Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by Dolan »

Well, many Americans seem to think that if a country is controlled by a totalitarian regime, like North Korea is, then the US must liberate the shit out of them, by force. No questions asked, only after the bombing stopped. But the Iraq experience shows just how bad this mindset is, both for Americans (who wasted hundreds of billions on a bottomless pit) and for Iraqis who are still living in an unstable country divided by conflicts, after supposedly being "liberated" by force.

If that political change doesn't come from the population itself, it won't result in anything stable. Liberating a people by external force never really works out fine. That's why I argued that North Koreans are not really victims of a regime, they are part of the regime, because only their religious belief in the cult of the Kim family is what keeps that regime in power. But apparently, lately cracks have started to show in the whole edifice, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a popular revolution at some point. The population is so starved and plagued by parasites and bad living conditions, eventually their survival instincts will make them stop believing in the religious cult of the Kim family.
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by fightinfrenchman »

It worked pretty well in Germany and Japan
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by Dolan »

Germans weren't liberated, they were defeated in a war.

Nazism in Germany actually enjoyed a lot of popular support. Officially, Nazis rose to power by popular vote.

In the 1930s, Germans weren't really as oppressed as people living under totalitarian Communism.
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by jesus3 »

Dolan wrote:Well, many Americans seem to think that if a country is controlled by a totalitarian regime, like North Korea is, then the US must liberate the shit out of them, by force. No questions asked, only after the bombing stopped. But the Iraq experience shows just how bad this mindset is, both for Americans (who wasted hundreds of billions on a bottomless pit) and for Iraqis who are still living in an unstable country divided by conflicts, after supposedly being "liberated" by force.

If that political change doesn't come from the population itself, it won't result in anything stable. Liberating a people by external force never really works out fine. That's why I argued that North Koreans are not really victims of a regime, they are part of the regime, because only their religious belief in the cult of the Kim family is what keeps that regime in power. But apparently, lately cracks have started to show in the whole edifice, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a popular revolution at some point. The population is so starved and plagued by parasites and bad living conditions, eventually their survival instincts will make them stop believing in the religious cult of the Kim family.


On the situation of the North Korean citizens:

They are not dumb, most know exactly what's going on but they have to play along - any minor misbehaviour can get them and their families into trouble. A revolution isn't very likely to originate from the malnourished, indoctrinated and fearful regular citizens. However, the Kim Regime relies heavily on it's patronage-system to keep the high ranked politicians and militaries happy and over time they had to give more and more to do so. With every single business opportunity taken from Kim, a money crisis gets more likely, ultimately leading to a revolution by high ranked people within the government, if there will be one at all.

BUT, let's also think of the consequences from a humanitarian and geopolitical point of view:

If the Kim Dynasty, the regime falls, it will cause chaos on all sides. For South Korea and US side it would mean a huge undertaking to level the two koreas over a long period of time, first providing NK with food, getting up infrastructure, "educating" the people about the language (since SK and NK have developed quite differently), daily life, the capitalist system, 21st century needs to "make a living", technology, actual history (commonly accepted history), and so on.
That's of course only for those who actually want to stay in the new Korea. Many, if not the most, will search refugee in China.

Having mentioned China (godlike transition), they don't want that influx of many hundred thousands of barely educated people interfering with the ongoing success within China. Also and foremost, they don't want a direct border with South Korea and therefore the USA because of obvious reasons, North Korea acts like a buffer zone.

It's probably still not the complete picture, but that's just my five cents
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Dolan wrote:Germans weren't liberated, they were defeated in a war.

Nazism in Germany actually enjoyed a lot of popular support. Officially, Nazis rose to power by popular vote.

In the 1930s, Germans weren't really as oppressed as people living under totalitarian Communism.


Nazism and Communism are both pretty totalitarian
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

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@jesus3 I doubt NK party leaders could start a palace revolution. Remember, Kim-jong Un executed members of his own family to make sure nobody would challenge him.

https://nypost.com/2014/01/27/kim-jong- ... re-family/

It's doubtful that North Korea will simply reunite with Southern Korea, like it happened with the German reunification. Do you really know what Northern Koreans want? Maybe a big part of the population don't want to live in a capitalist society. I don't know why we should assume that all of them want reunification or all of them want a Western-style of society. It's possible they don't or they don't know what they want (living in a closed society without information about other countries can make you unable to think of better alternatives). We can only hope that their survival instincts will tell them they just need to overthrow the current regime and start an adventure in the unknown of political transition.

I can't think of a country with an authoritarian/totalitarian regime that was liberated by an external force, without any help or support from the population, and which turned out to be a success story. Iraq surely isn't a success story, on the contrary. It proves external liberation doesn't work, when its impetus doesn't come from what the people want. Political change can only be brought organically, if you want it to last and be legitimate.

@fightinfrenchman

True, but Communism lasted more and had enough time to perfect methods of controlling and exterminating people to a bigger magnitude than Nazism (eg, Siberian gulags). It's much more difficult to remove such a regime which lasted for a few generations, because people have no memory of how the country and its life looked like before the regime. They have no frame of reference for how life could be without the regime.
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by jesus3 »

@Dolan Of course within the inner circles there's also coercion, but using it there can already be considered a desperation move. I don't personally know what the majority of North Koreans want, I'm just judging from the defectors statements I've come across plus insight (which I haven't further looked up) provided by professors of my university. It's very likely that a united Korea would turn capitalist and slowly adapt to South Korea, who are the closest to NK culture it gets and it's not sure who else would step in to fill the void (with the same legitimacy) otherwise. Those who wouldn't want to live in South Korea would flee to China.

The nKorean people are the least likely to start the revolution by themselves for the reasons I've already mentioned, they don't possess the means or straight up energy to do that. Informal bribes or favors similar to the "blat" in ex soviet Russia do exist though. In most cases, when a dictatorship starts to crumble, the military is fast to take over or at least the first to respond. Of course I did add " if there will be one at all. " to that possibility, too but from my understanding and also colleges understandings, it's the most likely of all those revolution scenarios.
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

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jesus3 wrote:A revolution isn't very likely to originate from the malnourished, indoctrinated and fearful regular citizens.

And yet, this is what happened in many Eastern European countries. An impoverished and indoctrinated population plucked the courage to take it to the streets and ask for regime change. Nobody came from the skies to overthrow Communism.

The idea that Americans should bomb the shit out of North Korea to "liberate" them from an immoral regime is beyond stupid. Legitimate political change can only come from their own people.
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by jesus3 »

Dolan wrote:
jesus3 wrote:A revolution isn't very likely to originate from the malnourished, indoctrinated and fearful regular citizens.

And yet, this is what happened in many Eastern European countries. An impoverished and indoctrinated population plucked the courage to take it to the streets and ask for regime change. Nobody came from the skies to overthrow Communism.

The idea that Americans should bomb the shit out of North Korea to "liberate" them from an immoral regime is beyond stupid. Legitimate political change can only come from their own people.


The situation in ex Soviet states and today's NK is different though. At the time of liberation, the Soviet system was already dead, even if the formal breakup occured later. The Afghanistan war, the presetroika and the failed planned economy culminated in the fall of the Berlin wall and set a wildfire along the other member states. Those member states all had their distinct culture and history, so they had something to "go back to". The ideology was based on an economic system rather than a god-like person cult and with the economic system and institutions failing, there wasn't much holding it together. The population knew with certainty that states within the other system were doing better in comparison, creating a whole other drive for an overthrow.

The person cult and even more extreme intimidation makes NK more totalitarian and less dependent on the economic situation of the Kim Regime since the upper echolon is doing just fine, oppressing the even weaker than ex-soviet population with ease. The soviet officials were exchanging fighter jets and arms for goods to make it through.

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree on your statement that the change has to come from within, but imo it's just possible if it originates from the upper echolon of the military when the funding gets weaker - then, they might actually somehow also involve the population.
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Re: Make sure a box of tissues is nearby

Post by Dolan »

jesus3 wrote:The situation in ex Soviet states and today's NK is different though. At the time of liberation, the Soviet system was already dead, even if the formal breakup occured later.

It was declining, for sure, I wouldn't say it was already dead. After all, the USSR would be disbanded some years later after all Eastern European countries overthrew Communism. And even if it were "already dead", that doesn't mean Communism would have collapsed by itself in Poland, Hungary, GDR, Romania etc. Each of these countries had their own power structure that didn't really depend on the USSR's. Romania was notorious for being a rebel, non-aligned state within the Communist bloc. It's why it had better diplomatic relations with the USA and other Western states and why it received the most-favoured nation clause from the USA. Romanian Communism could have survived much longer if there was no popular revolt against the regime. In fact, Ceausescu, the Romanian Communist leader, took inspiration from North Korea in many policy areas. He was a big fan of the North Korean system. That's how his personality cult started in Romania, based on North Korean practices. We were very close to reaching the same stage of ideological religiousness as North Koreans did. There was no question that if Ceausescu died, only a member of his family could have taken his place.
I am not sure that one can simply say "Eastern European states had a different situation compared to present-day North Korea". Maybe the differences weren't that significant and the similarities weighed more. One could say, on the contrary, that North Korea was in a better position to survive as a Communist state, since they were protected by China's interest to maintain a buffer zone between their territory and that of an US ally (South Korea). This argument actually still applies today. This might be the main reason why the North Korean dictatorship survived until now.

The Afghanistan war, the presetroika and the failed planned economy culminated in the fall of the Berlin wall and set a wildfire along the other member states. Those member states all had their distinct culture and history, so they had something to "go back to". The ideology was based on an economic system rather than a god-like person cult and with the economic system and institutions failing, there wasn't much holding it together. The population knew with certainty that states within the other system were doing better in comparison, creating a whole other drive for an overthrow.

And North Korea didn't have a history to go back to? Every such system needs a functioning economy to survive, though, in the case of Communist states, political relations secured enough trade agreements that allowed Communist states to survive despite their deep economic flaws. I think this applied to every Communist state, from Cuba to North Korea. I don't think one system is more or less based on economic viability compared to others. And, as I explained before, an almost religious personality cult (of the leader and his family) wasn't something unique to North Korea, Romania went through a similar experience. Heck, Cuba did too, after all, Fidel Castro stepped down from power and installed his brother in his place.
I'm sure North Koreans are misinformed and manipulated, but I doubt they have no idea about how much more developed their Southern neighbours are. Why do you think defectors always try to escape to South Korea? Because they already know things are much better there. If they truly believed official NK propaganda, they wouldn't even try to leave the country.

The person cult and even more extreme intimidation makes NK more totalitarian and less dependent on the economic situation of the Kim Regime since the upper echolon is doing just fine, oppressing the even weaker than ex-soviet population with ease. The soviet officials were exchanging fighter jets and arms for goods to make it through.

The upper echelon couldn't survive either, if most of the army officers revolted against the regime. No political regime can survive for long if it doesn't meet any criterion for political legitimacy: whether it's people's belief in the system and its leaders or their belief that the system is working for them and not for the elites only. This happened in Romania too, people were told every day on every official media outlet how well our economy performed, how we beat every expectations in terms of productivity and managed to produce even more than in the previous year etc etc. At some point, people realised that the official discourse of the Communist elite and everyday living were pretty much taking place in parallel universes. It was almost comical, people were already cracking jokes about the whole thing. Writers, singers, actors developed a specific jargon that they used to poke fun at the official discourse of the regime, because it was obvious for everyone the Communist elites were full of shit. This happened despite all the efforts they made to brainwash and manipulate people into believing in their official, fantastic narratives about thriving living standards and milk and honey flowing through our rivers.
I really doubt propaganda can be so effective as to make people starve for the sake of the Kim family.

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree on your statement that the change has to come from within, but imo it's just possible if it originates from the upper echolon of the military when the funding gets weaker - then, they might actually somehow also involve the population.

This has already been tried and it failed. Jang Song-thaek, who was Kim Jong-un's uncle by alliance, was removed from power and executed for trying to undermine Kim's power. The purges extended to other high-ranking military officers that were close to Jang Song-thaek, just to make a point of what can happen to you if you even think of challenging the leader's authority. At this point the whole system survives on a pyramid of internalised fear. It can only take one spark for the whole thing to crumble.

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