Let’s not kid ourselves, Australia is not the most noteworthy country in the world. We may take up a fair chunk of the map, but our biggest cultural exports are extreme shitposting and drinking beer out of gross things (both of which rule, by the way).
Given the Americans‘ usual knowledge of the world around them, we can’t be too surprised when they’re not intimately familiar with us and our country. That’s fine. I reckon, though, a pretty reasonable standard for us to expect is that they don’t think North Korea is about a ten-hour drive from Darwin.
The revelation that some of them do believe that comes as the result of an investigation by the ‘New York Times‘ into whether respondents’ level of knowledge of North Korea influenced their feelings about the US’ diplomatic approach to them.
1,746 Yanks were asked to place a dot where they believed North Korea to be on a map of Asia, and around 36% of them got it right:
As you can see from the map, five people mistook our beautiful shores for North Korea, while one person (with apparently a radically different notion of NK’s size compared to the previous five people) picked a non-descript patch of ocean just off the coast of Western Australia.
As you can also see from the map, we got off relatively lightly compared to, say, Japan and India, who should probably be very thankful that the people who took this survey are not in charge of the nukes.
The study found what they anticipated: that there was a link between the ability identify North Korea and a desire to use non-military intervention.
Respondents who didn’t think North Korea was in Papua New Guinea were more likely to support sanctions and cyberattacks, whereas those who seemed to think North Korea was in the Himalayas were more likely to support military action and airstrikes.
Kids, pay attention in school.
Source: The New York Times.
Photo: Getty Images / VCG & Matt Blyth.
