North Korean Refugee/citizen in official WCA competition?

[TheSilverBeluga]

Or (I promise this is very likely) they found this post and Kim didn't want his country on the list:

The idea that Kim Jong Un has personally read something I wrote is incredibly amusing to me

 

[Billabob]

The China-North Korea border is very porous and relatively easy to cross as the countries have good relations. It's estimated by the BBC that there are 100,000 north Korean workers in China right now. So it's not unreasonable to think one might go to a comp there. It being a south Korean competition makes this way more likely to be a data entry error though.

Also loads of "defectors" are normal people who were trying to go on holidays or leave the country for some other reason and got kidnapped by human traffickers. South Korea then keeps these people in solitary confinement camps for months until they sign away their rights on paper. It's quite horrible, I saw a documentary on it that interviewed a few people who went through it, they still don't enjoy full rights as citizens afterwards so loads end up defecting *back*, there was even a guy who went back and forth 11 times? lol

Pretty unrelated ramble but there's more context for you. I'm saying this one is a data entry mistake, the next 1 or 10 probably will be too, but it's not unrealistic for some competition in northern China to have a real one, and then that NR will probably last forever lol

 

[LBr]

Yeah this is most likely a mistake. If the North Korean government find out that somebody has defected they could lock up their whole family in a prison camp, so if a North Korean defector hypothetically wanted to go to a competition they would just represent South Korea since they have automatic citizenship.

The China-North Korea border is very porous and relatively easy to cross as the countries have good relations

This used to be true, but isn’t anymore. Kim Jong Un has tightened the border with more soldiers and cameras since coming to power, and since the pandemic the border has been sealed and not reopened. Before, 1,000 people were defecting each year to South Korea but this is now less than 100. As a result of this increased security, the prices charged by brokers have risen to extortionate levels, so even the richest couldn’t afford it, especially in the poorer regions closer to the border with China. Note that the rich North Koreans live in Pyongyang and these are mainly people loyal to the government. Any sign of disloyalty and you are thrown out of the city.

And the government has made it near impossible to travel between regions of the country without some sort of permit in order to segregate and prevent a revolution gathering steam. So it is harder for people living in Pyongyang to defect anyway

Anyway I just wanted to correct people on this, because all of the people being excited and whatever clearly didn’t understand the mechanics of this

 

[FenTheGoat]

The China-North Korea border is very porous and relatively easy to cross as the countries have good relations. It's estimated by the BBC that there are 100,000 north Korean workers in China right now. So it's not unreasonable to think one might go to a comp there. It being a south Korean competition makes this way more likely to be a data entry error though.

Also loads of "defectors" are normal people who were trying to go on holidays or leave the country for some other reason and got kidnapped by human traffickers. South Korea then keeps these people in solitary confinement camps for months until they sign away their rights on paper. It's quite horrible, I saw a documentary on it that interviewed a few people who went through it, they still don't enjoy full rights as citizens afterwards so loads end up defecting *back*, there was even a guy who went back and forth 11 times? lol

Pretty unrelated ramble but there's more context for you. I'm saying this one is a data entry mistake, the next 1 or 10 probably will be too, but it's not unrealistic for some competition in northern China to have a real one, and then that NR will probably last forever lol

This competition was in northern South Korea. Also, China usually will just send back people to North Korea where they’ll be tortured

 

[UncleFrank]

Apparently this was just a data entry error.
While it still shows the North Korean (democratic people's republic of korea) flag next to this person's name on wca Live -https://live.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/5105/competitors
the list of competitors for that comp on the main wca site comp info page -
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/PrimeCubingDaySeoul2024/registrations
has already been corrected and shows the same person as Republic of Korea (south korea).
I imagine Live will be updated with the correction soon, after they sync it.

 

[precompsubwr]

Update: I became the pope

 

[Exmestify]

Update- Ive seen pope and followed his footsteps on my road to greatness

 

[Kivvi]

Update: I became the pope

Question: As the new pope, what will you do for the speedcubing community?

 

[precompsubwr]

Question: As the new pope, what will you do for the speedcubing community?

set unbreakable nrs and force the wca to add fto

and if this doesn't happen then they'll get to see my cross again

 

[yes cubing]

As I was reading this thread, I was thinking that maybe this person, when creating their WCA account, they accidentally clicked North Korea instead of South Korea, as on the WCA North Korea and South Korea are listed as Democratic Peoples Republic of China and Republic of Korea. But then I thought of the fact that chances are they were viewing the site in Korean, meaning that North Korea would be listed as 조선민주주의인민공화국, and South Korea would be listed as 대한민국. Quite different. And they probably wouldn't be together as it would be listed in alphabetical order, but I don't know, I don't speak Korean, for all I know there could be no Korean alphabet. After doing a bit of hard research (using google translate to translate Democratic Peoples Republic of China and Republic of Korea to Korean, so hard), I decided to look at this NamHum Kim's profile. They are now representing South Korea. They must have noticed after a while.

Also, please tell me if on the SS Forums you aren't supposed to bump up old topics like this. I know you're not supposed to do this on WCA forum, this is my first time posting on SS Forum, please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

 

[ProStar]

As I was reading this thread, I was thinking that maybe this person, when creating their WCA account, they accidentally clicked North Korea instead of South Korea, as on the WCA North Korea and South Korea are listed as Democratic Peoples Republic of China and Republic of Korea. But then I thought of the fact that chances are they were viewing the site in Korean, meaning that North Korea would be listed as 조선민주주의인민공화국, and South Korea would be listed as 대한민국. Quite different. And they probably wouldn't be together as it would be listed in alphabetical order, but I don't know, I don't speak Korean, for all I know there could be no Korean alphabet. After doing a bit of hard research (using google translate to translate Democratic Peoples Republic of China and Republic of Korea to Korean, so hard), I decided to look at this NamHum Kim's profile. They are now representing South Korea. They must have noticed after a while.

Also, please tell me if on the SS Forums you aren't supposed to bump up old topics like this. I know you're not supposed to do this on WCA forum, this is my first time posting on SS Forum, please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

As long as it’s a relevant reply that adds to or revives the discussion, then it’s all good. Welcome to the forums!