The University of Sydney's student magazine is refusing to remove a controversial article that both praises North Korea and was written by a former tutor that's been accused of antisemitism.

Honi Soit published the piece by PhD student Jay Tharappel on Thursday after his recent visit to the country, where he and others were shown about by a former soldier.

"What I saw was a highly organised, egalitarian and energised society, with good reason to believe that they're now reaping the fruits of past sacrifices," Mr Tharappel wrote.

The account been slammed online by Federal Labor MP Tim Watts as well as by a presenter on the popular Sydney radio station 2GB.

Their criticism focused on the article's praise for North Korea, with the Victorian MP saying, "He's a PhD student, not a 'kid' ... This isn't about finding yourself."

Honi Soit is a long-running weekly newspaper edited by students and distributed around the university's campus free for all students to read.

Organised tours to North Korea are typically shown a highly sanitised version of the country. Accounts from defectors paint a very different picture - one of poverty, surveillance and fear.

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Whatsapp A kindergarten in North Korea.

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Whatsapp People walk beneath huge pictures of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Aside from the content, the magazine's decision to publish Mr Tharappel at all has been criticised by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students.

Spokesman Saul Burston said Mr Tharappel has in the past posted offensive views about the holocaust on Facebook, including questioning the number of victims.

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Whatsapp A Facebook post by Jay Tharappel that questions the number of victims.

"We believe Honi Soit and the University of Sydney shouldn't be giving a platform to someone who has a history of making antisemitic comments," he said.

Mr Tharappel said he respects jews and rejects the term 'antisemitism.'

"I am not an antisemite - there's multiple answers to this question. They're all complicated," he said.

He also clarified his comments.

"I accept the 6 million figure - all I am saying is if a holocaust revisionist were to go through claims I am not in a position to refute it because I'm not studied enough in that area."

Channel 7 recently reported on a photo of Mr Tharappel wearing a jacket patch of the Yemeni Houthi which includes an Arabic slogan that translates as "Curse on the Jews."

"I don't agree with the Houthi slogan - I wore it for symbolic not literal meaning to defend Yemenis, out of solidarity to them."

Our unis are invested in the armed companies that sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and I am dressed in solidarity with the victims.

Mr Tharappel said the "witch hunt" was a waste of everyone's time.

"There are more important things," he said.

The University of Sydney has confirmed Mr Tharappel's conduct is under investigation. It would not say why he is no longer a tutor.

We will not retract the article: Honi Soit

University of Sydney Jewish student Joshua Wooller said he's complained multiple times about the article to the magazine.

His opinion letter was published in the most recent Honi Soit:

"You should retract the article, and issue an apology immediately. It is entirely inappropriate for the student newspaper of the University of Sydney to be providing a platform for anti-semites and racists or apologists of murderous dictatorships."

Alongside the union of Jewish students, the officially-elected representative body of the Jewish community of New South Wales, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, has backed calls for the article to be taken down.

The Honi Soit editors told Hack that won't happen.

"Honi is not taking the article down," it said in a statement.

After publishing the article, we received complaints regarding the author. Those complaints are still under consideration.

The statement said the article had been approved by a majority of editors.

"We consider a number of criteria when approving pitches. These include whether an article is relevant to USyd students and young people, whether it adds something to the discourse it belongs to and whether it is original," it said.

"No pitch must satisfy every criterion, and each editor may have different reasons for approving a pitch. We do not consider whether an article conforms to the political opinions of editors."

'I didn't see a single homeless person'

The article begins with the caveat: "What follows is not an academic account that takes into consideration every aspect of the country, but simply what I saw in a thousand words."

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Whatsapp Apartment blocks are pictured from the viewing platform on August 24, 2018 in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Its assertions include:

"I didn't see a single homeless person either, and the people at the embassy are convinced that it's one of the safest places to live."

"In Wonsan we visited a school for orphans that had a swimming pool, and a whole range of sporting facilities, far better than anything I had access to in primary school."

"A country that endeavors to credibly stand up to the United States must necessarily be authoritarian for the simple reason that they are a nation at war, and cannot be one where the population are timid, beaten, and demoralized."

"Their slogan is, 'we envy nothing in this world', and that seems to make perfect sense when you look around. They don't smear their public spaces with advertising telling their citizens they're inadequate, instead they paint murals intended to inspire their people to build a better society. All they ask of us is to be left alone, and for the US military to leave their homeland."

A Washington Post article published last year, based on six months of interviews with 25 North Korean defectors, described experiences of torture and a culture of surveillance, a menacing state security department, and factories failing to pay workers.

A 2013 BBC undercover documentary revealed the grinding poverty of North Koreans, who are exposed to constant propaganda and live in fear of speaking out against the leadership.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) warns Australians to reconsider their need to travel to North Korea on its Smart Traveller website, but the country is not on the 'do not travel' list.