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When the DPRK regime falls, these people are going to be beyond confused.

• jpatokal 12y ago
  Probably not as much as you think. The author seems to be taking her students' comments and writings at face value, but her students have to praise the Great Leader and kimchi and whatnot in public, regardless of what they actually think. Remember, her students were the elite of DPRK, the kids of high-ranking party functionaries etc, who certainly have access to Western goods and South Korean TV and whatnot. They know full well that much of what they are taught and the line they have to parrot is a lie; but there is just no safe channel to express that, particularly to a foreigner like her. Now they may not realize the full extent to which everything is a lie, and there's probably a few particularly dim true believers in the mix, but in the North Korea of the 2010s, post murderous famine and in an era of mushrooming black markets, the failure of Juche is pretty obvious.