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What is happening in North Korea can only be summed up as epic fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime. Maybe I don't quite u

What is happening in North Korea can only be summed up as epic fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime. Maybe I don't quite understand how mass psychology works, but I know that the population of the country is 24 million people and that the current system probably doesn't benefit 99.9% of that population (the other 0.1% being the regime members, for whom the whole thing works out just fine). Sorry for pulling the numbers out of my ass, but I am trying to convey an idea here. If that's the currently the case, then why wouldn't those 99.9% rise up and overthrow the regime that oppresses them? Even the soldiers are most likely normal people who have been conscripted at some point, why would they kill their own neighbors, friends and family members in the case of such an uprising? The people of North Korea have EVERY reason on this planet to overthrow their "government", what's preventing them from doing so? Like I said, I may be totally misunderstanding how mass psychology works in dictatorships, but this kind of thing seems pretty logical to me, even a no-brainer. Is it the lack of critical thinking? Critical mass? Inability to build up that critical mass? If so, why? Do people there really rat on their neighbors and family members like we often hear? If I were a more dismissive person I would just say "They're just getting what they're asking for", but I really want to understand how this works better, so someone please enlighten me.

skrebbel 14y ago
The people of North Korea have EVERY reason on this planet to overthrow their "government", what's preventing them from doing so? Communication and organization, I guess?
jswinghammer 14y ago
North Korea is the nation most like Oceania in 1984 than any other on Earth. People are hungry and brainwashed from birth to love their leader and the state. That's basically why no one is trying to overthrow their government. US military intervention is sort of out of the question as well due to the immense lose of life involved (mostly in South Korea).
oskarth 14y ago
Reading up on the Milgram experiment [1] could provide some insight into how such a social dynamic can be maintained. Another thing to keep in mind is that most people (most notably the soldiers) probably don't feel like they are being oppressed, or can even identify that they have a "shared enemy", i.e. the state. Revolutions are hard, and it's easy for us from more democratic countries to think of how they all should act united. As an example of that - imagine 300 years from now there are probably a lot of things that will be seen as obviously wrong with the world we are living in right now. Hindsight (or in the case of NK, a different perspective) is 20/20. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiments
crusso 14y ago
The account brought a tear to my eye as I read it. It's very sad. fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime. You can try to blame the regime; but really, this is the life that the generation in control during the Korean war chose. They fought with their lives to live under tyrannical communist rule. It's such a shame that their progeny have to live with the consequences of those decisions in perpetuity.
- talaketu 14y ago
  > You can try to blame the regime; but really, this is the life that the generation in control during the Korean war chose You are contradicting yourself.
  - crusso 14y ago
    How so? The regime that is in place today is a result of all of the decisions that all the actors made before them, particularly during the events leading up to and during the Korean War. The primary actors dictating eventual outcomes were the North Koreans themselves. Their myriad choices led to the prison society they live in today.
    - unavoidable 14y ago
      Even a cursory Google search shows how false your assumptions are. There were many external factors which regular North Korean citizens had no control over. Most accounts of the 'origin' of North Korea involve to some degree the proxy war between USSR and USA in the aftermath of the Japanese invasion in Asia. I doubt very much that "regular" North Koreans had any say in how some foreign governments decided to divide up and control their land. Follow that up with a great deal of propaganda, and you have a massively uninformed (or misinformed) citizenry controlled by the state.
      - crusso 14y ago
        Sure, there were external forces at play. There always are. That doesn't negate the fact that they made their own decisions on where to take their society and those decisions were poor ones. As a counter example, I'd say that those who fled or chose to fight the Communist forces made good decisions, at least at a societal level. Let's put it this way. If the Koreans who fought for Communism in the Korean War could see the situation today. If they could see the thriving success of South Korea vs the tyrannical poverty of North Korea. Do you think they would change their decisions made during the war? Do you think they'd fight against Communism? I think a lot of them would. They had a chance to do something. They had a chance to battle their leaders and those external forces before the door shut on their ability to do much of anything. Now it's mostly too late. A system has been set up that takes all choice from them.
nirvana 14y ago
North Korea is at the end state of socialism. Hayek wrote a famous book called "The road to serfdom", and this prison camp, and the way the rest of NK citizens live is the serfdom he's talking about. Once you accept that you're owned by "society", and that everyone is "responsible for the greater good" this is inevitably what you end up with. You ask if they lack critical thinking or a critical mass. Both of these are true, they've been indoctrinated to believe in this system, except maybe the ones like the writer of this story who were born in a camp and got less indoctrination. The sad thing is, you can see this very same thing play out repeatedly in history. The way the germans let the nazis take over, even after it was clear they were up to no good. The way there was no revolution to overthrow the soviet state in the USSR. You see these same mechanisms happening here in america today-- people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit. And there's the error- they think "the rich" or "everyone else" is going to be forced to pay for their wellbeing, never realizing that they are calling for their own enslavement. Pair the idea that you have a "right" to make others pay for healthcare (and other things) with the claim by these same people that you don't have a right to self defense (eg: own guns.) The latter is even in the constituttion. You'd think this would cause a dissonance in their head, but the party ideology is so strong they never connect the two. And when americans are being herded into camps, long disarmed, and forced to work "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs".... they will wish they still had guns. Schools teach people to be compliant little sheep and have done so for over a century, there's a distinct connection between government control over schools and lack of critical thinking in the populace. Unless things turn around soon, the US will end up in some sort of terrible state. Not likely like North Korea or Nazi germany or the USSR, but we already are suffering from the economic destruction of these kinds of policies (and like NK citizens told to blame the US for their poverty, we're told to blame wall street, germans were told to blame jews, russians were told to blame "hoarders", etc. etc. etc.)
- philbarr 14y ago
  > people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit. No, it's saying that as a society we're not going to let people suffer and die in the street when we have the technology and resources to help them. Probably you'll believe in society a bit more if you're ever in a position where you can't solve your problems yourself.
kyllo 14y ago
Because people are self-interested to the extreme, and powerful, domineering sociopaths can easily manipulate them by setting up incentive structures that play to that self-interest. Individuals and small groups of North Koreans have certainly tried to subvert the leadership--but they simply ended up in the prison camps that the article describes, because everyone else would rather stab them in the back for a reward than assist them and face certain death or imprisonment. This isn't to say that the North Korean populace is stupid or immoral. They are merely powerless. The rules of the game are so perverse, that the players don't even matter. Put any humans in that society and they will behave the same, because there is no other choice--you either play by the rules or you die. This incentive structure is so firmly entrenched that the death of Kim Jong-Il did precisely nothing. The hydra simply sprouted a new head. (And I'd argue that a Hitler assassination would likely have had the same outcome.) There is not going to be a North Korean revolution to overthrow the Kim regime. Even if the younger Kim trips up politically and is backstabbed and supplanted by another ambitious psychopath from among the political elite, he will also find the current structure beneficial. But if that person cannot cement their power and the elite descends into infighting and schism, there could be a reform as the factions compete for power (this is what happened in the USSR and PRC). The only other way the Kims will ever be deposed is through outside military action, and they know it--that's why they are armed to the teeth.
- epidemian 14y ago
  Well, you put it in a much more succinct and clearer way than i did. Thanks for the clear explanation.
epidemian 14y ago
Maybe you're underestimating the pressure society can put on individuals. And overestimating the "freedom of choice" individuals really have. If you look at it from the outside it's easy to fall in the conclusion that very few people people benefit from the regime (let's say ~0.1%). But that's only looking from a very global perspective. From each individual's perspective, some people have more privileges than others. In that sense, the people on DPRK are really not that different from you and i. We also try to live better in the the way we know and we believe that we can live better. For example, maybe if i lived in a society where the people are used to raise against corrupt governors then i'd believe that that would be the way to live better, and i'd act accordingly; but i don't, so i look for other ways to live better... ways that might not be the best for society as a whole (e.g. try to raise enough money to pay for privileged private education; even though it would be better for the whole t have a good public education system). The circumstances around us and the people at DPRK can vary a lot, but that essence, i think, still holds. We can't choose to do what we don't believe in. To put things into perspective, imagine what a non-imprisoned person at DPRK knows and what could she believe in. She knows that she is not as bad as the people in the concentration camps, that's for sure. She probably also knows that outside NK people live better, but how could she believe that she could escape, or change the society she lives in? She knows that the government would put her in those concentration camps if she tried to do anything suspicious. Not revealing attempts of escape/treason is considered enough to put you in those concentration camps, and she knows that. So she will act according to her knowledge and what she believes she can do. If she sees someone trying to escape, the best thing to do, for her life, is to tell the authorities about it. And let's go a bit higher in order of thought: she knows that the people around her will probably think the same way, so she knows she has little chances of escaping/changing something without getting caught. That is, i think, in a very simplified way, the thought process behind those dysfunctional societies. And, sadly, it's, in essence, the same thought process that prevents other (maybe less dysfunctional) societies from doing something to really help.

skrebbel 14y ago

The people of North Korea have EVERY reason on this planet to overthrow their "government", what's preventing them from doing so? Communication and organization, I guess?

jswinghammer 14y ago

North Korea is the nation most like Oceania in 1984 than any other on Earth. People are hungry and brainwashed from birth to love their leader and the state. That's basically why no one is trying to overthrow their government. US military intervention is sort of out of the question as well due to the immense lose of life involved (mostly in South Korea).

oskarth 14y ago

Reading up on the Milgram experiment [1] could provide some insight into how such a social dynamic can be maintained. Another thing to keep in mind is that most people (most notably the soldiers) probably don't feel like they are being oppressed, or can even identify that they have a "shared enemy", i.e. the state. Revolutions are hard, and it's easy for us from more democratic countries to think of how they all should act united. As an example of that - imagine 300 years from now there are probably a lot of things that will be seen as obviously wrong with the world we are living in right now. Hindsight (or in the case of NK, a different perspective) is 20/20. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiments

crusso 14y ago

The account brought a tear to my eye as I read it. It's very sad. fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime. You can try to blame the regime; but really, this is the life that the generation in control during the Korean war chose. They fought with their lives to live under tyrannical communist rule. It's such a shame that their progeny have to live with the consequences of those decisions in perpetuity.

talaketu 14y ago
> You can try to blame the regime; but really, this is the life that the generation in control during the Korean war chose You are contradicting yourself.
- crusso 14y ago
  How so? The regime that is in place today is a result of all of the decisions that all the actors made before them, particularly during the events leading up to and during the Korean War. The primary actors dictating eventual outcomes were the North Koreans themselves. Their myriad choices led to the prison society they live in today.
  - unavoidable 14y ago
    Even a cursory Google search shows how false your assumptions are. There were many external factors which regular North Korean citizens had no control over. Most accounts of the 'origin' of North Korea involve to some degree the proxy war between USSR and USA in the aftermath of the Japanese invasion in Asia. I doubt very much that "regular" North Koreans had any say in how some foreign governments decided to divide up and control their land. Follow that up with a great deal of propaganda, and you have a massively uninformed (or misinformed) citizenry controlled by the state.
    - crusso 14y ago
      Sure, there were external forces at play. There always are. That doesn't negate the fact that they made their own decisions on where to take their society and those decisions were poor ones. As a counter example, I'd say that those who fled or chose to fight the Communist forces made good decisions, at least at a societal level. Let's put it this way. If the Koreans who fought for Communism in the Korean War could see the situation today. If they could see the thriving success of South Korea vs the tyrannical poverty of North Korea. Do you think they would change their decisions made during the war? Do you think they'd fight against Communism? I think a lot of them would. They had a chance to do something. They had a chance to battle their leaders and those external forces before the door shut on their ability to do much of anything. Now it's mostly too late. A system has been set up that takes all choice from them.

nirvana 14y ago

North Korea is at the end state of socialism. Hayek wrote a famous book called "The road to serfdom", and this prison camp, and the way the rest of NK citizens live is the serfdom he's talking about. Once you accept that you're owned by "society", and that everyone is "responsible for the greater good" this is inevitably what you end up with. You ask if they lack critical thinking or a critical mass. Both of these are true, they've been indoctrinated to believe in this system, except maybe the ones like the writer of this story who were born in a camp and got less indoctrination. The sad thing is, you can see this very same thing play out repeatedly in history. The way the germans let the nazis take over, even after it was clear they were up to no good. The way there was no revolution to overthrow the soviet state in the USSR. You see these same mechanisms happening here in america today-- people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit. And there's the error- they think "the rich" or "everyone else" is going to be forced to pay for their wellbeing, never realizing that they are calling for their own enslavement. Pair the idea that you have a "right" to make others pay for healthcare (and other things) with the claim by these same people that you don't have a right to self defense (eg: own guns.) The latter is even in the constituttion. You'd think this would cause a dissonance in their head, but the party ideology is so strong they never connect the two. And when americans are being herded into camps, long disarmed, and forced to work "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs".... they will wish they still had guns. Schools teach people to be compliant little sheep and have done so for over a century, there's a distinct connection between government control over schools and lack of critical thinking in the populace. Unless things turn around soon, the US will end up in some sort of terrible state. Not likely like North Korea or Nazi germany or the USSR, but we already are suffering from the economic destruction of these kinds of policies (and like NK citizens told to blame the US for their poverty, we're told to blame wall street, germans were told to blame jews, russians were told to blame "hoarders", etc. etc. etc.)

philbarr 14y ago
> people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit. No, it's saying that as a society we're not going to let people suffer and die in the street when we have the technology and resources to help them. Probably you'll believe in society a bit more if you're ever in a position where you can't solve your problems yourself.

kyllo 14y ago

Because people are self-interested to the extreme, and powerful, domineering sociopaths can easily manipulate them by setting up incentive structures that play to that self-interest. Individuals and small groups of North Koreans have certainly tried to subvert the leadership--but they simply ended up in the prison camps that the article describes, because everyone else would rather stab them in the back for a reward than assist them and face certain death or imprisonment. This isn't to say that the North Korean populace is stupid or immoral. They are merely powerless. The rules of the game are so perverse, that the players don't even matter. Put any humans in that society and they will behave the same, because there is no other choice--you either play by the rules or you die. This incentive structure is so firmly entrenched that the death of Kim Jong-Il did precisely nothing. The hydra simply sprouted a new head. (And I'd argue that a Hitler assassination would likely have had the same outcome.) There is not going to be a North Korean revolution to overthrow the Kim regime. Even if the younger Kim trips up politically and is backstabbed and supplanted by another ambitious psychopath from among the political elite, he will also find the current structure beneficial. But if that person cannot cement their power and the elite descends into infighting and schism, there could be a reform as the factions compete for power (this is what happened in the USSR and PRC). The only other way the Kims will ever be deposed is through outside military action, and they know it--that's why they are armed to the teeth.

epidemian 14y ago
Well, you put it in a much more succinct and clearer way than i did. Thanks for the clear explanation.

epidemian 14y ago

Maybe you're underestimating the pressure society can put on individuals. And overestimating the "freedom of choice" individuals really have. If you look at it from the outside it's easy to fall in the conclusion that very few people people benefit from the regime (let's say ~0.1%). But that's only looking from a very global perspective. From each individual's perspective, some people have more privileges than others. In that sense, the people on DPRK are really not that different from you and i. We also try to live better in the the way we know and we believe that we can live better. For example, maybe if i lived in a society where the people are used to raise against corrupt governors then i'd believe that that would be the way to live better, and i'd act accordingly; but i don't, so i look for other ways to live better... ways that might not be the best for society as a whole (e.g. try to raise enough money to pay for privileged private education; even though it would be better for the whole t have a good public education system). The circumstances around us and the people at DPRK can vary a lot, but that essence, i think, still holds. We can't choose to do what we don't believe in. To put things into perspective, imagine what a non-imprisoned person at DPRK knows and what could she believe in. She knows that she is not as bad as the people in the concentration camps, that's for sure. She probably also knows that outside NK people live better, but how could she believe that she could escape, or change the society she lives in? She knows that the government would put her in those concentration camps if she tried to do anything suspicious. Not revealing attempts of escape/treason is considered enough to put you in those concentration camps, and she knows that. So she will act according to her knowledge and what she believes she can do. If she sees someone trying to escape, the best thing to do, for her life, is to tell the authorities about it. And let's go a bit higher in order of thought: she knows that the people around her will probably think the same way, so she knows she has little chances of escaping/changing something without getting caught. That is, i think, in a very simplified way, the thought process behind those dysfunctional societies. And, sadly, it's, in essence, the same thought process that prevents other (maybe less dysfunctional) societies from doing something to really help.