Mike Deri Smith contrasts himself to the giants of the journalistic past:

As idealistic young journalists, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and William T. Vollmann each wanted to fix something: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan, respectively. As an idealistic young person, at a similarly nascent stage in my journalism career, I’d like to think I understand their drive. But I can’t say I’m idealistic enough to fight or die for the freedom of North Korea, if that option were available to me. The old idealists fought in the mountains; I scroll over North Korean mountains on Google Maps. They suffered on the front line; I read a little of the news from North Korea before going to a restaurant and gorging myself on beef ribs to the point of severe stomach pain.

But he nevertheless makes the case for his own cause of ending North Korea's gulag camps:

Concentration camps are a reality in the 21st century. Their existence in North Korea is an incontestable fact proven by hundreds of satellite images and the testimony of thousands who have escaped. A former camp guard and a defector who once worked within North Korea’s National Security Agency have suggested that approximately 200,000 people are currently in the camps. That's a number equal to the population of Tallahassee, Fla.