Update 5:

  Hacking Team currently has, based on internal documents leaked by the
  attackers on Sunday evening, customers in the following locations:

    Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Nigeria, Sudan
    Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, United States
    Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand
    Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Australia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary
    Italy, Luxemburg, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Bahrain, Oman
    Saudi Arabia, UAE

It's a perfectly nice place to visit. People there apparently feel free to talk about everything: The war, the Park era, etc. Unions can be quite militant. But they are not as free as Americans.

Oh, give over! As if the US of A were the ultimate land of freedom. With the NSA, Guantanamo, race-based police violence...

[Disclaimer: I have nothing against the USA (well, almost nothing). But I can't stand people talking about it as if it was the only true democracy/free country/heaven on earth.]

Guns in America are a bit of an opiate for the masses, people have guns and feel free therefore they dont need to rise up against their government no matter what other constitutional freedoms they shit on as long as they dont attempt to take their guns they will pretty much let them get away with anything.

It may be fiction, but I think it showcases a true-to-life phenomenon where people feel free only because of hyper-stimulation. Because they have so much, they don't think about everything they lack.

Here's the deal. Yes, the US has been getting into some shady areas, even more-so since 9/11. All the things you reference are big issues that haven't been addressed properly yet. I'll grant you all that and more, because it's true.

Here's the problem though. This is where I generally hear about how the Nordic/Scandinavian countries have a much higher level of "freedom", (que statistics dump here), and how the US isn't really free.

The problem I have with this outlook is that it forgets the history and origins of the US, and it's purpose and function as a place of freedom where there was little in other places; namely freedom under the laws of the land, which in the US is the Constitution.

Yes, the Constitution is in tatters at the moment. We have had presidents abusing it and stretching it, congress who disregards it, and a public that is largely apathetic about it. The bottom line though, is that while, functionally, we are indeed less "free" than many other nations, we at least have a legal framework to base a new kind of freedom upon, where as many of those other countries lack key freedoms.

I think the best example of this is freedom of speech. The US still has the best levels of freedom of speech according to law (an important distinction to be made between the law, eg the Constitution, and practice, eg stifling of dissent via programs like COINTELPRO.)

Here some some experts from a Christopher Hitchens speech on the related matters.

    “…It’s not the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear; and every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your action because you deny yourself the right to hear something.

    …It’s a tiny thought experiment: if you hear the Pope saying he believes in God, you think, well, the Pope is doing his job again today. If you hear the Pope saying he’s really begun to doubt the existence of God, you begin to think he might be on to something.

    …And one person gets up and says, “you know what, this holocaust, I’m not even sure it happened. In fact, I’m pretty certain it didn’t. Indeed, I begin to wonder if the only thing is that the Jews brought a little bit of violence on themselves.”—That person doesn’t just have a right to speak, that person’s right to speak must be given extra protection. Because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with. Might be, might contain, a grain of historical truth; might, in any case, give people to think why do they know what they think they already know. How do I know I know this except I’ve always been taught this and never heard any thing else? It’s always worth establishing first principle….don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus and the feeling that, whatever you think, you’re bound to be okay because you’re in the safely, moral majority. One of the proudest moment in my life, that’s to say, in the recent past is defending the British historian David Irving, who is now in prison in Austria, for nothing more than the potential of uttering an unwelcomed thought on Austrian soil. He didn’t actually say anything in Austria. He wasn’t even accused of saying anything; he was accused of perhaps planning to say something that violated an Austrian law that says only one version of the history of the Second World War may be taught in our brave little Terellian republic. The republic that gave us Kurt Waldheim, Secretary General of the United Nations, a man wanted in several countries for war crimes. You know, the country that has Jorg Haider, the leader of its own Fascist party, in the cabinet that sent David Irving to jail.”

America has simply been failing at it's own ideals. I won't devolve yet into who I think is behind it all, as that's a conversation best left for another time.

I have the highest respect for the history of the United States and where they came from. Perhaps the founding fathers were not the first to think thoughts of freedom, but they were among the forerunners in implementing a system that was actually based on the idea of freedom.

But I also very much agree that there is an increasing difference between freedom in theory and in practice in the States - something that I hope its citizens will manage to sort out sooner rather than later.

As Jefferson said: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

You pick up a Korean newspaper, you are almost certainly reading a mouthpiece of the government.

There are even more frightening stories during this time. Playing national anthem 4 oclock every fucking day, forcing people to stop what they are doing, and sing, many of which were propaganda songs composed by the president with the help of his daughter, the current president of Korea.

The most scary one is where people just 'disappear' only to reappear in mental hospitals because they got a bit drunk and talked shit about the government during the 70s or 80s.

Plenty of young men conscripted into Korean military would die because what the concept of human rights has long been an alien ideology, basically a curfew and martial law during this period where you couldn't do jack shit after 10pm or you'd get arrested or get a good beating.

Let's not also get started with women's rights, but perhaps the most frustrating is the social fabric of Korea is hierachial and oppressive. Kindergarteners going to overly priced private tutors after school ends and coming home at midnight because they are told the same lie that studying will get you places, teachers beating kids with corporal punishment for low scores on exams, and the constant war drumming of the 'suffering' or 'han' of Korean history and teaching to hate neighboring countries, especially Japan.

It's no wonder that millenial Koreans are desperate to leave the country, even if it means being a plumber in Germany with an advanced degrees.

By no means has South Korea ever been a democracy, the same traditions continue but hidden beneath disinformation and surveillance of opponents.