An honest mistake

North Korean refugees do exist and even if its more likely to meet a South Korean, wouldn't it be discrimatory and erasing to just assume all Koreans you meet are from the south?

Especially since South Koreans normally don't make the distinction of north and south but talk about one Korea. In my expierience, foreign born Korean don't do this, but Korean born Koreans do.

I know y'all are trying to be open minded, so first off, you're doing great! That said, you're doing so well it's kind of at risk of being opened so wide your brain might fall out

Seriously though, I would absolutely think someone was... being silly (to put it nicely) if they asked which Korea an American was from (this for sure wouldn't apply to an 8 year old tho)
- And you are from either of these Koreas?
  
  I personally would not ask an American which Korea he is from ("which Korea an American was from") but I had extensive conversations about the separation of the countries with actual Koreans. I commented about my personal expierience.

My SO is Korean and we get this all the time. I don't even think it's always a joke, some people just honestly don't understand how restrictive N. Korea is...

There are around 100,000 north koreans working abroad. It's not so unreasonable of a question as you'd think
- Looks like it's mostly Russia and China, with unconfirmed estimates for other countries. This is in violation of UN sanctions, so it's highly unlikely that you'd meet a N. Korean in countries that respect UN sanctions.
  
  South Korea, on the other hand, numbers in the millions. So if you live outside of Russia and China, there are millions of S. Koreans vs probably a few thousand N. Koreans. It's not even close.
- Plus about 50,000 have managed to defect over the past 30 years.
I still dont really get the issue. Yes its much less likely that any korean would be from the north, but there absolutely are defectors from the north that live in the west. This is just like people calling themselves "american"... Like bro just properly state the name of your home country, then people wont have to ask you.
- Yes, defectors exist, but they're so vanishingly few that it makes no sense to ask. Average defectors are something like 1-2k/year, and by comparison, about 16-17k S. Koreans immigrate to the US every year. So the chance that the person you're talking to is from N. Korea is incredibly small, not only do very few people actually escape N. Korea, they likely largely stay in S. Korea, where they speak the language.
  
  "Korea" is the proper name for both countries, the "North" and "South" descriptor comes from other countries to disambiguate them. The official name for S. Korea is "Republic of Korea," and the official name for N. Korea is "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." So if you're wanting people to fully state the country they're from, you'd probably be more confused because both countries' official names include "Republic of Korea." But you'll likely never talk to someone from N. Korea, so the whole question is moot. If they say they're from "Korea," 99.9% of the time they'll be from South Korea, and if you live outside of S. Korea, it's probably like 99.999%.
- Nobody will be confused if you tell them you’re American
World politics isn't really well understood by most people, me included. Outside of who the US is bombing lots of people genuinely don't know what's going on with the world. We know NK is bad and restrictive but it's hard to comprehend as it's not something we've experienced
- That's fair, but surely people understand that N. Korea is perhaps the most sanctioned country in the world. As in, N. Korea and pretty much every other country in the world agree on perhaps only one thing, that N. Koreans should stay in N. Korea.