Handmaid’s Tale-Style Repression Is Kind of Charming — So Long As It Is Practiced by a Regime Hostile to Trump

Ben Shapiro and David French have written powerfully about the media getting duly charmed by North Korea’s charm offensive at the Olympics. This has included warm coverage of the North Korean cheerleading squad, which anyone with even a little moral imagination should realize is the product of a hideous totalitarianism. In the push-back against the chipper press notices, outlets are noting that in 2006, 21 members of the squad were reportedly sent to a prison camp for talking about what they had seen in South Korea. The North Korean cheerleading squad would only be a feel-good story if all its members managed to defect. They won’t, of course, because their families are de facto hostages to the regime.