Maybe silly but at my Korean classes there’s a seemingly “apolitical” guy working in IT who plans to work in China’s IT sector and we talked a bit about it. Just talked about how it’s exciting but wishes it was less difficult for him to go, that they’re making huge leaps in the IT field etc. Just nice to have a convo about it without Uyghurs or muh political freedoms or whatever coming up.
I think so… it’s weird, maybe it’s just because it’s “polite company” or whatever but even in my Korean classes the most negative reaction my teachers have to mentions of DPRK is sort of a confused whimsy or mild disagreements, same from my classmates. I’m sure they’ve all got ideas in their head about it, but nobody’s said the kind of heinous bullshit I see online.