[Dilbert San Diego]

A cruise ship in North Korea?????

I wonder if Kim Il Sung is turning in his grave at the sight of North Korea embracing the capitalist decadence of a cruise ship. Even a rusty hulk of a ship. Who knew that they could conceive of the idea of a pleasure cruise???

Next thing you know, North Korea might embrace some capitalist reforms, as did China. So much for communism.............

[GAB-1955]

Why not have a cruise ship? The Nazis, who were also totalitarians, did through the Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) Organization. The Wilhelm Gustloff, which a Soviet submarine sank in 1945, was a KdF cruise ship. The Soviets built a number of cruise ships as well; one recently foundered in the Volga.

A smart dictator who comes from a totalitarian ideology allows his people some outlets for luxury and pleasure, poor as they may be. Look at the East German ad campaigns in the 1950s for consumer goods. A whacko dictator, who starts from Year Zero, doesn't, and his tyranny lasts less time. KJI is closer to whacko than smart, because he's trying to do something as an outlet, but he can't let people out of the prison camps and he can't loosen up agriculture because if he did, the Army would shoot him.

Would that the NKPA shoot KJI and his family! We'd be better off with a junta of the colonels than this cardboardhead!