5 ms·

Ask a North Korean: what's life like in the army?

53 points by yitchelle 11y ago

pavlov 11y ago
North Korea may be the worst place in the world to do military service. Eritrea also seems to be solidly in the running for this questionable record: http://taskandpurpose.com/eritrea-is-the-last-place-in-the-world-you-would-want-to-serve-in-the-military/ http://taskandpurpose.com/eritrea-is-the-last-place-in-the-w...
- HiYaBarbie 11y ago
  From the article: In the United States, individuals join the military as a way to serve their country with honor and pursue new career opportunities. But that’s not the case in Eritrea, where men and women risk their lives and those of their families just to escape military service. Both are nation-states though, and both have governments that pass laws and then punish the masses for disobeying them. In other words, the people of both countries have rulers, and the main difference is in the rulers' degree of "benevolence" towards their subjects. You're fine with your particular government ruling over you because you think they would never do what Eritrea and North-Korea are doing. But that's how German people thought before Germany turned into a mass-murdering Nazi-Germany, so that kind of thinking is clearly misguided. Any nation-state is just a police state waiting to happen. Then it does happen, and years or decades pass until tyranny subsides, and then people go back to "it could never happen here!" How crazy is that?
  - SEJeff 11y ago
    I guess if you're more of an Anarchist, you could go to Somolia, or Afghanistan, parts of both are considered fallen states with no actual government.
    - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
      Are you trying to make an argument? What is it?
niklasni1 11y ago
> Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts If people join after high-school, how does that work?
- drcode 11y ago
  They starve even before their military service- The only reason this comes up for the military is because soldiers from both sides appear near each other on the borders, making the height comparison easy.
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    Starvation alongside a severe lack of essential nutrients. So even if they get enough calories in their daily intake its likely their highly restricted choices make it near impossible to obtain the right nutrients
  - marme 11y ago
    south korea specifically picks only tall soldiers to stand guard at the border. They do it on purpose to intimidate the north koreans. It is consider special duty in south korean army and you must be hand picked. The US does this shit too, to be a flag bearer or part of official honor guard you must be over 6 feet tall
    - pavlov 11y ago
      So why wouldn't North Korea do the same?
- spikels 11y ago
  Their mothers were malnourished
brixon 11y ago
"Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts" Diet early in life has the determination if you are going to have a stunted growth. By the time you finish high school you are about as tall as you are going to be.
- spikels 11y ago
  You can also get stunted growth if your mother is malnourished during pregnancy or even before. In fact, it can take several generations for the effects malnourishment to be eliminated.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    My grandparents and granduncles were all Irish farmers who immigrated after WW2. None were over 5'9. From photographs, it appears that their parents were noticeably shorter. None of the males of my generation is under 6', and most are > 6'2". None of the females are shorter than 5'8" or so.
drcode 11y ago
Whenever I hear about disadvantaged North Koreans, it confuses me how they can survive- Some of these people say they had never eaten any other food besides ground corn, even rice was an unobtainable luxury. How is it possible for a person with that type of diet to remain alive, from just a pure medical/physiological standpoint?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- cryoshon 11y ago
  There is a rationing system for rice and corn. It's highly unlikely that this is enough food to live on, so people probably turn to the black market for food-- but even that is probably quite thin, and extremely expensive. Eating edible grasses/herbs (even ferns), very weak bone-based soup/tea, gutter fish, frogs, roadkill, rice roots/tubers, tree bark (the NKs have been known to make pine bark "cake"), wild mushrooms, oysters/clams (if near the ocean), wild berries/fruits, lichen, bugs, rats, wild hemp (extremely nutrient rich and unregulated in NK), and sparrows, all of which are plentiful in NK. Knowing Koreans, they probably also have family gardens where they grow garlic and shallots (relatively easy to do), provided that they can retain viable seeds. I'd imagine that these private gardens are frequently stolen from by other hungry people, so they may be clandestine a lot of the time. No kimchi, though-- they can't grow the cabbage. You see this kind of food pyramid a lot during famines-- most recently, during the Cambodian genocide but also during the Great Leap Forward in China and the Holodomor in Ukraine. Scavenging low-density calorie sources from wherever, with increasingly lowered standards for what constitutes food. The problem becomes when effectively everyone is scavenging, which leads to sparse finds and increased calorie usage during harvesting. I assume they have been in this state of extremely scarce scavengeables for years now. There's effectively no access to dairy items or fresh fruits from what I can tell. This probably results in near-endemic calcium deficiency, and is supported by their tragically reduced heights and high infant mortality. During the last NK famine in the 90s, there were widespread rumors of abduction of children for the purpose of cannibalism, and people were told not to eat meat unless they knew the source. It's tremendously sad.
  - 11y ago
jkot 11y ago
There is big difference between elite North Korean army and regular army. Totalitarian regime would never trust their citizens with guns. Regular army is basically forced labor camp. Some of them might train shooting, but at level three shots per week, in heavily guarded area. Source: my father served in communist army.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yeah, this is an important part of the picture as well. In NK, "being in the army" is basically being a slave. Maybe some people are siphoned off from the labor pool to be trained in actual warfare, but most aren't.
smacktoward 11y ago
> The main difficulty conscripts must endure is constant hunger. Soldiers in the special units are well taken care of but those stationed outside the capital Pyongyang are only given two or three potatoes a meal, or are fed solely on raw corn kernels or corn rice... North Korea may be the worst place in the world to do military service. I don't doubt it, but it's probably worth noting that those North Koreans inside the army still live better than those outside it. The official ideology of the modern North Korean state is songun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun), "military first," meaning that the military's needs are prioritized when allocating the nation's extremely scarce resources. (Which makes sense, considering how critical the army is to maintaining the regime's hold on power.) So if soldiers are only getting two potatoes, that doesn't mean that they'll be looking enviously upon the diets of the civilian population. The civilians will be having to make do with even less.
jeremyt 11y ago
Also related, I have a friend that runs a nonprofit to try to get information about the outside world into North Korea. Running a fundraiser currently: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6-000-miles-to-freedom#/story https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6-000-miles-to-freedom#/s...

53 points by yitchelle 11y ago

North Korea may be the worst place in the world to do military service. Eritrea also seems to be solidly in the running for this questionable record: http://taskandpurpose.com/eritrea-is-the-last-place-in-the-world-you-would-want-to-serve-in-the-military/ http://taskandpurpose.com/eritrea-is-the-last-place-in-the-w...

HiYaBarbie 11y ago
From the article: In the United States, individuals join the military as a way to serve their country with honor and pursue new career opportunities. But that’s not the case in Eritrea, where men and women risk their lives and those of their families just to escape military service. Both are nation-states though, and both have governments that pass laws and then punish the masses for disobeying them. In other words, the people of both countries have rulers, and the main difference is in the rulers' degree of "benevolence" towards their subjects. You're fine with your particular government ruling over you because you think they would never do what Eritrea and North-Korea are doing. But that's how German people thought before Germany turned into a mass-murdering Nazi-Germany, so that kind of thinking is clearly misguided. Any nation-state is just a police state waiting to happen. Then it does happen, and years or decades pass until tyranny subsides, and then people go back to "it could never happen here!" How crazy is that?
- SEJeff 11y ago
  I guess if you're more of an Anarchist, you could go to Somolia, or Afghanistan, parts of both are considered fallen states with no actual government.
  - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
    Are you trying to make an argument? What is it?

niklasni1 11y ago

> Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts If people join after high-school, how does that work?

drcode 11y ago
They starve even before their military service- The only reason this comes up for the military is because soldiers from both sides appear near each other on the borders, making the height comparison easy.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  Starvation alongside a severe lack of essential nutrients. So even if they get enough calories in their daily intake its likely their highly restricted choices make it near impossible to obtain the right nutrients
- marme 11y ago
  south korea specifically picks only tall soldiers to stand guard at the border. They do it on purpose to intimidate the north koreans. It is consider special duty in south korean army and you must be hand picked. The US does this shit too, to be a flag bearer or part of official honor guard you must be over 6 feet tall
  - pavlov 11y ago
    So why wouldn't North Korea do the same?
spikels 11y ago
Their mothers were malnourished

brixon 11y ago

"Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts" Diet early in life has the determination if you are going to have a stunted growth. By the time you finish high school you are about as tall as you are going to be.

spikels 11y ago
You can also get stunted growth if your mother is malnourished during pregnancy or even before. In fact, it can take several generations for the effects malnourishment to be eliminated.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  My grandparents and granduncles were all Irish farmers who immigrated after WW2. None were over 5'9. From photographs, it appears that their parents were noticeably shorter. None of the males of my generation is under 6', and most are > 6'2". None of the females are shorter than 5'8" or so.

drcode 11y ago

Whenever I hear about disadvantaged North Koreans, it confuses me how they can survive- Some of these people say they had never eaten any other food besides ground corn, even rice was an unobtainable luxury. How is it possible for a person with that type of diet to remain alive, from just a pure medical/physiological standpoint?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cryoshon 11y ago
There is a rationing system for rice and corn. It's highly unlikely that this is enough food to live on, so people probably turn to the black market for food-- but even that is probably quite thin, and extremely expensive. Eating edible grasses/herbs (even ferns), very weak bone-based soup/tea, gutter fish, frogs, roadkill, rice roots/tubers, tree bark (the NKs have been known to make pine bark "cake"), wild mushrooms, oysters/clams (if near the ocean), wild berries/fruits, lichen, bugs, rats, wild hemp (extremely nutrient rich and unregulated in NK), and sparrows, all of which are plentiful in NK. Knowing Koreans, they probably also have family gardens where they grow garlic and shallots (relatively easy to do), provided that they can retain viable seeds. I'd imagine that these private gardens are frequently stolen from by other hungry people, so they may be clandestine a lot of the time. No kimchi, though-- they can't grow the cabbage. You see this kind of food pyramid a lot during famines-- most recently, during the Cambodian genocide but also during the Great Leap Forward in China and the Holodomor in Ukraine. Scavenging low-density calorie sources from wherever, with increasingly lowered standards for what constitutes food. The problem becomes when effectively everyone is scavenging, which leads to sparse finds and increased calorie usage during harvesting. I assume they have been in this state of extremely scarce scavengeables for years now. There's effectively no access to dairy items or fresh fruits from what I can tell. This probably results in near-endemic calcium deficiency, and is supported by their tragically reduced heights and high infant mortality. During the last NK famine in the 90s, there were widespread rumors of abduction of children for the purpose of cannibalism, and people were told not to eat meat unless they knew the source. It's tremendously sad.
- 11y ago

jkot 11y ago

There is big difference between elite North Korean army and regular army. Totalitarian regime would never trust their citizens with guns. Regular army is basically forced labor camp. Some of them might train shooting, but at level three shots per week, in heavily guarded area. Source: my father served in communist army.

cryoshon 11y ago
Yeah, this is an important part of the picture as well. In NK, "being in the army" is basically being a slave. Maybe some people are siphoned off from the labor pool to be trained in actual warfare, but most aren't.

smacktoward 11y ago

> The main difficulty conscripts must endure is constant hunger. Soldiers in the special units are well taken care of but those stationed outside the capital Pyongyang are only given two or three potatoes a meal, or are fed solely on raw corn kernels or corn rice... North Korea may be the worst place in the world to do military service. I don't doubt it, but it's probably worth noting that those North Koreans inside the army still live better than those outside it. The official ideology of the modern North Korean state is songun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun), "military first," meaning that the military's needs are prioritized when allocating the nation's extremely scarce resources. (Which makes sense, considering how critical the army is to maintaining the regime's hold on power.) So if soldiers are only getting two potatoes, that doesn't mean that they'll be looking enviously upon the diets of the civilian population. The civilians will be having to make do with even less.

jeremyt 11y ago

Also related, I have a friend that runs a nonprofit to try to get information about the outside world into North Korea. Running a fundraiser currently: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6-000-miles-to-freedom#/story https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6-000-miles-to-freedom#/s...