Are these people lying or is it really possible to be so broken to talk about your family dying and chuckle about it? (see the details)

*beaten up

Asians have different reaction to violence and death from Europeans and Americans. I don’t know about your country but here people can talk about someone dying without making it such a big deal. It doesn’t mean we don’t care, we just don’t react the same way you do. Fun fact: that is partly why you see adult subject matter being more openly depicted in anime than Western cartoon.

And given that the two people are from North Korea and had to defect, they might have witnessed so much violence that they just stopped being scared.

While I’m partly agree with @Mimishu1995 I must add that sometimes people are really good in masking their real emotion in front of other people and it is not uncommon for people to subconsciously express their nervousness/sadness through laughing.

Yes.

Laughter is one of the possible responses to things that are so bad they are hard to contemplate or express. I often laugh or make jokes just when trying to describe things that I think are ridiculously bad.

I think it’s partly because I can’t cope and can’t hold it all in mind at once, also because the words I try to use to talk about it seem so inadequate, and because the feeling wants some sort of expression, release and relief, and humor actually works for me, even though those around me might mistake me for making light of it, or not get the nature of my humor.

For example, if I say that I think poachers of endangered wildlife should be hunted down by Delta Force for practice, and a new animal food plant set up where you put the poachers on a conveyor belt and it turns them into tiger food, and that we could test it out on Trump’s sons, I’m not being serious. I’m not proposing that. I’m not going to do anything violent. I’m not exactly trying to be funny. And I’m certainly not trying to “make light” of the situation, nor am I going insane. But I am at a loss for a more effective way to vent out my upset and despair and disapproval over several messed up situations at once. Even if not many people get what I’m saying, it does express the level of my disapproval and dismay about what is happening and what is considered acceptable and what isn’t being done about it, that I would think that even actually doing that would be a great improvement about what is actually happening. The humor also has an effect on my body that I can feel – the distress rises up and gets blasted out by the venting and soothed by the humor.

Also when something awful has been closer to me, I’m often too protectively numbed by it to do actual grief, but often humor is still available.

No different from gangbangers i have met in the past who spoke of blasting someone with about as much concern as ridding your field of unwanted gophers.

Sometimes the only way to cope with something horrific is to laugh at it.