After all this I am not really bothered by juche gang posts, whether ironic or not, like damn. South Korea was just indefinitely worse than North Korea, it was like a fucking totalitarian state. It wasn’t until the 80s that the economic situation reversed. I mean I don’t think anyone should support the current regime but when you learn that more bombs were dropped on North Korea per capita than anywhere else in the world, ever, it becomes understandable why they’re seen as a backwards country with no development. The country was literally flattened by US bombing campaigns. And then you learn that Kim il sung gave rights to women while Rhee was murdering suspected communists by the thousands. The US was committing atrocities like No Gun Ri and yet in the common image America and South Korea are the good guys. I mean, fuck, I don’t think I can support the direction that Kim Jong un has taken North Korea in, but after learning this it solidifies my anti American views, there is officially no war after WW2 that America was justified in. I can’t believe that anti Korean War sentiment isn’t as high as anti Vietnam war, more people need to know about this
Which part? The isolation is imposed by the world, not them. Likewise with the poverty.
The nukes are a nice shield from future bombings, and once China and Russia get an alternative to SWIFT set up for global transactions, we can expect to see the DPRK open up more.
The hereditary thing isn’t great long term, but it gets way too much shit for it. Cuba’s still got the Castro family as the head of state, and you almost never hear leftists go on about that.
Then we need to consider the alternatives. If it were to unilaterally reunite with the South, under the South’s rule, you’d see the same sort of horrendous economic collapse that the GDR suffered. Probably worse, given the greater wealth disparities.
Juche gang’s a fun meme, but in reality, the DPRK’s just our generation’s Cuba, with all the atrocity porn that comes with it.
The modern reaction against north korea is largely in response to how the country reacted after the fall of the USSR.
Before the 80s, north korea was better than south Korea in virtually every way, people were actually moving from the south to the north in meaningful numbers. But the decline in aid from the USSR resulted in them doubling down on their need to be self sufficient rather than opening themselves up even in the way Cuba has to tourism.
The fall of the USSR resulted in so much deprivation in terms of the economy since they were isolated. It resulted in people starving and that resulted in further crackdowns and propaganda by the state to ensure the communist party maintained power. This part is what did a lot of damage and helped push the narrative that NK was a monarchy when they do in fact have real elections and what not for all sorts of things.
The way I view it is that the Kims are very bad, but when you literally flatten a country it's your fault that they get behind an authoritarian. And what can a Swedish dem soc do when 20% of the population gets fucking murdered?
We had 2 buildings knocked over and we're half fascist now. So we really can't fucking talk.
I agree with most of that, but ‘the Kims are very bad‘ feels like a truism absorbed through a lifetime of stories of generals being fed to Piranhas. What makes them ‘very bad’?
For anyone who sees this, here's a good article on North Korea that's pretty recent: North Korea, Without the Hacks. I do wonder if anything has changed due to covid though, but it's probably too soon to tell.
Their internment camps sound worse than ours 🙃
A large amount of the mainstream information surrounding the camps comes from defectors like Kim Young-il who ran away when he was 19 and wrote a best selling book about the camps, which he later admitted to largely lying about since there were such large incentives for such a story in the west. There are other instances of defectors and dissidents admitting to making up things and lying.
Prison conditions in countries tend to decline in proportion to wealth, so that's not really a surprise. I've also read (from a liberal source) how their prisoners aren't culturally penalized after being released from their sentence. You go live in the jungle for several years with your family, some guards are garbage and others are helpful but they msotlynstay out of your way, and then you go back to life. In the case that I read about, the prisoner was able to bribe his way back to Pyongyang and join upper-tier social circles after just a few years. Nothing is especially "good" about it, but there isn't much you could say that's particularly bad.
It’s not necessarily the family part that’s the most distressing, it just seems to me since the Korean War NK went from a revolutionary communist state with surprising liberties to a much more authoritarian state now. I mean obviously it’s expected, but it could be toned down a bit for sure, like so much media censoring really isn’t that necessary. Looking at vietnam which was in a pretty similar situation economic recovery did happen by opening up a little and not completely shutting out the world, and now to this day their covid recovery and such was phenomenal, proving that they have pretty excellent social systems in place.