sources
on the dprk
- right to housing and retirement, multi-party peoples democracy: constitution of the dprk
- power checks and balances: infographic: why the us is a dictatorship and the dprk isnt.
- welfare economy: prolewiki article about the dprk, section on economy (that whole article is generally really great and debunks a lot of western propaganda)
- democratic since inception: kim byong sik. “modern korea: the socialist north, revolutionary perspectives in the south, and unification.” 1970.
on the rok
- poverty, slums: prolewiki-article on the term “hell josoen”
- political prisoners: western source confirming the existence of the national security law, stephen gowans (2018). patriots, traitors and empires: the story of koreas struggle for freedom: ‘the political partition of korea’ (pp. 115–116) , and the prolewiki-article on the rok, sections “national security law” and “unconverted long-term prisoners”
- widespread corruption: a lot of reporting can be found on this topic, even in western media. lets just take the government-sanctioned prostitution and sex trafficking as an example, though there is other equally horrific stuff, including the usage of disabled people as agricultural slaves.
- worlds second highest suicide rate: katrin park (2021-10-5). “south korea is no country for young people” doreign policy.
- tyrannical history: prolewiki-article on the rok, section “history” warning: very bleak read
debunking of anticipated liberal comments
norf korea no food
malnutrition was in fact a thing during the 1990s, though the portrayals of this time period, the so called “arduous march” in westen media are usually exaggerated. mostly omitted by american-allied media is the fact that those difficulties were caused by the inhumane and terrorist western sanctions and embargo against the dprk, as well as the cia-backed illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr. nowadays problems regarding food security have pretty much ceased to exist in the country.
hermit kingdom
first of all, the term itself is nothing but racist, orientalist nonsense, but whatever… the dprk is in no way a kingdom, its democratic model of governance, while obviously imperfect and worthy of (constructive) criticism, is explained in the constitution and infographic linked above.
furthermore, the county is neither “reclusive”, nor internationally isolated. the dprk enjoys very friendly relations with fellow aes china, cuba, laos and vietnam, as well as anti-imperialist nations like iran, russia and palestine. the reason you dont hear much from inside the country is due to western press not wanting to report the truth.
no lights, no electricity
the famous “no lights”-photo is a photoshopped fake initially circulated by a southern far-right tabloid. here is an actual image of east asia, including the korean peninsula:
haircut police
unlike south korea, the dprk never had such policies. here is a very entertaining video debunking that myth.
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Whatever you call yourself, you have argued yourself into a position of extreme, sanctimonious conservatism if you are claiming the present Korean society does not deserve harsh criticism. Nowhere did OP say that things are just as bad as under the military dictatorship which, as you say, was one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. The thing about that being true is that you can make significant progress in the state of things and not even escape being under a military dictatorship, so I think acknowledging the current state as a deeply unwell bourgeois democracy is being borderline charitable when you look at the sordid state of Korea’s electoral politics (which might be owning communism being banned, something the communists who were persecuted and slaughtered by the dictatorship certainly didn’t fight for the preservation of).
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I was on this thread criticizing OP before you were, you don’t need to tell me that
I don’t understand why you’re so ready to call tone a concrete statement with a truth value. I’m sure you’d agree that America today is disgusting and lacking in human dignity if we point out practices from one of its largest companies, Amazon, essentially forcing its employees to piss in bottles and shit in bags to make quotas on time, forcing employees to work around the body of their collapsed and eventually deceased coworker, demanding that they come in even when forecasts predicted the facility would be destroyed by a tornado (and it was). There is so much in America, even when we constrain our view, that we can use to support the country being disgusting and lacking in human dignity, and I’m sure we can find different but still comparable stories in SK. For example, check out their human-trafficking fueled “defector” industry where they hold N Koreans hostage by preventing them from leaving and trapping them in a society where they struggle to find work and can even starve to death in the middle of a city if they don’t work as good little media puppets spreading lies about the North.
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I mentioned it because it’s quite easy to find. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761156048/in-south-korea-anguish-over-deaths-of-north-korean-defectors-who-may-have-starve
I slightly misremembered, “starved to death” is speculation (and the most prevalent speculation!) but I personally think that severe malnourishment leading to succumbing to disease or something like that sounds more plausible from the description this and other articles gives, but also such a death is still referred to in many contexts as effectively being starvation (e.g. if you’re counting famine deaths).
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I encourage you to work on thinking of keywords. “North Korea defector starves to death” yields:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korean-mother-son-defectors-die-suspected-starvation/story?id=65777523
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/03/28/asia-pacific/north-korean-defectors-lonely-death/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49408555
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/21/asia/north-korean-defector-funeral-intl-hnk/index.html
And on and on. As I said, it’s a story that is very easy to find.
I think mental health is a reductionist answer here, even if it was a suicide. Something the NPR article rightly puts some emphasis on is that she was dirt poor, dying after spending the equivalent of like $3 on produce after emptying her bank account. The same article also mentions:
There are still serious structural elements here that caused it, especially since I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that getting hired for a normal job in SK as a N Korean can be very, very difficult.
Suicide or not, this was done by Seoul.
Like many “defectors”, she is a trafficking victim, albeit in this case she was sold to some Chinese man rather than the more modern trend of being sold directly to South Korea to fuel the “defector” industry (do the traffickers get a cut of the reward money? idk). Not that there aren’t also defectors, whether they are people just fleeing crushing poverty or they’re wanted for having committed some heinous crime. You know, a whole range of things.
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ahh look my new favourite anti-communist rok apologist is bringing out the classics! dont you just love the pecking order misery olympics bullshit people broing out when somebody says that things are not as good as they should be? Oh you think things are bad? Try shoveling burning coal with your bare hands, like in mordor! :maybe-later-kiddo:
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for a person claiming to be this principled against supposed “lies” you sure do make a lot of shit up about other people. never have i claimed that the rok has achieved absolutely zero progress, this would be absurd. yet you, the supposed beacon of honesty, simply invent such statements of me.
you continue to confuse, at this point probably willfully so, the justified admiration for the 1988 revolution with respect for the decrepit south korean puppet regime. to use an analogy: every leftist will admire the heroism of the 1789 revolution in france, but that doesnt make the french dictatorship of the bourgeoisie any less horrible. leftists recognize that things are progressive or reactionary in the context of their material conditions.
you on the other hand use right-wing liberal logic at best and end up sounding like piłsudski rallying against the bolsheviks. have you even read socialist theory? are you member of a party?
and you really dont get how all this makes you sound like chosun ilbo?
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