Posted on 11/27/2010 9:51:39 PM PST by Nachum
With its ruthless dictator, network of forced labour camps and iron grip of its ruling party, North Korea is the last country one might expect to see a middle-aged woman berating a policeman for demanding a bribe.
But extraordinary video images smuggled out of North Korea, combined with reports of graffiti and posters critical of the regime, indicate a growing willingness among a previously cowed public to speak out and demand change.
Such dissent would once have been unthinkable in the reclusive state, but now hunger and plummeting living standards are now triggering demands for freedom - something that no North Korean has ever experienced.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Bump
I cry reading this.
There is a video of a poor girl in the article. She sleeps in the open. Has no food. Starving to death. That makes me cry.
The North Korean version of the Soviet samizdat. NK has lasted as long as it has because its people have no way of comparing their situation with life in China, Russia and South Korea. But change is coming and no society can remain in the grip of a totalitarian ideology forever.
Very sad.
Thanks for that. I just put a hold on it at the library.
That girl gathering grass made me want to weep, it's just pure evil.
Things are slowly changing in NK. More knowledge of the outside world is creeping in, and Westerners are visiting in larger numbers. This stands in comparison to the Cold War era, when it was very difficult for people from non-communist nations to visit. Slowly, the populace is starting to realize how much better life is in the outside world, and so we begin seeing acts of protest here and there.
This process is being helped by the overall breakdown of NK’s infrastructure. Back in the ‘70s, it would have been all-but-impossible for undercover reporters to operate there.
Iran's Ahmadinejad auctioning his '77 Peugeot 504 for charity
Don't forget that China has starving population also. They are constantly dealing with violent unrest and probably do not want another flood of hungry people streaming to their country for bowls of rice.
We forget that America is generally a land of plenty, even for the poorest among us. China probably does not want to invest one soldiers life in anything going on in NK as long as the problems stay there. They are looking at this latest escalation and imagining the conflict dragging them into it and costing them more than they can afford.
Just my 2 cents.
“They do honestly fear the wave of refugees, but they can go to hell for enabling it.”
There are several reasons why China continues to prop NK up:
1. They dislike the idea of a unified, US-backed Korea on their border.
2. Ideological reasons. North Korea is one of the few remaining communist states.
3. China doesn’t want a million refugees pouring across its border.
4. North Korea is useful to keep around for annoying the US whenever we complain about China’s trade practices.
Netflix currently has on their streaming video a National Geographic about North Korea. It’s well worth the watching to see how propaganda and utter fear have affected the population alone. We watched it today.
Thank you for the link to the “Vice Guide to NK”. OMG. They are ‘Crazyland’! Huge army, no electricity, little food, no cars. They are certifiably insane.
The average "citizen" of most countries would love the lifestyle and opportunities of America's "Poor."
“I agree with all of your points. I would add that the one child policy has created a schizophrenia in China. They claim that they cannot support 1.5 billion people yet are terrified at what the demographics of the one child policy will do now in one generation.”
On the surface, China looks like a fat, happy, rich, growing superpower. But they have a lot more problems than you might think. The demographic issues you mentioned, horrendous pollution and environmental damage, imbalanced distribution of wealth between the cities and rural region, endemic corruption, widespread discontent among farmers, and finally a relatively impotent government that lacks the imagination or ability to solve these problems.
We might have problems and we might be unhappy with the current president, but America’s troubles don’t really seem all that bad compared to the ticking time bomb in Asia.
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