Much as it's a fascinating story my BS alarm is flashing. Is there anyone at Georg Mason University who can confirm Professor Kim Hyun Sik actually exists?
If he doesn't exist, there's an awful lot of gatherings with him as a guest speaker at universities hitting on Google over the past four years from 07 to 2010, and he was (if Google can be believed) a visiting professor at Yale from 03-06 up until becoming a research professor at GMU.
I am finding a few things hard to believe as well. In the commonwealth games, the Indian Government rounded up beggars and sent them out of Delhi. In the Iraq war, GWB banned the media from covering body bags. Every state is guilty of this ,so unless the deliberate crippling part is true, it may just be another exercise in FUD, much like the weapons of mass destruction.
The control of information and people's lives in North Korea is incomparably more than the examples you gave. Respectfully, your comparisons are not close.
The difference is not merely quantitative.
North Korea's activity is well documented and overwhelming.
The FUD would be a lot easier to refute if NK would actually let people into and (especially) out of their country without a security apparatus monitoring their every move.
