'm looking at my data set from Jacob and you see potential underground entrances to these heavily secured compounds and bunkers.
575
For how much we know these folks like to dig, you can imagine that behind Kim Jong-un's house there are tunnels and bunkers.
576
We don't know that, but I presume there probably is.
577
Now Google Maps being what it is someone put a concentration center label right over the hill from Kim Jong-un's house.
578
I asked the experts about this
579
and they're like no that's not a constant That's like there's
580
not a concentration camp on the other side of Kim Jong-un's house.
581
It's probably a barracks where his bodyguards live.
582
Don't believe everything you see on Google Maps folks.
583
So yeah, Pyongyang is a place that could look fairly developed
584
and nice and indeed the imagery from from Pyongyang does look fairly nice in some views.
585
Because this is where the elite live, the core class.
586
This is where the output from all of the horrific abuse and slavery that's happening out in the countryside comes to benefit.
587
And this is the center of power for the regime.
588
Oh, and something you can't see here, but that you see in a lot of tourist videos is the very deep underground train system.
589
They've got a subway that is very nice looking.
590
And boy, I wish I could go there and visit and see it sub day, but I probably will never do that for obvious reasons.
591
OK, I want to finish this video talking about the thing we can't really see on this map, which is the people.
592
They are regular people like you and I.
593
And they have dreams and ambitions.
594
They just want to have some food and enjoy themselves
595
and go out with friends and just kind of have a happy life.
596
Despite all the horrors of this place, there are wholesome, meaningful traditions and rituals that still endure.
597
The Lunar New Year, or the Harvest Festival, brings people together to celebrate.
598
The extreme poverty limits their feasts, but they often consist of homemade alcohol,
599
simple rice cakes, and something poverty and totalitarianism can't totally take away, which is community.
600
The nourishment of relationships.
601
As we've seen, most people can't really move around in the country, so they stay in one place,
602
which defectors have reported leads to a sense of intimacy and connection with the community they live next to.
603
They lean on each other, they survive because of each other, they celebrate together, and they seem to find meaning despite all the limitations and all of the control.
604
One defector went so far as to say, Everything was suffocating and pitiful in North Korea, but it is a country that I have many positive memories from.
605
So if someone asks me what is North Korea like, I say, North Korea is a nice place with plenty of love.
606
And that's, I think, one of the things that's often forgotten
607
when we look at North Korea in the traditional media because people having a happy life is not newsworthy,
608
but a military parade or a nuclear test or a missile launch or something is newsworthy.
609
So just leaving you with a reminder
610
that there's more to this country than the horrible realities
611
that we've seen here or that we often see on the news
612
if you want a deeper look on this angle of the country, there's a book called Nothing to Envy, which is a great human level account of life in North Korea.
613
So thank you all for being curious with me as we looked at this map to understand more about this secretive country.
614
Let me know what you want me to cover next and I'll see you in the next one.
615
Don't forget to check out our new channel, Tunnel Vision, where we published that video about North Korean IT professionals taking Western jobs, funding the regime with money and secrets.
616
It's a deep dive and I think you'll like it.
617
Thanks for watching.
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אוצר מילים והערות הגייה לשיעור הזה
שיעור הדיבור הזה ברמה B2 מבוסס על הסרטון “What’s ACTUALLY Happening in North Korea”. בסרטון הזה יש 617 משפטים ו-8082 מילים לתרגול Shadowing. הדיבור נמשך 45:31. הדובר מדבר בקצב טבעי של כ-178 מילים בדקה, קרוב לשיחה יומיומית. 86% מהמילים נמצאות בין 3,000 המילים הנפוצות ביותר באנגלית; כדאי ללמוד את השאר לפני שמתחילים.
אוצר מילים מרכזי בסרטון הזה
15 המילים המתקדמות ביותר בסרטון, עם ההגייה והמשמעות שלהן:
| מילה | הגייה | משמעות |
|---|---|---|
| boulevard שם עצם | /ˈbuː.ləˌvɑːd/ | שְׂדֵרָה |
| missile שם עצם | /ˈmɪs.aɪl/ | רָקֶטָה, טִיל |
| barrier שם עצם | /ˈbæɹi.ə/ | מַחְסוֹם |
| checkpoint שם עצם | /ˈt͡ʃɛkˌpɔɪnt/ | נקודת ביקורת, נְקֻדַּת בִּקֹּרֶת |
| secretive שם תואר | /ˈsiːkɹɪtɪv/ | חשאי, נוטה לסודיות |
| famine שם עצם | /ˈfæm.ɪn/ | רָעָב |
| submarine שם עצם | /sʌb.məˈɹiːn/ | צוֹלֶלֶת |
| broker שם עצם | /ˈbɹoʊkɚ/ | בְּרוֹקֶר |
| dive פועל | /daɪv/ | צָלַל |
| surveillance שם עצם | /sɚˈveɪ.ləns/ | מעקב סמוי |
| barrack שם עצם | /ˈbæɹ.ək/ | קְסַרְקְטִין, אַכְסַנְיָא |
| bodyguard שם עצם | /ˈbɑːdiɡɑːɹd/ | שׁוֹמֵר רֹאשׁ, שׁוֹמֶרֶת רֹאשׁ |
| roundabout שם עצם | /ˈɹaʊndəˌbaʊt/ | כִּכָּר |
| limestone שם עצם | /ˈlaɪmˌstoʊn/ | גִּיר, אֶבֶן גִּיר |
| greenhouse שם עצם | /ˈɡɹːnˌ(h)aʊs/ | חֲמָמָה |
Phrasal verbs שתשמעו
| מילה | הגייה | משמעות |
|---|---|---|
| go out פועל | יָצָא | |
| check out פועל | בדק | |
| crack down פועל | /kɹæk ˈdaʊn/ | נקט אמצעים, דיכא |
| come back פועל | שָׁב | |
| go down פועל | ירד | |
| go up פועל | עָלָה |
משפטים שכדאי לחזור עליהם
משפטים קצרים ושלמים מהסרטון שאפשר להשתמש בהם בשיחה יומיומית:
- You'll see this in the capital.
- At least that's what I've noticed from above.
- You can see that they're shipping stuff out.
- You've got your required empty boulevard, traffic park.
- You've got a school, probably for the guards' children.
דקדוק בסרטון הזה
המבנים שהדובר משתמש בהם הכי הרבה, עם המילים המדויקות מהסרטון:
| מבנה | בסרטון |
|---|---|
| הווה מושלם ממושך (Present perfect continuous) have/has been + -ing — פעולה שהתחילה בעבר ועדיין נמשכת עכשיו | I've been looking · I've been stumbling · I've also been talking |
| משפטי תנאי (Conditional sentences) if + clause, will/would + verb — תנאי ותוצאה שלו | if you look closely, you will see |
| “Used to” used to + verb — הרגל או מצב שהיה נכון בעבר וכבר לא קיים | used to live |
| הווה מושלם (Present perfect) have/has + past participle — פעולה שקרתה בעבר ועדיין יש לה חשיבות או השפעה עכשיו | have designed · has been · I've been exposed |
הגייה ששווה לשים לב אליה
הדובר משתמש ב-155 קיצורים וצורות מקוצרות, כמו don't, you've, they're. אמרו אותם בצורה הקצרה, כפי שאתם שומעים אותם.
- הצלילים של “sh” ו-“zh”: installation /ˌɪn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/, configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/
- מילים ארוכות — שימו לב להטעמה: installation /ˌɪn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/, operable /ˈɒ.pə.ɹə.bəl/, configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/, technically /ˈtɛk.nɪˌkəl.i/, automobile /ˈɔː.tə.məˌbil/
צלילים שדוברי עברית מתקשים בהם:
- /æ/ — פתוח יותר מה-“אֶ” העברית, לא כמו “a” ב-“cup”: barrier /ˈbæɹi.ə/, famine /ˈfæm.ɪn/, barrack /ˈbæɹ.ək/, backyard /bækˈjɑːd/, rabbit /ˈɹæbɪt/
- /r/ — הלשון לא נוגעת בשום מקום, לא ה-“ר” הגרונית: barrier /ˈbæɹi.ə/, informal /ɪnˈfɔɹ.m(ə)l/, defector /dɪˈfɛktə(ɹ)/, gnarly /ˈnɑɹli/, secretive /ˈsiːkɹɪtɪv/
- עיצור קולי בסוף מילה — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ בלי להפוך אותם לאטומים: boulevard /ˈbuː.ləˌvɑːd/, secretive /ˈsiːkɹɪtɪv/, dive /daɪv/, bodyguard /ˈbɑːdiɡɑːɹd/, mesmerize /ˈmɛzməɹaɪz/
איך לתרגל עם הסרטון הזה
- הקשיבו לכל הסרטון פעם אחת בלי לדבר, ורשמו את המילים שאתם לא מכירים.
- התחילו במהירות 0.75×, תרגלו Shadowing משפט אחר משפט, וחזרו למהירות רגילה כשזה מרגיש קל.
- הקליטו את עצמכם והשוו למקור, תוך תשומת לב למילים כמו boulevard, missile, barrier.
מהי טכניקת השאדואינג?
שאדואינג היא טכניקת למידת שפה מבוססת מדע שפותחה במקור להכשרת מתורגמנים מקצועיים ופופולרית על ידי הפוליגלוט ד"ר אלכסנדר ארגואלס. השיטה פשוטה אך עוצמתית: אתה מקשיב לאודיו באנגלית ילידית וחוזר עליו בקול רם מיד — כמו צל העוקב אחרי הדובר עם עיכוב של 1–2 שניות בלבד. בניגוד להאזנה פסיבית או תרגילי דקדוק, שאדואינג מכריח את המוח והשרירים בפה לעבד ולשחזר דפוסי דיבור אמיתיים בו זמנית. מחקרים מראים שזה משפר משמעותית את דיוק ההגייה, האינטונציה, הקצב, הדיבור המחובר, הבנת השמיעה ושטף הדיבור — מה שהופך אותו לאחת השיטות היעילות ביותר להכנה לIELTS Speaking ולתקשורת באנגלית בעולם האמיתי.