4 ms·

The only thing stopping this from being really funny is how awful the life of the average North Korean is.

taligent 14y ago
Actually the average life of North Korea is not that different from those in rural China, Phillipines, Thailand and arguably some parts of the US.
- yen223 14y ago
  Do they really send people to reeducation camps for disrespecting the president in the US?
  - taligent 14y ago
    Sorry I should have clarified. I meant in terms of the basics: food, shelter, water etc. My point was that North Korea is borderline third world on par with other countries in the region.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      North korea is not borderline third world, they are much, much worse - indeed they can't even feed their own army anymore.
    - nandemo 14y ago
      Your comparison is still off. North Koreans will risk their lives to escape to rural China. In China and Philippines there might be poor sanitation and malnutrition but you won't find a lot of people actually starving to death.
- sakai 14y ago
  Umm... that's quite simply false. Between 1994 and 1998, somewhere between 240K and 3.5M people died from famine in North Korea (of a total population of ~20M).[1] And while it's possible that there are similarly arduous conditions in China, the Philippines, Thailand, and (even) the US, the average citizen is certainly better off in all of those places. To put those famine figures in perspective, that's roughly the equivalent of half of California perishing from starvation during the mid-1990s (at a national scale -- if you prefer to think at a more regional scale it's like losing SF from the Bay Area). [1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine for a quick overview
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  We desperately need a Poe's Law or a Godwin's law to describe this common scenario. In any sufficiently-long comment thread, the probability of someone falsely equating the USA and $DICTATORSHIP, or invoking moral relativism to achieve the same end, approaches 1.
  - nickolai 14y ago
    To be fair, In any sufficiently-long comment thread, the probability of someone making $STATEMENT, approaches 1.
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      Ah, yes, Borges' Law.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  In all parts of the US they have fridges (ones that freeze food) and electricity to run these. In NK, they never had many fridges (except for the most lucky) and the electricity is reliably unreliable. And it kind of goes downhill from this point.

Actually the average life of North Korea is not that different from those in rural China, Phillipines, Thailand and arguably some parts of the US.

yen223 14y ago
Do they really send people to reeducation camps for disrespecting the president in the US?
- taligent 14y ago
  Sorry I should have clarified. I meant in terms of the basics: food, shelter, water etc. My point was that North Korea is borderline third world on par with other countries in the region.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    North korea is not borderline third world, they are much, much worse - indeed they can't even feed their own army anymore.
  - nandemo 14y ago
    Your comparison is still off. North Koreans will risk their lives to escape to rural China. In China and Philippines there might be poor sanitation and malnutrition but you won't find a lot of people actually starving to death.
sakai 14y ago
Umm... that's quite simply false. Between 1994 and 1998, somewhere between 240K and 3.5M people died from famine in North Korea (of a total population of ~20M).[1] And while it's possible that there are similarly arduous conditions in China, the Philippines, Thailand, and (even) the US, the average citizen is certainly better off in all of those places. To put those famine figures in perspective, that's roughly the equivalent of half of California perishing from starvation during the mid-1990s (at a national scale -- if you prefer to think at a more regional scale it's like losing SF from the Bay Area). [1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine for a quick overview
CamperBob2 14y ago
We desperately need a Poe's Law or a Godwin's law to describe this common scenario. In any sufficiently-long comment thread, the probability of someone falsely equating the USA and $DICTATORSHIP, or invoking moral relativism to achieve the same end, approaches 1.
- nickolai 14y ago
  To be fair, In any sufficiently-long comment thread, the probability of someone making $STATEMENT, approaches 1.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Ah, yes, Borges' Law.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
In all parts of the US they have fridges (ones that freeze food) and electricity to run these. In NK, they never had many fridges (except for the most lucky) and the electricity is reliably unreliable. And it kind of goes downhill from this point.