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 mos

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