I don’t watch television so most of my news comes from scanning headlines, following links suggested by friends and readers, etc. The impression that I’ve gotten from U.S. media is that North Korea is a starving prison camp. But this Wall Street Journal video shows a clean, organized, and modern city. Having recently returned from trash-strewn Casablanca, I would have guessed that North Korea is wealthier than Morocco (the CIA says otherwise). Presumably the rural areas of North Korea are not as prosperous as the city toured by the WSJ reporters, but that is also true in Morocco and in the U.S. for that matter.
27 thoughts on “Are things really that bad in North Korea?”
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Are you really that obtuse? Are you unfamiliar with the concept of propaganda? Have you not heart that visits to NK are always accompanied, and are carefully rehearsed and orchestrated as to where visitors can go and what visitors can see? The description of the video itself says “…a tightly controlled reporting trip”. Geez.
@Philg
Watch this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Sun_(2015_film) and you will see how even the elite who are close to the regime are under constant fear and control.
From the “Filming” section off the Wiki:
At the end of each day’s shoot, authorities would review the footage and delete scenes they deemed unacceptable. To get around this censorship and record unscripted moments, Mansky allowed digital cameras to roll throughout the shoot even after North Korean handlers yelled “cut”. The crew employed a recording system that recorded all footage on two separate memory cards. The crew submitted one of the memory cards to North Korean authorities for inspection and hid the other copy.[12][14] According to producer Simone Baumann, “The camerawoman is very brave. She put [the memory card] in her trousers when she went to the toilet. They gave one of them to the North Koreans, and the second one they took with them.” The film crew then smuggled the footage out of North Korea.
This is, truly, either one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen posted or one of the best troll posts I have ever seen. Disturbing I’m not sure which.
I’m noticing a trend with Phil and economic advancement, keep trash and traffic off the street and you are doing pretty great!
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2017/08/27/visiting-new-york-after-moscow/
Your next trip should be to Naypyidaw, by these standards you are going to love it:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/19/burmas-capital-naypyidaw-post-apocalypse-suburbia-highways-wifi
Scott: I would like to visit Burma. Thanks for the suggestion! And, yes, to me the closer a country gets to Swiss or Japanese levels of cleanliness and organization the better they’re doing as a first approximation!
George: Thanks for the suggestion to look at Under the Sun. I didn’t mean to suggest that the North Koreans had political freedom. But Western media (i.e., our propaganda) portrays North Korea as starving and struggling to maintain a subsistence level standard of living. That’s not consistent with what is shown in the WSJ video. Maybe some sham buildings or houses could be shown to journalists. But could office buildings and urban mass transit systems be built as a sham?
Having roads and office building could co-exists with starving population. I tend to believe that many N Koreans do not have enough food because similar situation (scientific and technological advancement and simultaneous starvation) occurred during Stalin rule. Kim dictatordhip reminds me of Stalin’s dictatorship, although I of course do not know what is going on in NK. But sure N Koreans are very poor: no cars on roads is indicator of very poor population that can not afford motor vehicles. Not happenning in Japan or Switzerland.
…although I of course do not know what is going on in NK. But sure N Koreans are (insert whatever)
Perfect summary of the discussion.
So, do North Koreans sing their national anthem at their stadiums sporting events (see previous post)? If so, the de facto North Korean national anthem is “Song of General Kim Jong-il”.
Maybe we can change our national anthem to “Song of Donald Trump”.
That would give a new meaning to take a knee.
Apparently the latest Kim has allowed a measure of free market economics so not as many people are starving now as in earlier periods when millions starved in the countryside. Pyongyang is (as Moscow was for much of the Soviet period) reserved for the elite of N. Korea and not at all representative. Communist “egalitarianism” is a sham – the whole society consists of concentric circles of privilege. At the very peak you have the Kim inner circle who live like pashas. Then you have the nomenklatura of Pyongyang who have access to imported luxury goods and better quality housing and medical care. Then you have the general citizens of Pyongyang who also live better than the rest of the country because the shops are stocked with more and better food. Lower and lower the circles go (even before you get to the prison camps) until you reach the peasants in the countryside who, when things get rough, have to eat tree bark or bread that is bulked up with sawdust.
The children that you see are the children of the privileged elite. No one seems to be buying anything at the well stocked shops – the stuff may not even be for sale. Everyone sort of looks the way they do in totalitarian societies – lots of blank faces and regimented activities. The most telling thing is the total absence of traffic. Forget cars, which are way beyond their reach but there are hardly any bikes or mopeds in the street, probably because no one is allowed to travel anywhere except to and from work. As in Stalinist Russia, there are really no civilians, just prisoners out on temporary work-release until they are caught in some minor infraction of their parole.
Reha,
The citizens of N. Korea must be much happier with Kim than we are with Donald Trump because I have never seen or heard of a N. Korean “taking a knee” as a protest during the singing of their national anthem. Presumably they are all happy with their leaders and the fairness of their society and so have no reason to want to take a knee.
If you’re in Pyongyang you’re inner party. The slave labor camps are far away.
I appreciate Phil’s contrarian perspective.
In this case, however, I would use the famous NASA-created map of areas lit by streetlights or building lights at night as an indication: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/earthday/gall_earth_night.html
Pretty sure that Japan and Switzerland, both with clean streets, also have some amount of light at night!
paddy: That’s an excellent point. I’m assuming this is not due to a Millionaires for Obama Dark Skies-style initiative by the North Koreans (there are epic multi-year fights among our neighbors regarding who is going to be allowed to keep a lighted tennis court).
Still… how is it that they seem to have a better subway system than do most U.S. cities?
>how is it that they seem to have a
>better subway system than do most U.S. cities?
That’s easy; their government puts a higher priority on it than ours does. Perhaps shooting anyone who goes on strike helps keep costs down.
After reading this book, I was really shocked at how bad things are in North Korea.
https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Seven-Names-Korean-Defectors-ebook/dp/B00JD3ZL9U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506392413&sr=8-1&keywords=the+girl+with+seven+names
I don’t think a few pretty pictures of a city are going to erase the desperate description of life near the border with China which is described in this book. The threat from the state is pervasive and quite deadly.
philg: “Still… how is it that they seem to have a better subway system than do most U.S. cities?”
Pyongyang: 22 km of tracks. 3.2 million people.
NYC: 368 km of tracks. 8.5 million people.
Boston: 126 km of tracks. 0.67 million people.
Wash DC: 188 km of tracks. 0.68 million people.
Seems NK’s subway is mostly for show.
How good were things in Moscow for the general population when its subway was built?
Moscow: 346 km of tracks. 13.2 million people.
Short answer is yes. Long answer is: how long do you want me to write? As a former resident of a communist regime which was directly inspired by the North Korean model and it would compete for the first place as the worst country to live in the former communist bloc in Eastern Europe I can tell you that the situation may be exactly (or worse) as it is described by the western propaganda. 😀
Canada has always had notably less litter than the U.S., but we’ve always had a higher standard of living. I don’t think it tracks.
Agree with Scott. Together with the Russia-loving posts and the closeted admiration of Trump’s agenda, this post depicts either a gullibility to be fooled by propaganda, or a delight in troll posting.
You want to live in a society with poor train service because that means that talented people have better-paying options than making the trains run on time. I bet North Korea also has smarter rocket scientists and nuclear engineers than we do, and I’m OK with that.
Davep: Excellent points. And thanks for the numbers on the subway systems (though the numbers for Boston are misleading; the population of Boston that may depend on the T is closer to 3 million (the city itself has a small area and a small population, but after a few stops on the subway you may be in a separate town, e.g., Cambridge or Brookline; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MBTA_subway_stations for a list of stations with city or town adjacent; also, a lot of people take a car or a bus from a suburb to the nearest T station).
bjdubbs: That’s an interesting perspective! In Portugal the Uber service is awesome because the drivers are mostly English-speaking college graduates. But that’s not a sign of a healthy economy…
You guys have answered the question of the original post, I think, which is why this blog is useful to me!
philg is a provocateur, not a troll. Please feed the provocateur, it’s a Socratic thing.
“As a former resident of a communist regime which was directly inspired by the North Korean model ”
Albania, I presume?
philg: “Davep: Excellent points. And thanks for the numbers on the subway systems (though the numbers for Boston are misleading; the population of Boston that may depend on the T is closer to 3 million (the city itself has a small area and a small population, but after a few stops on the subway you may be in a separate town, e.g., Cambridge or Brookline”.
I suspected that the Boston subway (and the DC subway too) were servicing a larger population. I expected other people to have the same suspicion.
@Tom
It îs Romania.
(BBC) Nine charts which tell you all you need to know about North Korea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41228181
“North Korea has some 25,554 km of roads, according to 2006 figures, but just 3% are actually paved, amounting to a meagre 724km (449 miles).
It’s also estimated that only about 11 out of every 1,000 North Koreans owns a car, which means a long queue at the bus stop for most people who need to travel.”