Is North Korea successful?

Recently a Russian friend of mine returned from North Korea after having a two-week holiday there. She told me North Korea is not what you think it is, actually it is quite successful in nation-building, here is her reasons:

1.North Korea is not Egypt or Iraq right before another revolution, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not a poor desperate third-world unstable country, on the contrary, it is a highly-developed right-wing ultra-conservative egalitarian state with a super stable single-party system.
If you go to India, you will see tons of very poor people of lower class under the Indian caste system. If you visit downtown Shanghai, you will see lots of beggars sitting right before the front door of major super-malls every morning to beg for food and money. However, in North Korea, there are political prisoners but no beggars. People there are poorer than you, they have no access to the internet and no smart phones, BUT they are really not people living a life of absolute poverty: under the egalitarian planned economy, they enjoy a fair amount of food ration, free housing, free education, free health care, free holidays, even free condoms. Of course, every thing ( :open_mouth: INCLUDING condoms :open_mouth: ) is of low-quality, but thing is, If that Kim guy provides all those things for you free of charge, will a North Korean wish to get rid of him? . Also, don’t forget the unemployment rate in Spain is 27%, that figure is 0% in North Korea.

2.North Korea WILL NOT COLLAPSE in the face of sanction whatsoever.
Believe or not, the Soviet Union collapsed not because of American sanction and boycott, it collapsed due to two major reasons:
First, its own ideological crisis, when the Marxist-Leninist Utopia the Soviet Union claimed to be to its people turns out to be a dystopia, the Marxist-Leninist state will loose legitimacy and collapse whatsoever.
Second, too much involvement into the global free market. The Soviet Union remained the No. 1 oil export country in the 1980s, it maintains a certain level of standard of living for its people by selling oil into the global free market then use that oil money to pay their military bill and buy food and consumer products then distribute the goods via the domestic central planning system to its people. But when the global oil price collapses near the year 1989 the Soviet Union has no means to make ends meet let alone distributing enough consumer products, and people will protest and seek change when their living standards is falling.

North Korea is very different:
The ideology that sustains that state is not leftist Marxist-Leninism or Maoism, it is an ultra-conservative ideology, called the Juche Idea. the Juche Idea has a major advantage over Marxist ideology, it did not promise anything Utopian in the future therefore when that Utopia did not come nobody will experience any ideological crisis.
Also, unlike the soviet union with its dependency on global oil price, the economy of North Korea is a very self-sufficient one, it has no much oil to sell. If you visit North Korea, you will see that lots of cars there even don’t need gasoline, they burn coal to run. And in a 100% central planning economy, there is no such thing called Great Depression.
In the end, sanction will only make a highly self-sufficient economy more self-sufficient than ever.If you are in the daydreaming process of a North Korea collapse, think of Cuba.

Like North Korea or not, what can you do about it?
BTW, here is the sort of singer my friend met in a bar exclusive for turists in Pyongyang, Gee! If Paul McCartney had met this North Korean gal in this video he will certainly write a Back In The DPRK!!! :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o63mGktKJJU[/youtube]

Did your friend visit many areas away from the tourist areas? When I visited Acapulco, the tourist areas were nice, when I rode the city bus throughout the rest of Acapulco, it was 3rd world, just on the other side of the mountain facing the bay where the real people lived.

North Korea will collapse if China and Russia as well as other NATO countries do not violate the sanctions against NK as they have been. The people are slaves who will be imprisoned or executed if they do not conform 100% to NK politics and ideologies. Free, low quality, material goods in exchange for strenuous labor, but no freedom to even leave the country. I’ve heard that they shoot people who try to escape from NK. So they shoot you for trying to get out of the country instead of trying to get in. What kind of a successful country holds their population hostage?

Not only just material goods, In North Korea, the state provides literally cradle to grave welfare: you go to state kindergarten when you are young, go to state run school, if you are smart you will go to college, free of any tuition fees, you graduate from college and the state will hand you a life time job, in the job you will never be fired unless you murder someone or express disloyalty to the Kim family, you will receive a free apartment from the state once you married, you will retire at age 60, with the pension provided by the state, then you die in a state run hospital, with the medicine bill paid by the state.

And the most important thing: you are not allowed to make a living on your own.

The system is designed to favor the poor over the rich, with such a system, how could the outside world expects the poor people in North Korea to revolt against their Kim family? I don’t think so.

In return for your enslavement and you must settle on the low quality that is offered. I myself really enjoy low quality medical care and low quality food, it makes me so healthy.

Let me ask this:

You can only judge one thing to be low-quality or not only if you have see some really high-quality thing, if you have never allow the North Korean people to take look at the high-quality thing in life, how will they even know what they have is low-quality or not???


If North Korean people never see the alternative, how will they even know that alternative exists?

It’s easy to realize low quality objects for they often harm you in some way which is common sense. If what is offered is making you and others sick, maims, or kills you, then that product is defective which equates with low to no quality. I imagine that the government cover-ups there are atrocious and controversial dissenters disappear real quick like.

The NK people would have to in mass rush the weakest areas of the borders to defect into Russia (which would be quite ironic :wink: ).

Believe it or not, ‘making you and others sick, maims, or kills you, then that product is defective’ rarely happens in a state central planning economy:

By the word ‘low quality’, I 'm refering to the level of service that is above the limit of human tolerance but below the average level of service you will receive in other country, say, if you have a 80 m3 apartment in Paris but in North Korea you can only get a 40 m3 apartment. Comparing to the quality you get in America as a consumer, the quality in North Korea is quite low, but it actually is not that low as to make you sick, because the central planning system is not designed to sell some very low quality things as much as possible to maximze profits (the concept of ‘profits’ only exists in a free market economy, in a central planning economy, goods in a state run shopping mall even has no price tag, you buy things not with money, you buy things with limited number of tickets you received from the state for free , the shopping mall can not make a single dime more profits by selling you more things, because you have limited number of tickets :astonished: )

Let me sum it up: the North Korean system is designed to meet the basic needs, it does not encourage high-quality things which will consume extra resources to produce that high quality above basic needs.

Why are you defending a low quality of life?

I’m not defending anything, I 'm just explaining how things work in North Korea

Explaining it as if it’s not so bad because all the basics are paid for from cradle to grave and most of your thinking and decisions are made in advance by others, the central planning blah blah.

If you are not promoting communism, what are you doing?

I have repeatedly explained why NK is not successful, but you do not engage any of the reasons of my answers that, “No, it is not successful” from my first response that holding your population hostage is not a sign of success down to cover-ups that keep the NK public in the dark about the serious nature of the low quality goods and services.

Nobody in their right mind would ever think that communism is successful…ever.

Communism is subsistence with a gun to your head.

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In developed countries … in return for your enslavement you must take anti depressant medicines. :laughing:

Believe it or not, I have made a post in reply to your first objection, but it was removed misteriously by someone, maybe the admin. :astonished: :astonished: :astonished:
( well, the site admin might be a North Korean guy who feels unhappy reading my posts :confused: :confused: )

Anyway, I rewrite my reply.

Cuba, as well as North Korea can survive for decades desbite American sanction is because of this:

There are always political dissendents and people who wish to go to South Korea, BUT

For the large majority of people in North Korea, they have reached ‘an unwritten deal’ with the state
, the deal is this: the Kim family will run the state and he gives the people a welfare state, treat them nicely, provides all the basics for free, and in return the people will give their 100% loyalty to the Kim family.

Under this deal, If you disobey the leader, you have breached the contract and therefore is liable to the punishment; because you failed to honor your duty and withdraw your loyalty first, the leader will dishonor his duty and stop treating you nicely, too. he will treat you as the enemy of the state. :astonished: :astonished: :astonished:

It looks more like feudalism rather than communism.

In medievel Europe, you work for the landlord who owns the whole estate, in return the landlord will provide free housing, free food and free clothing to you; if you disobey the lord, the lord will hang you upside down.

When my friend visit North Korea, she did not go to those remote places, she only stayed in Pyongyang. Other parts of North Korea is off-limit to tourists.

So she didn’t see the subsistence or the public executions, I’d kind of figured that. Fear is the only thing that keeps those people from rebelling. They have all most likely witnessed public executions of folks who weren’t even given a fair trial, just alleged criminals put to death. Like I said, communism is subsistence with a gun to your head.

They had a choice not to support the Kim nightmare?

First, you keep using the word ’ communism’, but North Korea currently is not a communist country. What’s your reasons for you to say that North Korea is a communist country ???

Check this link: http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?num=14060&cataId=nk03600

North Korea looks more like feudalism rather than communism.
It is true that in the soviet union under communism the state provides its people with free welfare, but under feudalism, you work in an estate for the lord and the lord also provide you with free housing, food and other free welfare as long as you remain loyal to your lord.

Under feudalism, if the lord is getting old and then died, his son will inherite the estate and become the new lord, likewise, in North Korea, when the old Kim dies, the young kim will inherite the country. However if you take a look at the major communist countries, Soviet union, China, in communist constitutions the leader can never pass their position directly to their son when the old one is dying, to communists the North Korean practice is 20000% politically incorrect. (an example is Stalin, when Stalin is dying he did not ask his son to take his position)

If you check the North Korean constitution, you will find that the constitution states very, very clearly the Kim family is the only family that is legetimate to rule, nobody else can take the throne.
If this is not feudalism, then what is feudalism?? :open_mouth:

NK is not an orthodox communist country, nor is it an orthodox Feudal society as you keep insisting. Economically, it is pure communism. Politically, it is sovereignty ruled by a tyrant who wishes to be a king who has unlimited tickets for purchasing power. :astonished:

Why the rest of the world puts up with Kim’s ridiculousness while he torments and murders his own people, I’ll never understand.

All the tyrannies in the world need to be laid to rest.

Of course, she did not witness those things.

You use the word ‘tyranny’, and I would say this:

‘Tyranny’ is simply a subjective judgement, whether a system is tyranny or not totally depends on where you stand, and where you stand depends on where you sit under that system.

For example: In America before the black right movement, the black people in America can not vote, sometimes they are not even treated like humans by the police, for lots of black people at that time, America is a ‘white tyranny’ maintained by white police officers. But if you were a white person you will never consider America as a ‘tyranny’ country, because after all you can vote and you have your freedom of speech, and the police officers will respect your personal rights.

Likewise, for a ordinary North Korean guy, if he more or less accepts those free welfare the state provides to him and his family and he can accept many other daily inconvenience of living in North Korea, he will not likely be disloyal to the state, for him, the state is not a tyranny, the state is at worst another daily inconvenience he will live with in his life. However, the state will only becomes a ‘tyranny’ if a guy in North Korea wants more than what the state can give to him (like the right to vote) , then the state will become a tyranny for him.