http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/korea/articles/20071004.aspx
The North Korean government is cracking down on corruption, and other "anti-state" behavior. This includes the emergence of some bizarre children's games. In one of them, the kids imitate funerals. It is believed this arose during the 1990s, when so many people were dying of starvation, and there were so many funerals, that kids, as kids are wont to do, adopted the funeral practices of their elders as a form of play. Kids could also be seen playing "firing squad." This apparently developed from kids getting to see frequent public executions of "enemies of the people." The government wants to stamp out these morbid, and unnerving, practices, and has threatened parents with punishment if they do not maintain better control over their kids. More serious sanctions have been administered to those who run trading companies that deal with China. The North Korean trading officials had been keeping two sets of books, the one the government was shown listed much lower prices for North Korean goods sold to China. The bureaucrats running the government approved trading companies kept the difference between the low price and the real price. But many of these guys could nor resist spending their profits, building mansions and buying foreign cars. This attracted the attention of the police. At first, the cops were put off with bribes. But this year, a new bunch of anti-corruption police arrived in the towns along the Chinese border. Investigations and executions (of police and trading officials) followed.
>>The government wants to stamp out these morbid, and unnerving, practices, and has threatened parents with punishment if they do not maintain better control over their kids.
Anyone else see the problem?
North Korea is criminally insane as a national entity? We already knew that.
It's a funny country. I think everyone has a hard time understanding them.
By talking with some of the people in Pyong'yang, at least those who are allowed to interface with foreigners, I've heard that visitors got the genuine sense that they deeply loved their country and national leader(s). I think it must be a kind of religious existence for many N.Koreans, persevering in their devotion to the state despite great adversity.
>>4
It's impossible to tell the difference between the people who genuinely love their leader and the people who are just acting really well because the people who don't and couldn't fake it are dead. Have you never read 1984?
No. No one in a politics board has ever read 1984.
It's unthinkable.
North korea is relly the worst place on the planet.
A poor country in africa is better.
North koreans don't even know about the outside world, aside from the anti-us propaganda.
But now they got internet, with 2pages. One of kim jung il and one of the goverment.
Kim jung il said that if people had internet they might find out that north korea was not the best place on earth and could start a rebellion or leave. So he just invented the 2pages internet.
>>1
Yes, wonderful. The North Korean gov't sucks gigantic donkey dong. We know this. Now what do we do about it?
Stop supporting South Korea which believes in some bizarre fantasy version of North Korea
lol typos
lol hundred flowers
I think for many Pyong'Yang North Koreans, they would never think of leaving their country, and if they did, they might be unhappy and have difficulty adjusting to a world where you don't all sing government theme songs together at work.
It might be a totally different story for country-folks though, since there are a fair amount of starving refugees.
For a society that is historically very devoted to following social hierarchy, it isn't hard to believe that most of society has been completely brainwashed by Kim Jong-il's and Kim Il-sung's personality cults. I guess we'll find out how devoted they really are when KJI dies.
Brainwashed/Patriotic
It's all politics.
Or maybe Dear Leader is already dead.
Anyway, power will be ceded to his offspring, most likely.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200509/200509200033.html
(Reliability of source unknown?)
Wow that N.Korea is something else i'm about to start a joint speedboat manufacturing deal with them lol.
After 50 years of this kind of regime, there's no way they can ever open up willingly. Imagine if the Nazi Party reigned for five times as long. Imagine if Stalin stayed alive until 1989. It's a 50-year holocaust up there.
>>17
Every dictatorship is the worst dictatorship.
Unless it's America-friendly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyongsong
This is an article about a failed satellite launch that the N. Koreans continue to hold dear. Every independent organization capable of tracking objects in space say it isn't there and likely crashed into the Pacific during launch. However, it still plays a central role in North Korean mass games. Their people are so deluded by the singular media that the government there could easily pull off a moon landing hoax. If you're a special effects artist and live near the ocean, be on the lookout for North Korean kidnappers.
The People's Republic of China and North Corea are test states. What do you find fascinating about group compulsion to accept oppressive gov't over happiness and freedom? Is it that the subjects support and cement the dictatorship by not rebelling and willfully remaining ignorant of their ignorance or that some may that the gov't has turned its citizens' lives into commodities for the national-corporate machine and continue to stare in morbid curiosity.
These tyrants suffer from an inescapable and progressive illness. Whether it is internal or external paralysis, it is absolutely necessary for the masses to be divided - divided in society as subjects and government/divided in the home as man and wife/ divided in the neighborhoods with all the modern apathy of "The Nighthawks" in their lonely corner diner... If the "vile servitude" realizes the oneness of it all and the oneness of us all, then we are infinite as we truely are and not meat suits for bullies to exploit.
I think you people let the capitalist western media brainwash you.
North Korea is a beacon of hope for third world countries and the international working class.
Both are also isolated, rather backward states with millenia-long histories of iron-fisted rule by brutal, depraved madmen alternating with total breakdown of the state (usually but not always triggered by foreign invasion) resulting in anarchy and bandit armies fighting over scraps.
Those who look for budding Jeffersonian democrats in such places are going to be disappointed. After a few thousand years of rule by the Two-Province System alternating with Mongol invasions, you will not find an environment in any human society better suited to producing an outlook of fatalism and despair among the people, who have been for millenia bludgeoned into conformity, into fearing and blaming "foreign devils" (a term which includes people from that village ten miles down the road, who are rumored to be demons and not really human at all) for just about everything, into a deeply paranoid, insular, narrow perspective, for reflexive reactionary unthinking hyperconservatism rooted in terrifying stories of that time Great-Grandfather Wa plowed the furrows in a different direction and the provincial governor had him executed for disturbing the feng shui.
It was difficult enough to make Japan into a semblance of a constitutional democracy, and Japan had been modernizing and Westernizing for generations before the war. If all the Party thugs in North Korea disappeared tomorrow, and South Korea received a trillion dollars of Western aid to try to rebuild North Korean society, the only thing that is certain is that it wouldn't go as planned. It would be culture shock on a level dwarfing anything in human history, and it would probably be very interesting for historians and psychologists to observe--from a safe distance.
>...the genuine sense that they deeply loved their country...
You don't love a family member any less because they get cancer or become alcoholics, you don't love your homeland any less if some geeky mobster runs it into the ground.
We always think getting into Canadian banks is pretty easy. There are a lot of drunkards in China. But watch out. The Chinese are extremely pushy people who always profit from any excnage. They make the first buck theirs, and they determane the terms of what is your share. And what is worse is that split between the stressyness of getting hammered by public opinions is that they like it. The Chinese are always pushing in until the rhetoric feels the limit. They really can hurt our opinion sometimes, but just as often, sometimes the attention is wet and nice.
You know most North Koreans believe that Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong il are living gods and they think that sung is still alive right? Its a cult. A national religion. Death alone will not stop his dynasty's reign.
We Americans (and probably many other westerners as well, im just speaking for americans tho) tend to neglect the impact of history. History means a lot in most of the world. Historically, in asia, Divine right to rule was widely accepted. Until farily recently, these people still had forms of government where the ruling class ruled by divine right with little or no parliament/congress. They are among the oldest cultures on earth, many of them rivaling mesopotamia and greece in terms of how ancient they are. To them Totalitarianism has been the norm for thousands of years, as has been worshiping their leader as a divinity. Many asian families still have living relatives who remember growing up in a country like that. Remember this b4 u call them crazy. Also remember that while DRPK doesnt feed its populace adequately, it does provide them with cheap gin (fittingly enough. remember victory gin?) to keep the people too drunk to revolt.
>>20
right... ok then, Sidhartha! Im sorry North korea is worse than anything else. Even Nazi Germany was better than DRPK. At least in Nazi germany, you had a prayer so long as you were an "Aryan" German . You atleast had food. If you want to call every form of government slavery, thats fine. to an extent its true. The difference is, even if we grant you that (and thats a stretch) atleast our western slavemasters treat us better than the DRPK treats its slaves. as Anton Lavey said " Choose your master wisely".
>>23
yes you do stop loving your country when it gets run into the ground. If a family member who you onced loved becomes abusive you do stop loving them, and you proptly get a divorce and restraining order.
ITT we quote Satanists while talking about totalitarian dictatorships. Which seems strangely appropriate.
it does, doesn't it? particularly when you are in a thread about the Worste totalitarian regime in memorable history. And said satanist had a point. If you must be a slave, choose the master who is nicer to you.
>>28
The problem with this line of thinking is that when you're born in a totalitarian police state you don't get a choice of masters.
Ah but they had a choice before following Kim Sung -il about 90 years ago. they chose the wrong leader and ended up where they are.
>>30
"they" are all dead of old age now. What choice have the people who had the ill fortune to be born there been offered?
none. just remember that your kids pay for your mistakes. our generation will already have to deal with the global warming our parents, grandparents and great grandparents create. and out kids will have to deal with it worse, along with an imploded economy.
The north koreans had their chance and they failed. now their progeny must pay the piper.