Note that the survey says that they believe that their [i]countrymen[/i] venerated Il-Sung. Defectors may be likely to dislike Il Sung themselves, but my (low certainty) expectation would be that they’d be more likely to see the population at large as slavishly devoted. People who take an unusual stance in a society are quite likely to caricature everyone else’s position and increase the contrast with their own. Mind you, they sometimes take the ‘silent majority’ thing of believing everyone secretly agrees with them: I don’t know which would be more likely here.
But I’d guess that defectors would be both be more likely to think everyone else is zealously loyal, AND be more likely to believe that everyone wishes they could overthrow the government. I’d imagine them to be more likely to end up on the extremes, in short.
Note that the survey says that they believe that their [i]countrymen[/i] venerated Il-Sung. Defectors may be likely to dislike Il Sung themselves, but my (low certainty) expectation would be that they’d be more likely to see the population at large as slavishly devoted. People who take an unusual stance in a society are quite likely to caricature everyone else’s position and increase the contrast with their own. Mind you, they sometimes take the ‘silent majority’ thing of believing everyone secretly agrees with them: I don’t know which would be more likely here.
But I’d guess that defectors would be both be more likely to think everyone else is zealously loyal, AND be more likely to believe that everyone wishes they could overthrow the government. I’d imagine them to be more likely to end up on the extremes, in short.