something that puzzles me about reactionaries speaking about north korea or any communist country, is the idea that they have a dictatorship so powerful that people aren’t able to fight against it, movies and spectacles accused as “staged” or “if he/she fails he/she will die with his/her family”. the typical idea of enemies “being weak and uberstrong at the same time”, like damn…if people in dprk were under a dictatorship so brutal as they say, you would hear more about uprisings and strikes more frequently than in USA, are you trying to tell me that the only “efficient dictatorships” are the communist ones? that capitalism isn’t able to keep people like pinochet or hitler more than a couple of decades and with constant revolts and a huge media industry? ok…
This sounds like the White Man’s Burden. The people who live in DPRK are well-equipped to know what makes a happy and healthy life. They’re not any more brainwashed/blindly obedient to “the party” than people in the West are.
What a strangely intentional choice of words. I was talking about their awareness of how their government could/does treat them. You’ve changed the subject to their awareness of…happiness and health?
Part of living a happy life is not living in fear of your government. To deny that North Koreans live in fear of their government is to basically ignore all of the information we have from the people who lived there.
The only standard that applies is the happiness and health of the people. Saying that they “don’t know” or “wouldn’t know how” dehumanizes the people who live there.
There’s disgrace in describing people this way. Do better.
All the information we have shows great happiness and prosperity of the population even against the odds of being cut off from the world by trade embargos.