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It is not possible to change North Korea in the short term. Like any communist society, everybody has learned to live according to the rules. It takes generatio
by forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
It is not possible to change North Korea in the short term. Like any communist society, everybody has learned to live according to the rules. It takes generations to change that, and even then it is difficult.
The learnt that the state provides everything, that they are nothing without the state. People over 20 years old are not going to learn ever to live by their own means. They need communism.
- tikhonj 15y agoI think saying that they need communism--or even that they would be worse off without it--is a little much. While the state provides everything, that's just a relative measure: in an absolute sense, it does not provide very much at all. I think that they would be better off without communism even in view of the inevitable difficulties transitioning.
- dalke 15y agoThe North Korean constitution (2009) "officially rejects North Korea's founding ideology of communism." (Quote from Wikipedia, and I've heard it elsewhere.) It's better to say it's an absolute dictatorship, or absolute monarchy (with the Divine Right of Kings thrown in for good measure).
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoRussian life expectancy plummeted in the decade after the fall of communism. Don't downplay the extreme difficulty of transitioning from a command economy to a functioning liberal market economy.
- dinkumthinkum 15y agoRussia and North Korea are completely different. I don't think North Korean life expectancy has very far to plummet.
- tikhonj 15y agoThank you, that's exactly my point: since the government isn't doing much anyhow, going over to a different system is almost definitely going to be an improvement.