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North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

bbc.co.uk

11–20 of 100 posts

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#11
Do the sanctions prevent other countries from providing humanitarian aid?

Russia helped North Korea previously, but has been strained in years, plus the war probably further strains any aid.

China could certainly help, but that relationship I think is also strained by North Korea not being able to pay their bills for crucial resources to keep the lights on.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#12
post #9

I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…

What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#13
> They must attend their weekly Life Review Session, compulsory for every citizen. Here they admit to their mistakes and failures, whilst reporting the shortcomings of their neighbours.

This sounds like something taken straight from https://elan.school/. Or is it the other way around?

My parents lived through communism and even during the worst days of the system it wasn't this bad - chiefly because it was impractical to put so much effort into exerting control over the population.

You could get jailed for being at the "wrong" student gathering - just like my dad was more than once, but that was it. They would eventually release you because even the most corrupt representatives of the system had better things to do with their time.

I have to ask - what does the NK leadership hope to achieve here? Control? Over who - the dead?

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#14
post #9

I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…

What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)

I would have gave MacArthur whatever he needed to win.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#15
post #9

I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…

What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)

I mentioned at the end of my comment I don’t have a good solution. I think something being tragic and shameful is possible even if we don’t have a solution. Just on a human level, this is humans doing horrible things to other humans. To me that’s shameful for all of us on the scale of history.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#16

Do the sanctions prevent other countries from providing humanitarian aid? Russia helped North Korea previously, but has been strained in years, plus the war probably further strains any aid. China could certainly help, but that relationship I think is also strained by North Korea not being able to pay their bills for crucial resources to keep the lights on.

The sanctions from outside generally don't limit outside countries from providing aid, but the north korean government closing its borders clearly does. They've never allowed foreign aid workers in generally, and now they've evicted pretty much all foreigners. As the article says, they don't want anyone to understand how much better life is in other countries. Even when foreign countries attempt to send them aid materials no strings attached, the government typically stockpiles it for the benefit of those in power.

And yeah, the argument of "other people have it worse than you so you have no right to complain" is lazy self-serving garbage.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#17
North Korea runs contrary to my intuition about dictators. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of regicide, but most dictatorships, even among the most horrific, represent some sort of misguided attempt at benevolance.

Killing dissidents? Sure, they're getting in the way of your utopian plan. Failed economic plans that lead to famine? Well, the idea had some justification, better pivot to avoid further harm. Hell, even overtly fascist ideologies have some subset of the "common folk" that they attempt to promote.

North Korea's leadership doesn't seem to have any interest at all in the wellbeing of the populace. I'd expect radical, top down changes to be common place until they found some solution that didn't have almost half of the country malnourished. Yet they just seem to double down, consistently.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#18
post #13

> They must attend their weekly Life Review Session, compulsory for every citizen. Here they admit to their mistakes and failures, whilst reporting the shortcomings of their neighbours. This sounds like something taken straight from https://elan.school/ . Or is it the other way around? My parents lived through communism and even during the worst days of the system it wasn't this bad - chiefly because it was impractic…

> > They must attend their weekly Life Review Session, compulsory for every citizen. Here they admit to their mistakes and failures, whilst reporting the shortcomings of their neighbours.

This is agile/scrum's sprint retrospectives, for every aspect of life and even more often. Seems horrible.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#19
post #6

> Like most women in North Korea, she is the main earner in the family. The meagre wages men earn in their compulsory state jobs are all but worthless, forcing their wives to find creative ways to make a living. Really interesting! Economic policies have created a system where women earn much more than men on average. I think that's quite rare globally.

This is not in any way a victory for feminism, or for anyone else. The men are basically slaves, and the women are considered to be too inferior to be slaves so they do black market work.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#20
post #9

I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…

What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)

If China decided they would no longer back North Korea, the regime could be replaced in hours. Most of the time, when toppling regimes, you have to be worried about someone even worse taking over. In this case, I don't see how it could get any worse.
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