I have already expressed my doubts as to the trustworthiness of the article’s sources regarding the companies in question being controlled by North Korea directly, so I don’t understand why you’d reference the very same article as a justification as to why my suspicions are wrong.

The rest of your post is a lot of stuff that I’ve heard time and time again. Things like “North Korea is a dystopian hellscape where everyone is dying to leave or dying outright” is the kind of thing that I keep seeing people state as though it’s common sense. That is to say, it’s obvious, and needs no further thought or consideration. And the way NK is described, you’d think it was the perfection of totalitarianism, with scarcely any flaws in its population control. I find this level of success a difficult sell. This is all worsened by the fact that the United States has a vested interest in people believing that places like China and NK are basically Mordor. Put them all together, and I’d hope you can see why I might not take this all at face value.

But I’m honestly not interested in debating if North Korea’s really as hellish as so many have said. I think it’s an awful country with an awful, dictatorial government, and whether or not it’s as awful as is claimed is not something I care for. I can’t fix the place.

But I do care for the defaulting assumption of bad faith on my part and repeated uncharitable readings of my posts. I at no point ever made any claims about Tardigrada, nor have I cast any doubt upon their character anywhere in this thread. My criticisms were aimed squarely at the article and the sources it used. Coming back to this thread to see paragraphs written at me and everyone else with a similar opinion to me that do feel like they cast doubt upon my character is not a fun thing to see in my inbox when I come to the site.