Why Revolution Can’t Come to North Korea

[MachineGhost]

This bizarre technical architecture is reinforced by a terrifying analog infrastructure: the constant surveillance of secret police, the perpetual threat of prison camps, the revocable “privilege”? of living in the capital of Pyongyang, and an education system that teaches that all of this, insofar as citizens actually understand it, is fair, right and good. On the whole, North Korea’s policies make Orwell’s 1984 look like a handbook for good governance.

That, of course, is the easy answer to the natural question: Why hasn’t North Korea launched its revolution? Logistically, it’s virtually impossible. And the aforementioned horrors (the prison camps, the secret police, etc.) snuff out any display of lingering discontent. But we know that unhappiness is rife in the DPRK. The testimony of defectors is the best evidence. Along the northern border with China, North Koreans peer over the Yalu River and see uninterrupted lights in the homes of their neighbors. They watch black-market DVDs and access Chinese mobile networks with illegal phones. They swap stories with citizens who have chased food and money across the border and returned to their families. The unstoppable current of technology competes with the state loudspeakers that bark propaganda from street corners. In many cases, it wins. It’s not crazy to think that tomorrow a number of North Koreans will wake up with the thought—just the thought—that something has to change in their country; that they deserve something better. Structurally, that is the same emotional core that sparked the Arab Spring.

http://techonomy.com/2012/11/why-revolu ... rth-korea/

[Ad Orientem]

Good article and generally very accurate. Terror is an extremely effective political tool. But it's great limitation comes when life has become so intolerable for people that death no longer frightens them. And I cannot but wonder if North Korea may not be approaching that point. If and when it does, I would not want to be a high ranking government official there.

[MediumTex]

Perhaps that writer hasn't read Orwell's 1984 in a while.

I would say that North Korea isn't quite as bad as 1984.  To me, North Korea is kind of like what 1984 would be like if it was a children's cartoon.

One of the many sad and tragic things about North Korea is that they spend an enormous amount of their meager resources on completely stupid activities like group gymnastics and developing long range missiles.

[RuralEngineer]

Good article and generally very accurate. Terror is an extremely effective political tool. But it's great limitation comes when life has become so intolerable for people that death no longer frightens them. And I cannot but wonder if North Korea may not be approaching that point. If and when it does, I would not want to be a high ranking government official there.

I would posit that the situation you're referring to only works when the subjugated population has a frame of reference to compare it to.  Free people will fight very hard to throw off imposed shackles.  However, when an entire population has been born into subjugation for generations and has no other existence to reference I can see that kind of situation lasting for a very long time.

By all the accounts I've seen, death is already immensely preferable to life in North Korea.  There are whole generations of people born into their gulag system that are essentially just animals at this point.  I remember a very sad interview I saw with a young man who escaped North Korea.  He had been born in a gulag and was so acclimatized to the system that he turned his entire family in when he found out they were plotting escape.

My understanding is that North Korea is a perfect an example of 1984 as any has existed on this Earth.

[CA PP]

"'I would posit that the situation you're referring to only works when the subjugated population has a frame of reference to compare it to.  Free people will fight very hard to throw off imposed shackles.  However, when an entire population has been born into subjugation for generations and has no other existence to reference I can see that kind of situation lasting for a very long time."'

I second that.  That is about the feeling I had when I had the opportunity to live in DPRK for about a year some 10 years ago.  Revolution will not happen there any time soon in my opinion. But who knows... future is unpredictable right.  It is truly a libertarian nightmare.