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North Korea is really damn weird
- Thread starter Tornado Condor
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Mr_Kitty_Fantastico
Neo Member
Twilight Princess said:
Until she says or does something that upsets the government, then her and her whole family get thrown in a gulag for the rest of their lives.
Twilight Princess
Member
Asmodai said:
i'm pretty sure a NK person would have said the exact same thing if i were to put down their Great Leader and/or "great country".
i was just comparing the free time the tea girl gets vs a typical western middle/working class person. i've never said anything about one being better than the other.
Mr_Kitty_Fantastico
Neo Member
APF said:
Nah, they're too busy paying homage to the Dear Leader to post on messageboards or post messages on Twitter or enjoy stimulating political/cultural debates with their neighbors. That's what fun is all about!
out0v0rder
Member
kastrioti said:
OT, but remember when it used to be 818?
Twilight Princess
Member
yeaaa, instead of stimulated social interactions, the north koreans engage in real social activities!Mr_Kitty_Fantastico said:
Mr_Kitty_Fantastico
Neo Member
Twilight Princess said:
The point myself, AFP and others were trying to make is that the North Korean people do not even have these options to occupy their free time with. North Korea is an incredibly bleak place, to even compare life there to a western democracy is impossible.
Lagspike_exe
Member
I just finished watching part 3. This is probably the most bizarre thing i ever saw in my life. It's just mindblowing how people are hipnotised and how everything is carefully planned to satisfy a group of a few people... Freaking insane.
Twilight Princess
Member
they could very well occupy their free time with activities man kind has been practicing for thousands of years, before the industrial revolution. i would agree north koreans live miserable lives only because they still suffer from hunger, not because they have a different hegemony/ideology than "western democracy".Mr_Kitty_Fantastico said:
Think about it, there would be a huge revolution if North Koreans realized what's going on outside their country. They would go crazy with all the technology around...
It would be like if we just realize that all the other planets in the galaxy have actual life and they have all those awesome technologies like cheap space travel, all sorts of vehicles, etc.. but all the Earth governors have been hiding all that information from us. And all other planets are posting on forums (or whatever awesome communication systems they have) saying "Earth is really damn weird" :lol
It would be like if we just realize that all the other planets in the galaxy have actual life and they have all those awesome technologies like cheap space travel, all sorts of vehicles, etc.. but all the Earth governors have been hiding all that information from us. And all other planets are posting on forums (or whatever awesome communication systems they have) saying "Earth is really damn weird" :lol
chaostrophy
Member
What I find amusing is that the people that seem to most often demonize North Korea by calling it part of the Axis of Evil, insult its citizens by calling them brainwashed, etc. are American conservatives who wanted the USA to be more like the DPRK during the Bush administration: more deference to the top leaders, more military spending, less concern about civil rights for suspected terrorists, etc.
North Korea is just the most patriotic country on earth. Plenty of citizens of Western democracies would find joy in living under it's government if they happened to have been born and raised under it.
North Korea is just the most patriotic country on earth. Plenty of citizens of Western democracies would find joy in living under it's government if they happened to have been born and raised under it.
Mr_Kitty_Fantastico
Neo Member
Twilight Princess said:
But you fail to realize is that they suffer from hunger because their hegemony/idoelogy is so screwed up that they have no idea that their lives could be better if they ditched Kim Jong Il and his cronies. If the North Korean people were made aware of what the world was really like outside of their little bubble, there could be real change and a real chance they could improve their living standards.
Barry Lightning
Banned
damn, this is kindof amazing. great find, salva.
Mr_Kitty_Fantastico
Neo Member
chaostrophy said:
If you'd like to compare additional military spending and wiretaps for potential terror suspects to throwing entire generations of families into concentration camps where they are tortured, experimented on, and kill, then go right ahead.
I don't have time to watch the vids right now but I was reading up on human rights.
I didn't realize how bad the country was.
-14 year old girls are drafted to be prostitutes by the state
-citizens cannot freely travel in or outside the country
-only the healthy live in Pyongyang
-babies that are born with defects are put to death
-ethnically homogenous and today immigration is almost non-existent.
-only political elite can own vehicles
They seemed to achieve what Hitler wanted to make...
I didn't realize how bad the country was.
-14 year old girls are drafted to be prostitutes by the state
-citizens cannot freely travel in or outside the country
-only the healthy live in Pyongyang
-babies that are born with defects are put to death
-ethnically homogenous and today immigration is almost non-existent.
-only political elite can own vehicles
They seemed to achieve what Hitler wanted to make...
perfectchaos007
Member
North Korea intrigues me. When the Ryogyung hotel gets finished, I wonder if they will encourage more tourism or leave the place 99.9% empty all the time like the rest of their hotels.
ConfusingJazz
Member
Twilight Princess said:
You know, cultural relativism is fine and dandy, up to a point. I do believe North Korea's society crosses that point, with gusto.
I doubt that will happen, most architects believe that the concrete is too crap to finish off anything stable.perfectchaos007 said:
chaostrophy
Member
Mr_Kitty_Fantastico said:
You're right. Western democracies only bring individuals to our prisons to torture and kill. When we kill generations of a family, we do it in one fell swoop with a cluster bomb. So we totally have a moral high ground beyond reproach!
iamaustrian
Member
GodofWine said:
well ,believe it or not: NK could be one of the most visited tourism-countries ever because the land has one of the biggest sensations already: "North Korea" itself
There are sooo many people worldwide fascinated by this country. There could be a NK-hype coming, I tell you. If NK allows more tourists visiting their country,I think they could get massive cash out of it.
the big BUT is that it wouldn't be the "isolated,hard to get in"-country anymore, so most of the fascination could be gone then.
Twilight Princess
Member
by that logic, every society is flawed and its hegemony screwed up. we all suffer from something, be it hunger, stress from work/not being able to pay the bills, anger, etc, and no one lives in utopia.Mr_Kitty_Fantastico said:
i'm not saying that i don't find the north korean regime wrong and disgusting, or that i don't want to destroy their evil government that forces abortion/prostitution. but there are just as many flaws in the west as in NK. we all love the idea of liberating people from their suffering, by which we also force our ideology onto others. is it really necessary to free them or feel sad for them when they are actually happy? (especially the tea girl, i mean she looks well fed and all)
SimpleDesign
Member
Neither do you man, like you're just a slave of the corporation just like they're a slave of the state. It's all the same bro, want a hit of this shit right here?ImperialConquest said:
Happiness is very relative to ignorance. One of the most fundamental philosophical questions is whether it's better to be happy but ignorant, or miserable but aware. I can't answer that question for every person, but I do know that allowing people the freedom to make their own determinations in that regard is morally defensible, while the alternative in this case is not.
ConfusingJazz
Member
Twilight Princess said:
Christ you are a sucker for government propaganda. Watch this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...eelPTYBg&q=north+korea&hl=en&client=firefox-a
That ain't exactly on the visitor's tour.
Kuro Madoushi
Unconfirmed Member
Twilight Princess said:
Hmmm...I couldn't have said it better myself. I should just quote something like this every time I go in a thread about this. I don't know what it is with Americans and their propensity to think "NOT American = wrong." There's cultural relativism and then there's forcing/comparing your beliefs and ways onto other people. Need I remind people about Iraq and Afghanistan? Vietnam? Don't like the regime? Well, let's replace it with a more Western-friendly dictator.
Regardless, I do agree. NK is damned weird. I always read stuff about the prostitution, kidnapping, and overall unhappiness of the country, and it is quite shocking. It's obvious that their media is manipulating the way they think (I refuse to say 'brainwash' as there is always media bias), but there's not much anyone can really do at this point.
To those people who are not from SK and are thinking about reunification; if you ask Koreans themselves, most do NOT want reunification due to how poor and messed up NK is right now. SK is enjoying the benefits of a decent social, political, and economic infrastructure, now toss NK in the mix and the amount of resources needed to help NK is going to destroy all of Korea. What I'd like to remind them though is that in the long run it'd be better as they wouldn't have to poor so much money and resources into their military.
Parallax Scroll
Banned
I would definitely bang the tea girl.
Seriously though, this documentary is awesome.
Mr_Kitty_Fantastico
Neo Member
chaostrophy said:
Oh you are so clever! Now read this and come back with the same snarky bullshit;
http://ncafe.com/northkorea/SunOkLeeTestimony_w_llus.pdf
Singapore is a dictatorship that actually brilliantly works. No corruption, a very low crime rate, high employment and level of life, but on the other hand you have censorship, more or less a unique party, the highest number of executions per capita (drug trafficking is passible of death, even if you're a tourist), a very high suicide rate (especially among the students, who are trained to be competitive) and extremely strict moral laws (pornography is illegal of course, but kissing your girlfriend in the street also is). You can even go to jail if a cop (probably dressed as a civilian) finds a chewing-gum in your pocket (yep, illegal too).Black_Mamba said:
What makes it worse than NK, at least to me, is that it awfully looks like a state that would make a lot of people happy in Europe and in America... and not only politicians. A perfect capitalist dictatorship.
Twilight Princess said:
You serious? Because that's about the dumbest thing I've ever read. I'm pretty sure the tea shop job is her reward, and when she isn't there she's working in some shitty salt mine or doing whatever manual labor job the government demands.
Anyway, these documentaries are interesting. I watched most of them about 3 months ago. It's a very pitiable situation. The people are oppressed yet who knows how many of them actually are aware of it. You wanna do something for them but what is there to be done? It's easy to see why they (KJ Il) get away with so much. It's not like you can physically do anything to them, because of the psychological traps as well as the geographical sensitivity of the area. Too close to China, South Korea, etc. Kill the leader and he becomes a god and proves that the rest of us are the aggressors, etc.
What can be done...I pity the United Nations officials as NK pushes itself closer to the point of no return. They have a lot to weigh.
G.O.O. said:
I thought they allowed certain gum that was proven to help teeth?
chaostrophy said:
Well if that's all you know, how can you want anything different? As for patriotic, no. There's patriotic and then there's jingoistic. I'd say they're jingoistic and forced to be so, either that or they don't know how to behave otherwise.
South Korea:
48 million people
1.28 trillion GDP
North Korea:
22 million people
40 billion GDP
Hmm, I can see why reunification might be economically devastating to South Korea. But it wouldn't take much effort to raise the standard of living in NK by a lot, especially with how much foreign aid would come from the US, Japan, and China.
Immigration from NK to SK would be a huge problem though, probably creating ghettos like you see in Brazil and South America that were created when the poor rural population moved in mass to the more prosperous cities.
48 million people
1.28 trillion GDP
North Korea:
22 million people
40 billion GDP
Hmm, I can see why reunification might be economically devastating to South Korea. But it wouldn't take much effort to raise the standard of living in NK by a lot, especially with how much foreign aid would come from the US, Japan, and China.
Immigration from NK to SK would be a huge problem though, probably creating ghettos like you see in Brazil and South America that were created when the poor rural population moved in mass to the more prosperous cities.
Yeah I mean North Korea is completely fucked up and I'd never want to live there in a million years and I'd probably kill myself the first chance I'd get if I were forced to live like that, but really the US has the Jonas Brothers, so can any of us really say it's any worse? I mean, can we?
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