My co-worker believes the DPRK is a uniquely evil and incompetent state that is in a constant state of famine. They are the most failed and corrupt state.
I told him that DPRK has been incredibly fucked over historically and has been punished on every front for the crime of existing.
Does anyone have any good info I can arm myself with? Or help at articulating something that might get through. He's very much a 'facts and logic' type of lib.
:kim-salute:
Don't bother. For all the stats in the world, it is still difficult to fully comprehend what goes on in the DPRK without having experienced it.
Every statistic you bring up will be countered by some absolutely batshit insane propaganda about how they eat cement for breakfast and dogs for dinner.
Your best bet is to just get them to agree that if America was bombed to absolute shite in the same way that NK was (find some stats about just how thorough the carpet bombing was - they're not too hard to find), that America would also be isolationist and focused on nuclear deterrence.
Essentially, material conditions created by the US' thirst for blood have precipitated whatever edition of North Korea they believe in.
This right here. North Korea does actually suck but look how fucked up our country got from 3 buildings blowing up! And we blew up literally every structure in the country and killed 1 in 5 people. They're gonna consolidate around a strongman like literally anyone would.
And we still have them under siege and we openly want to slaughter them again. Our foreign policy is to kill them if we can. John Bolton literally said, publicly, on camera, that Kim better not dare to get rid of his nukes or else the US would make sure he is sexually assaulted to death. I'm not even kidding. You heard that right, he wasn't demanding disarmament, he was demanding that North Korea continue threatening SK and Japan with nuclear weapons.
Elaborate on that.
Just that the quality of life is still low, although not like what you hear in the western press, and it's obviously still due to international embargo. There are also things like collective punishment and very harsh prison conditions. And they have to spend a huge amount of resources on their military due to the external threat.