An old video showing what appears to be a fake computer laboratory in North Korea has recently gone viral on the internet. The footage captures a visit by journalists to a computer lab in North Korea, where the atmosphere raises doubts about the authenticity of the scene. The students in the lab are seen sitting in silence with little to no activity, suggesting that the environment may have been staged for the visitors rather than reflecting a genuine situation.
During the visit, one of the journalists interviews a North Korean student who claims to be researching string theory in collaboration with European scientists. This claim stands in stark contrast to the well-known restrictions on information access in North Korea, leading to further skepticism about the truthfulness of the student's statement.
Watch the video:
In the video, the narrator explains the situation and says, "Next, they took us to a computer lab where students were using the internet. And your first thought is: OK, this looks like any lab at a university back home. But then it dawns on you that it's completely silent. No one is doing anything; there is no typing, no mouse clicking, nothing. We saw one guy looking at the Google homepage, but he wasn't searching for anything. He was just staring blankly at the screen. The one person we saw there who actually looked like he knew how to use a computer was, of course, the one person they wanted us to meet."
The journalist and the student had a little conversation, and the student said, "Hi, nice to meet you."
"Very nice to meet you as well. Sorry to disturb you while you're working," replied the journalist.
"Yes, I was looking for my papers, which are published in journals. This is about string theory; this is done in collaboration with some foreign scientists in Europe," the student can be seen hearing.
The narrator concludes the video by saying, "Considering North Korea's reputation for complete and total suppression of information, this stop was clearly designed to convince us that they had access to the internet just like the rest of the world, which we knew wasn't true. And that left us wondering: Was anything we were seeing real? It felt like we were walking through a real, live "Truman Show" created just for us. Everywhere we went and everything we saw was constructed to convey the exact opposite of what we know about North Korea."
The video has sparked widespread discussion online, with many viewers questioning the reality of the situation depicted and highlighting the challenges of obtaining accurate information from within North Korea.
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