Shouldn't the role be "advertised" to other people as well? Why is it following the Kim family line when that seems completely against ML thought?
In my view, it's perfectly valid to criticize the fact that the Kim family has been in charge the whole time. However, I don't think that's at odds with having critical support for DPRK.
yeah I think disallowing immediate family (if not more) from holding public power is something every political system newer than "divine right of kings" should do. Hardly anyone whining about north korea gives a shit that the united states went bush - clinton - bush into another clinton being the presumptive candidate and our elections are probably less legitimate than the dprk.
something something royal family something something usual decadence, two of them.
Completely disallowing a public official's family from holding public office is undemocratic. If people want a specific person elected to a certain position, why shouldn't it be allowed because of their family?
This issue is resolved by making public office less of a privilege and more of a job, which as far as I know is what has happened over time in the DPRK.
you literally answered your own question lol
. It's not undemocratic to protect the candidate pool from nepotism and privilege. even if it's "just a job" you make social connections and have access to people and institutions that normal people don't.
how many regular north koreans who weren't the children of politicians are sent to foreign universities?
I still think it's possible to have representatives who don't necessarily amass wealth and privilege. If the problem is that politicians are distinct from normal people to the point of having this kind of privilege to share with their family, then restrict the amount of privilege afforded to them. Make them into more normal people.
I think maybe we're coming to a problem that exists in representative states in general.
Being family with the politicians in power is already a kind of privilege, people from outside will want connections with the family relatives. Smooth promotions/contracts ect.
yeah i guess i don't think you can really separate power and rank from privilege. at least not now or in the foreseeable future. if humanity outlives capitalism maybe they can revisit the issue.
I couldn’t agree more, I’m not a fan of lifetime leaders or nepotism, but their contributions to a better Korea are admirable and inspiring
The leader of the SAC (formerly NDC) is the “leader” of the country, voted on by the SPA, which is elected by the people
It's important to note that Americans also do not directly elect the president (that's the Electoral College), and that most countries ~70 years into their democratic experiments were substantially less democratic than this.
Pretty much all the US leaders, whether political or economic, come from powerfully entrenched families, making the US a lineage-based feudal monarchy all but in name. This paragraph hits home:
Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Gonna show my dog brain here a bit but is there a visual somewhere that delineates this? I’ve never seen it put together in such detail. There was a nice infographic a while back floating around showing how chinas govt was put together and it was a really handy tool to deploy against libs
There was a graphic that went around for some time that compared all of Trump's executive powers with the same powers that were distributed among DPRK leadership. Just with that one comparison it was clear how much more decentralized the responsibilities are within the DPRK. Wish I could find it for you.
Premier is the second top rank within the SPA, currently held by Kim Jae Ryong [not related].
In 2020 the premier changed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Tok-hun
There is no family line or monarchy. This is just false. People voted for them lmao, they can always change at any time but the people voted for this.
DPRK is a people's democracy. Not a monarchy or whatever people like to claim. Kim Jun Un is a great leader and so were the other kim's, they were all legitimately elected, they were voted because they are great leaders.
Sounds like a dictatorship to anyone with 4 brain cells
Indeed. lmao. Bold of you to confirm it. 😂😂
Lmao, you're a joke. The voting process in DPRK is well documented if you actually look for real sources.
All men and women can only do one of 28 government-approved haircuts, 18 for women, 10 for men; other hairstyles are prohibited. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un introduced this law in 2013 and did not include his hairstyle on this list because he wanted to keep it unique and absolutely no one can dare to copy his hairstyle. It is assumed that married women should wear shorter haircuts than unmarried women.
Do you sincerely believe this shit? Like are you, Armen12, on this day on Lemmygrad, declaring to the world that you've abandoned all critical thinking and choose to live your life with the cognitive capacities of a lettuce slug from this day forward?
Nobody at the top level believes this crap lol. This is just gossip fodder for fashion magazines to print and remind people that the US and their made up state in the ROK are still at war with the DPRK and they need to keep up some war propaganda once in a while so that some day they can launch missiles at Korea and have people cheer for it.
You can legit go on wikipedia, type up DPRK and go from bluelink to bluelink down into obscure pages that the CIA hasn't touched too much yet and learn about all the state figures in the DPRK that are not Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un. All the state commissions, all the state positions and officials who've held those historically, shit you can even learn about the coalition that forms the Parliament composed of three parties including the WPK.
Do you actually believe that any country in the world would last for more than 10 years if they were this comically evil? The reason nobody at the top level in the west believes this shit is because they know how hard it is to manage macro stuff like, I don't know, an entire country. In the feudal past this ended with revolutions, but there has been no such thing in the DPRK in over 70 years. Why is that? Could it be that you're ignorant and should admit you know nothing but war propaganda about the DPRK? No, it must be the Koreans who are brainwashed and kept on a leash!
Maybe there's a typo. This makes much more sense:
Kim Jong
Un introducedUnintroduced this law in 2013 …Joking aside, this is, again, all projection. When I was in school… if you turned up with a shaved head you'd be sent home until it grew back. If you turned up with too long hair, you'd be sent home to get it cut. If you turned up with hair gel/hairspray or any other product, you'd be sent to the gym showers to wash it out. If you turned up with beads, braids, dreads, cornrows, a few too many bobbles or plaits, you'd be sent home to 'fix it'.
I'm led to believe that schools are marginally less racist nowadays. I'm not convinced. Is France not, right now, going through another wave of Islamaphobia sending muslim girls home for wearing religious/cultural dress over their hair?
Now that I'm in work (and it's been the same in every job), there's a dress code, which includes hairstyles. It's often unofficial. That doesn't make a difference. If you turn up with anything you might call a 'hairstyle', you will be ostracised, bullied, and possibly lose your job. You won't be given any public facing tasks, for a start.
I've not even touched on the shit faced by LGBTQAI2+ workers, for whom a 'non-confirming' hairstyle will be used as evidence of something if it suits bigoted, transphobic, racist colleagues and employers.
I just find it so mind boggling that liberals can live in the same world as me, put a quacky label on something that runs through every society in one form or another, and pretend it doesn't exist under liberalism but does exist in a designated enemy country. And that it's the worst thing ever. As if people in particular places and times don't just wear similar hairstyles, because culture, fashion, religion, etc.
Show
Is France not, right now, going through another wave of Islamaphobia
Yes, and OP shows how frogpilled they are because in another comment (I had to check if the fascism extended beyond just their takes on lemmygrad), they say "France doesn’t ban religious anything, only in schools". You get turned away at public pools if you wear too much there.
- Only government-approved haircuts
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What’s a liberal to do then, just shut the fuck up forever?
(Yes, shut the fuck up liberal who’s reading this)
Are you sure that a family have absolute authority over North Korea and that the Kim family were not simply figure head or influential people with limited power?
It's not unusual for people from certain political families to simply stand out and hold a special place in a country's politics. It's a consequence of the immense popularity that a particular leader may have had during their tenure, which can end up rubbing off on those who have the same name. Assad is another example of this, and for the United states you have the Kennedys as well. India is another example, with the Ghandi family (no relation to THAT Ghandi) has had multiple generations of leaders voted in as prime minister or as opposition leaders.
The Bushes and Clintons are also an example in addition to the Kennedys; the Bush family has been manipulating Amerika into cryptofascist warhawkery since the end of World War 2.
Didn’t one of the bushes try to do a fascist coup even before WW2? I think the business plot was earlier
It was, as a matter of fact! That was 1933; the attempted installation of Smedley Butler.
Im glad you and I could collab on this, we should do so again next time AOC does some lib shit
Yeah it's basically "What if the Kennedys had seen the US through a the complete destruction by bomb and rebuilding of the country"
I'd vote for em (in this hypothetical) 🤷♂️
I'd prolly also lambast anyone who decided they weren't worth voting for as foolish. Much like term limit scaremongering, a lot of the sealioning about the Kim "dynasty" is predicated on a rather infantile understanding of democracy. Not that OP did or is doing this by asking in good faith.
Roosevelt's are a good example because it was the popular one who made charges to benefit ordinary people and became so re-electable, they had to change the term limits to get rid of him.
This is the best read on this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230409194611/https://rolandtheodoreboer.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/2018-an-effort-to-understand-the-dprk.pdf
Why is it following the Kim family line when that seems completely against ML thought?
I think firstly, we've got to accept that it is real, the Kim family does hold a special place in that country. Trying to say, "Oh no, they were just legitimately elected", or "They're not special" is trying to deny the reality and impose some foreign image on the country.
They "hold a special place" because the people in the country love the kims, this was not forced on them, they can always vote for a new leader who isnt from their family. They have all been great leaders and the DPRK is a people's democracy. Please stop spreading western propaganda.
you shouldn't love somebody's kid before that kid actually does anything on their own, and it should be far less impressive when the accomplishment is only possible because of the parent's position and access to resources not available to regular people.
i don't need western propaganda to think that kind of paternalism gross and sus.
before that kid actually does anything on their own
Both had positions already FYI
ok. 3 generations of practicing doctors who hopefully don't get special treatment from medical schools is comparable to three generations of public administrators how?
family business on the scale of a medical practice is not a threat to the public interest the way a connected political family is.
Sorry you missed my point I’m just saying it’s pretty common for kids to enter the same field as their parents, it isn’t necessarily an indicator of nepotism
Even if two kids otherwise get exactly the same education and 'access to opportunities', the one with parents who do the thing is going to have an edge, all things considered. This logic works with any job. A child of a plumber is going to have an advantage in the plumbing world over a child of an accountant because they grow up hearing the language, picking up the tools when their parent isn't looking and then being taught to use the basic tools when they get s little older.
Personally, I don't see why society should be denied the extra skill that comes from that kind of informal home-education just to avoid 'nepotism'. Actual nepotism, where someone is given a job (or a place at a top university) just because of family ties… down with that!
In sum, I went a bit wider so you might disagree with me but I agree with you. Maybe 'nepotism' has class characteristics, which need to be considered. It might not even be a coherent concept in a later-stage of functioning socialism. If that's possible, the question is at what point in the development of socialism does nepotism become an incoherent concept? Then: has the DPRK or anywhere else reached it? If not, is it a problem?
That was a really interesting read and actually explained it very well.. Thank you. Do you have any other things to read on the DPRK in general?
Juche idea study course: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=OymYKXvrCF0
'Let us advance under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and the Juche Idea' – https://archive.org/details/LetUsAdvanceUnderTheBannerOfMarxism-leninismAndTheJucheIdeaOnThe
John Major: 'Want undiluted sovereignty? Go to North Korea' – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36170066
RAND report in 2020: DPRK will have 200 nukes by 2027 – https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/07/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-united-states-deterrence/ – https://www.rand.org/news/advisories/2021/04/12.html
Juche Idea: Answers to Hundred Questions – https://archive.org/details/juche-questions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Eliminating_Dogmatism_and_Formalism_and_Establishing_Juche_in_Ideological_Work
https://exploredprk.com/articles/housing-problem-and-the-dprk/
https://exploredprk.com/
http://www.gnu.rep.kp/ – the official website of DPRK broadcasting. There’s some videos on the site. The .kp TLD is controlled by DPRK, all websites that end with .kp are DPRK websites.
https://kcnawatch.org/kctv-archive/ – has video archives of DPRK TV broadcast. KCNA is the name of the DPRK state news but this website is owned by an American company called NK News
healthcare system: https://web.archive.org/web/20221024155438/https://www.globalasia.org/v16no3/cover/north-koreas-surprisingly-robust-healthcare-system_kee-b-parkedward-i-ham
Really boring Swiss report about the technicalities of how the political system works there. This type of source is good because it's not propaganda, it's for academics and governance experts – https://web.archive.org/web/20221217045342/https://www.asgp.info/Publications/CPI-English/1992_163_01-e.pdf
Election data – https://web.archive.org/web/20171021163836/https://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2085_E.htm
https://www.38north.org/resources/ – This is a very good website. It's run by Korean-Americans who are bilingual in English and Korean, and is dedicated to understanding primary sources from within the DPRK, like academic journals about economics. Article about consumerism. Article about banking. 'Reports of North Korea’s Return to a Command Economy Have Been Exaggerated'. https://www.38north.org/2023/02/understanding-kim-jong-uns-economic-policymaking-key-findings-and-implications/
N. Korea revises constitution to include Kim Jong-un’s reform-oriented approach to economy [2019]: https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/901610.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20210329180009/https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-koreas-new-agricultural-system-yields-promising-results/
Documentary: loyal citizens of pyongyang in seoul
Documentary: my brothers and sisters in the north
youtube channel: DPRK explained
Talking points/one-pager: https://dprkorea.carrd.co/ or https://web.archive.org/web/20230502123305/https://dprkorea.carrd.co/
https://www.kfausa.org/resources/ – overseas outreach arm
"Patriots, traitors and empires" by Stephen gowans. It's a great read on the history of Korea.
I agree. For a counterexample, Cuba passed the torch to an outsider after Fidel and Raul retired.
There is a tendency amongst western communists of uncritical support for AES countries. Yes, I do support North Korean people and their right to exist outside of capitalism. Yes, I am critical of their incestuous leadership structure and the consequent corruption that arises from such practices.
You make it seem like it's inherently good to elect someone not related to the previous leader, but we need to take a step back and ask why is this desirable? As was explained in another comment, another chairman was elected before Kim Jong Un but he tried to stage a coup after he was retired for his right-wing reforms (speaking relatively here). Outsider does not always mean better.
Also something I haven't seen people touch on yet is that all three Kim's have held different functions. Kin Jong Un is the general of the armies as well as the foreign minister of sorts (closer to the president but for foreign affairs). That's why we see him meet with foreign officials and we see him at weapons tests. I think he goes to factories and such in his capacity as Chairman of the WPK (and leader of the coalition encompassing three parties in the DPRK's parliament).
all three Kim’s have held different functions.
To add to this, Kim Jong-Un did not run for re-election to the Supreme People’s Assembly in 2019
Is he not in the SPA then? Is he just the party chairman now?
Is he not in the SPA then?
Correct
Is he just the party chairman now?
According to Wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt, he is “Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army,” “General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea,” and “President of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea.”
Note that I didn't criticize the Kim family specifically.
The whole of North Korean military and governmental high level positions are much more closely related than CPC for example.
Lineal succession of the Kim family is just a visible portion of the inner-circle domination. The Party itself has a problem.
Lineal succession of the Kim family is just a visible portion of the inner-circle domination. The Party itself has a problem.
But again, there is no lineal succession. All three Kims held different positions in government.
That is true. I amend my statement to mean top level positions held by Kim Il Sung's descendents.
But then we are back to the first step comrade, what makes it undesirable that members of a family hold different government positions? Especially in socialism, there's no question about capitalism.
My belief is that in a fair socialist society, there would be a constant flow of outsiders because that is the natural order of things if everyone's given fair education and opportunity.
That has been seen in most socialist countries historical and current. If this state of affairs is not true, that implies the existence of formal or informal institutional mechanisms in which connected people are favored. I dislike such mechanisms inherently after decades of living in it.
I don't see how I would suddenly like such mechanism just because it occurs inside a socialist framework comrade. Equal distribution of material goods and services is not the only concern for me. I also favor socialism due to the fact that impoverished peasants can rise to high stations unlike capitalism. Favoritism towards Pyongyang makes such things less likely.
There are 687 seats in the Supreme People's Assembly, of which Kim Jong Un is not a member anymore (having elected not to be on the ballot at the last elections). There are also countless generals in the army, several ministers, several members of the WPK's central committee, and of course local officials as well as party leaders other than the WPK (there's 2 other parties in the SPA forming a front for the reunification of Korea with the three of them).
Of all these officials, the Kim family had 4 members of their family fulfilling governmental positions. The DPRK even had one of the Kims executed for being a CIA insurrectionary.
I get your distrust of such mechanisms where family ties might get you somewhere, but the DPRK is not a capitalist country. I don't think this is a clear-cut area that we can readily criticize the DPRK on. It only strengthens the "DPRK is a monarchy" argument in the average liberal and right-winger; Kim Jong-Un holds 3 positions (chairman of WPK, supreme commander of the armies and president of the state affairs commission). The title of president, which conferred powers as the head of state, was abolished after Kim Il Sung's death (making him the "Eternal Leader" because he was the only one who ever held that title).
I'm just a baby at this and trying to ask in good faith so sorry if this is asked a lot.
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Didn’t they all actually have different positions and just hold a hereditary figurehead role symbolically? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il_Sung https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong_Il https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong_Un
There is, but its profoundly less powerful with each generation, but to deny the DPRK's great man theory obsession is not a reflection of reality. There is very much an overt effort to lionize the kims in every aspect of life. I give them a pass on this because they aren't really in a stable situation, whatever holds the country together is fine by me.
The DPRK isn’t ML, and hasn’t been for like 40 years. They’re kind of doing their own thing.
Hey, if privileged westerners declare their version of socialism invalid, who are we to argue? They're clearly world experts on this and everyone else should automatically defer to them when it comes to socialist states passing the purity test. (Not saying the person above you is like that, just that they're channeling that energy)
The idea that the DPRK 'abandoned' Marxism-Leninism bugs the crap out of me. Marxism-Leninism is a scientific methodology that must adapt to suit the material needs of each nation. I remain unconvinced of any differences between the DPRK's political economy and other AES states so drastic to warrant the claim that the DPRK is not a Marxist-Leninist (scientific socialist) nation.
Yeah, it reeks of western chauvinism, there's a lot of overlap between the "they aren't real AES" and "I uncritically parrot western claims about their government being a monarchy"
Or the standard ultra tactic of just dismissing them out of hand for not being "pure" enough because their material conditions aren't ideal and they've had to make compromises.
Each country adapts ML to their own circumstances — in China we have socialism with Chinese characteristics, in North Korea we have Juche, etc.
Communists are not fascists and I can prove it in two seconds, because I know you'll be out there calling for the deportation of minorities in three years time, but you'll never be out there protesting for the nationalisation of resources.
