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"Looking to the future, experts on the region are focusing on what happens ... when North Korea inevitably collapses" I'm no fan of the DPRK regime, but isn't

"Looking to the future, experts on the region are focusing on what happens ... when North Korea inevitably collapses" I'm no fan of the DPRK regime, but isn't it naive to assume that any state, even a completely mismanaged despotic one, will "inevitably" collapse? True, they rely on China just for bare survival, but they have their stuff together enough to create a functioning nuclear weapons program in the face of crippling sanctions, so it's not infeasible that they could find a way to continue on if they were totally isolated - maybe they'd kidnap some Monsanto scientists to provide them with GMO and fertilizer technology. Basically, they don't currently bother feeding their people because they don't currently have to, but there's nothing proving they can't adapt if circumstances change. And I'm not saying they're likely to conquer the world, but with the nuclear deterrent, it's not terribly likely that the US or anyone will invade them without direct cause.

M_Grey 10y ago
>I'm no fan of the DPRK regime, but isn't it naive to assume that any state, even a completely mismanaged despotic one, will "inevitably" collapse? I could not agree more, and if it does collapse there will be a lot of credit taken for prescience that will amount to having said the same thing for 60+ years. I think the problem is that the intellectual space around the DPRK is dominated by loud people with minimal expertise, but since expertise is so lacking, loud counts for a lot. I've read as much as I could on the subject of the DPRK, and even thoughtful scholars who make very guarded predictions seem very aware of the limits of their knowledge. One thing that most of them seem to agree on, is that most of us in the West underestimate the degree to which the North Korean people are into their own propaganda/mythology. That at least, seems to match with the struggles that defectors seem to face with adjustment. In essence, the people in the DPRK might not buy into the official line in all things, but what they do believe is no less bizarre.
- valarauca1 10y ago
  us in the West underestimate the degree to which the North Korean people are into their own propaganda/mythology. A lot of people truly do underestimate this. It is hard for Westerners to fully conceptualize but the ideological roots of Juche religious aspects. A surprising number of North Korean experts actively refuse to read Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il writing on the subject. Which the DPRK actively distributes online. Ignoring primary sources is weird when you're an expert in subject matter. The main purpose of Juche (from the ideological, not material stand point) is inscribing the significance of the socialist revolution into the consciences of the people at a religious level. As Kim Jong-il goes on to explain that people _need_ some social construct of a deity figure on a sociology-psychicological level. The goal of Juche is to place the importance of the revolution there (as communism is famously extremely anti-religious). Kim Il-Sung's writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. Without that daily constant re-enforcement people may lose site of its long term goals. He goes on to blame the failure of the USSR on this, one of his many critiques of Stalin. --- We rarely think but in English the expression, "Oh God." Is one deeply rooted within the western Juedeo-Christian tradition. It links our culture back to history of everything Caesar to Charlemagne to WW1 to the present. Once you can conceptualize that sociology-psychicological connection you can really see how deep ideological indoctrination can run. Furthermore what Juche and the DPRK has achieved.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    >writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. The shaping of cultural life via the relations to the means of production refers to the shaping of the superstructure by the base, Marx claims. Although Bookchin has his own ideas (that the superstructure is not entirely shaped by the base, as evidenced by societies involving shamanism, something which he claims does not arise out of the economic base) most Marxists believe that every aspect of society is given rise to by material conditions, i.e the relationship of people to their means of sustenance. For the proletariat under capiatalism, this means their culture and way of life is shaped by working in return for wage-labour. However I feel as though Il-Sung may have been hinting at something we already recognise in our own societies; the "American Dream" may be such a substitute for a deity figure which encourages blind faith in the capitalist system, in which "anyone can be anything with enough hard work". So the question is: does Socialism require such a system of belief, or can it as Marx claims go without due to the normalisation of the Socialist mode of production? This dilemma is a common theme of debate within Socialism, with one camp of Orthodox Marxists saying that everything can be explained in terms of the economic base, while communalists and "identity politicians" claim that changing the relationship to the MoP does little to eradicate the cause of non-economic power structures, including shamanism, racism, sexism etc.
- gibbitz 10y ago
  Regardless of the likelihood of a collapse, it is a possibility. No plan is a plan for failure. What's fascinating for me about this video is that it shows how the DPRK citizens have a hard time with capitalism (implying that it isn't "natural" as the capitalism marketing machine would have us think). Usually stories on the DPRK focus on the problems inside that country without turning the same eye on our systems.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I agree with you that 'collapse' is not really something that is inevitable. I do expect however that there will come a point when either China or South Korea will see it as the 'least painful' option to annex it. And in some ways I find it interesting to interpret moves by China and the rest of the world in that light.
monort 10y ago
They had a famine in 90s with a million deaths without a collapse. The reason that can cause the collapse of the government is that people there are getting richer due to a mild capitalistic reforms, and they have access to more information, e.g. more and more families have a DVD player and watch South Korean dramas. When enough people realize, that South Korea is a better place and considers them citizens, the wall will fall.
- lisper 10y ago
  People made exactly the same predictions about the Castro regime in Cuba. They were wrong about that. I predict they are wrong about this. I think people underestimate the power of indoctrination. Predicting that the Kim regime will fall when people realize how much better life is in South Korea is like predicting that the Trump regime will fall when Americans realize how much better life is in Denmark.
  - monort 10y ago
    Arguably there is a difference - Castro regime do not have half of Cuba with people of the same culture living in a drastically better conditions and most of population unaware of that fact.
    - lisper 10y ago
      Castro has people with the same culture living in much better conditions 100 miles away and everyone is aware of it. It's not quite the same, but if anything, the difference would make Castro more likely to fall, not less.
    - xorblurb 10y ago
      Is this really the same culture at this point?
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Two things: First, Cuba is different because the Castro regime is in fact going to fall, soon. It just waits for one old man (Raul Castro) to die. After that comes... something else. North Korea won't fall like that if the "Dear Leader" produces children, because they've somehow become a hereditary Communist dictatorship. Second, the difference between Denmark and the US is massively less than the difference between South and North Korea, so that comparison doesn't prove your point as well as you think.
yongjik 10y ago
Some South Koreans have been predicting NK's demise since the 90's. They didn't collapse then, and I don't think they would now. For nearly a decade South Korea's conservative government said they may collapse any time, and South Korea's strategy to deal with it was essentially "cut whatever ties we have, guard our borders tightly, starve them out and (some magic happens here)." First, it deprived us of whatever small leverage we used to have, and second, collapse of NK will be a total economic disaster for SK. Europe has trouble dealing with five million Syrians. North Korea has 25 million people and all they have to do to enter South Korea, should their nation fail, is to walk south. That's not discrediting that North Korea is a thoroughly unpleasant criminal state which has no right to exist. But they do exist, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, and anyone trying to deal with NK had better take that into their plan.
- dba7dba 10y ago
  North Koreans can't really simply Walk to South Korea because of DMZ. It would be easier for them to walk to China. And S Korea and others are planning for possibility of NK collapsing. But I honestly believe no planning would be enough. NK people will have to be fenced into NK for like 10 years to be reprogrammed. And allowed out to rest of world slowly.
nonsince 10y ago
The North Korea we know, with its God-king dynasty and intense insularism, is thoroughly the creation of Kim Jong-Il. He manipulated himself into power, usurping his father. Truly, one of the greatest modern talents in bastardry. Kim Jong-Un is a kid who was mollycoddled his whole life and is now in charge of a country that he is far from the most powerful character in. If North Korea will survive, it will likely not be with the Kim dynasty at the helm. I would put money on a coup by those closest to Kim Jong-Un, followed by China immediately stomping on them. I'm just an armchair NK enthusiast though so don't take that as gospel.

M_Grey 10y ago

>I'm no fan of the DPRK regime, but isn't it naive to assume that any state, even a completely mismanaged despotic one, will "inevitably" collapse? I could not agree more, and if it does collapse there will be a lot of credit taken for prescience that will amount to having said the same thing for 60+ years. I think the problem is that the intellectual space around the DPRK is dominated by loud people with minimal expertise, but since expertise is so lacking, loud counts for a lot. I've read as much as I could on the subject of the DPRK, and even thoughtful scholars who make very guarded predictions seem very aware of the limits of their knowledge. One thing that most of them seem to agree on, is that most of us in the West underestimate the degree to which the North Korean people are into their own propaganda/mythology. That at least, seems to match with the struggles that defectors seem to face with adjustment. In essence, the people in the DPRK might not buy into the official line in all things, but what they do believe is no less bizarre.

valarauca1 10y ago
us in the West underestimate the degree to which the North Korean people are into their own propaganda/mythology. A lot of people truly do underestimate this. It is hard for Westerners to fully conceptualize but the ideological roots of Juche religious aspects. A surprising number of North Korean experts actively refuse to read Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il writing on the subject. Which the DPRK actively distributes online. Ignoring primary sources is weird when you're an expert in subject matter. The main purpose of Juche (from the ideological, not material stand point) is inscribing the significance of the socialist revolution into the consciences of the people at a religious level. As Kim Jong-il goes on to explain that people _need_ some social construct of a deity figure on a sociology-psychicological level. The goal of Juche is to place the importance of the revolution there (as communism is famously extremely anti-religious). Kim Il-Sung's writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. Without that daily constant re-enforcement people may lose site of its long term goals. He goes on to blame the failure of the USSR on this, one of his many critiques of Stalin. --- We rarely think but in English the expression, "Oh God." Is one deeply rooted within the western Juedeo-Christian tradition. It links our culture back to history of everything Caesar to Charlemagne to WW1 to the present. Once you can conceptualize that sociology-psychicological connection you can really see how deep ideological indoctrination can run. Furthermore what Juche and the DPRK has achieved.
- ue_ 10y ago
  >writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. The shaping of cultural life via the relations to the means of production refers to the shaping of the superstructure by the base, Marx claims. Although Bookchin has his own ideas (that the superstructure is not entirely shaped by the base, as evidenced by societies involving shamanism, something which he claims does not arise out of the economic base) most Marxists believe that every aspect of society is given rise to by material conditions, i.e the relationship of people to their means of sustenance. For the proletariat under capiatalism, this means their culture and way of life is shaped by working in return for wage-labour. However I feel as though Il-Sung may have been hinting at something we already recognise in our own societies; the "American Dream" may be such a substitute for a deity figure which encourages blind faith in the capitalist system, in which "anyone can be anything with enough hard work". So the question is: does Socialism require such a system of belief, or can it as Marx claims go without due to the normalisation of the Socialist mode of production? This dilemma is a common theme of debate within Socialism, with one camp of Orthodox Marxists saying that everything can be explained in terms of the economic base, while communalists and "identity politicians" claim that changing the relationship to the MoP does little to eradicate the cause of non-economic power structures, including shamanism, racism, sexism etc.
gibbitz 10y ago
Regardless of the likelihood of a collapse, it is a possibility. No plan is a plan for failure. What's fascinating for me about this video is that it shows how the DPRK citizens have a hard time with capitalism (implying that it isn't "natural" as the capitalism marketing machine would have us think). Usually stories on the DPRK focus on the problems inside that country without turning the same eye on our systems.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I agree with you that 'collapse' is not really something that is inevitable. I do expect however that there will come a point when either China or South Korea will see it as the 'least painful' option to annex it. And in some ways I find it interesting to interpret moves by China and the rest of the world in that light.

monort 10y ago

They had a famine in 90s with a million deaths without a collapse. The reason that can cause the collapse of the government is that people there are getting richer due to a mild capitalistic reforms, and they have access to more information, e.g. more and more families have a DVD player and watch South Korean dramas. When enough people realize, that South Korea is a better place and considers them citizens, the wall will fall.

lisper 10y ago
People made exactly the same predictions about the Castro regime in Cuba. They were wrong about that. I predict they are wrong about this. I think people underestimate the power of indoctrination. Predicting that the Kim regime will fall when people realize how much better life is in South Korea is like predicting that the Trump regime will fall when Americans realize how much better life is in Denmark.
- monort 10y ago
  Arguably there is a difference - Castro regime do not have half of Cuba with people of the same culture living in a drastically better conditions and most of population unaware of that fact.
  - lisper 10y ago
    Castro has people with the same culture living in much better conditions 100 miles away and everyone is aware of it. It's not quite the same, but if anything, the difference would make Castro more likely to fall, not less.
  - xorblurb 10y ago
    Is this really the same culture at this point?
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Two things: First, Cuba is different because the Castro regime is in fact going to fall, soon. It just waits for one old man (Raul Castro) to die. After that comes... something else. North Korea won't fall like that if the "Dear Leader" produces children, because they've somehow become a hereditary Communist dictatorship. Second, the difference between Denmark and the US is massively less than the difference between South and North Korea, so that comparison doesn't prove your point as well as you think.

yongjik 10y ago

Some South Koreans have been predicting NK's demise since the 90's. They didn't collapse then, and I don't think they would now. For nearly a decade South Korea's conservative government said they may collapse any time, and South Korea's strategy to deal with it was essentially "cut whatever ties we have, guard our borders tightly, starve them out and (some magic happens here)." First, it deprived us of whatever small leverage we used to have, and second, collapse of NK will be a total economic disaster for SK. Europe has trouble dealing with five million Syrians. North Korea has 25 million people and all they have to do to enter South Korea, should their nation fail, is to walk south. That's not discrediting that North Korea is a thoroughly unpleasant criminal state which has no right to exist. But they do exist, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, and anyone trying to deal with NK had better take that into their plan.

dba7dba 10y ago
North Koreans can't really simply Walk to South Korea because of DMZ. It would be easier for them to walk to China. And S Korea and others are planning for possibility of NK collapsing. But I honestly believe no planning would be enough. NK people will have to be fenced into NK for like 10 years to be reprogrammed. And allowed out to rest of world slowly.

nonsince 10y ago

The North Korea we know, with its God-king dynasty and intense insularism, is thoroughly the creation of Kim Jong-Il. He manipulated himself into power, usurping his father. Truly, one of the greatest modern talents in bastardry. Kim Jong-Un is a kid who was mollycoddled his whole life and is now in charge of a country that he is far from the most powerful character in. If North Korea will survive, it will likely not be with the Kim dynasty at the helm. I would put money on a coup by those closest to Kim Jong-Un, followed by China immediately stomping on them. I'm just an armchair NK enthusiast though so don't take that as gospel.