North Korea is widely known as a country whose citizens are very poor and is developing dangerous weapons, but no one knows what is really going on inside it. On the other hand, I just wonder how much North Korean people know about their country and the world outside.According to "North Korea could have missiles submarines in five years, says South", South Korea government has reported that last week, North Korea tested its submarine to launch missile, and North Korea is expected to successfully develop its missiles submarine within next few years. This causes concern for many countries, especially South Korea and countries in North East Asia zone.
North Korea is very interesting country. It can develop many weapons by itself. The USA, the country with the most advanced technology, still needed help from Europe and other countries to develop its weapons during World War II. But North Korea could create its nuclear weapons without any help from outside.
I've heard that people in North Korea are happy with their lives. Some photographers were allowed to go inside and saw how North Korean people live. I've seen the pictures of inside North Korean, it looked like our world. People there are not as poor as we think, and they seem to be happy. However, I believe that what photographers were allowed to see is only a small part of it. There must be many things that we, outside people, are not know and will now be allowed to know. This leads me to the ideas that are used in many movies recently.
The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and Divergent have something in common. It is the idea of artificial world. People are controlled within such world for some purpose. This kind of movie makes me feel that our world is too bad to live on, so we have to create new small world, which is carefully controlled, to create skillful people in order to fix our mistake.
Lastly, how far North Korea has been developed is still unknown. However, we should not underestimate it just because it is communist.
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I'm on your side, Bank. I really like your quote "we should not underestimate it just because it is communist." Each country has their own regime. Some country is democracy, while others is communist. Communist leader is not bad like many people think. For example, in China, it is the biggest country which is communist and now China is one of the most powerful countries.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Bank, and disagree with Pond, who says he agrees with Bank. Who do you agree with?
ReplyDeleteI had written a longer comment which gave the specifics to clarify my comment here, but Bank raises so many interesting points that I would like to see your responses before giving mine.
DeleteAnd I like Pond's comment, which seems to me to add some points worth following up.
I think that China only became a successful country economically when it stopped being communist under the leadership of Deng Xiao Ping, and after the monstrously murderous Mao had died and his repressive policies that harmed all but his own corrupt group could be ended.
DeleteEven today, the most developed areas in China are the least communist and the most capitalist. I don't think this is an accident: communism is in principle as well as in practice both economically harmful and immoral.
Actually, I think North Korea build their weapons with secretly help from China or somewhere. I don't think they are able to make it on their own because of unadvanced technology and minority of well-educated people.
ReplyDeleteNorth korea can develop weapons by itself, but South korea is also capable of develop Gangnam style by itself too, which mean nothing at all...,I just need to write two comments for a day,what can i say... I hope Peter won't find out about this.
ReplyDeletePeter reads everything, especially on a post that has already caught his interest.
DeleteIf we are on facebook, I would definitely give you a big thumb. haha
DeleteDamn it!!!! ;3;
DeleteI thought i could get by with this.
DeleteDemocracy an Communist have different strong points but it still depends on the leader and people of the country to cooperate for their development.
ReplyDeleteFor Pond's comment, I think China and North Korean are dissimilar, even though both are Communist. The first thing is freedom, Korean people have to follow the rules strictly more than Chinese because the rules are not only the important things to do for country but also include all of private life such as their form of hair style, fashion and their knowledge. In contrast, Chinese government force people to do only necessary rules,especially in economy. They support Chinese people to do what they want such as they can travel abroad and invest in many kind of business , unlike in North Korean.
However. we don't know much about North Korean. They may tell a lie or the people are truly happy with their life.
There was a time when I think that communism isn't that bad if the ruler is capable of productively managing country and people in a respectful and morally appropriate ways. Why? Because democracy is easily prone to collective biased thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThere is an article that writes about experiment in collective intelligence. If I remember correctly, it was a competition in a village in which who can guess the correct weight of an ox is the winner. Of course, everyone guessed by their own - no one sweet talked others. It turned out that there was no winner. However, if you average out all the guesses, then you get a nearly perfect estimate of the weight.
But what if someone try to persuade the others to bias their own guess? Obviously, the averaged weight will deviate from the correct answer. This proves that democracy is dangerous when people do not think and decide by their own.
I think Tin makes a good point, with support from an unusual source, that democracy is not perfect. But is any alternative any better?
DeleteActually, I think one of the great strengths of democracy is that people can "try to persuade the others to bias their" ideas when they vote. I think this is how errors can be corrected, and how everyone can have an equal right to a say in the form that their society takes, not limited to its politics.
As Bank, Gift and others have suggested, I think that we know what is going on in North Korea much better than North Koreans possibly can. This forced ignorance is always, without exception, the purpose of censorship. The evidence all seems to suggest, and I'm sure it's the case, that the unhappy people of North Korea truly and sincerely do love, admire, respect and revere their amazing Dear Leader, who they think the kindest, wisest most talented, multi-skilled and generally wonderful leader any people has ever had, except perhaps for his even greater father and grandfather.
ReplyDeleteThese likely widespread opinions of the North Korean people are sincere and genuine. They are also false, unfounded and largely worthless opinions because they are only possible under extremely repressive censorship that hides the ugly truth from the North Korean people: the laws for saying anything negative about the dear leader or even for seeking access to reliable information and healthy critical assessment are severe, which perhaps does prove that extremely harsh laws can be very effective, however morally evil and totally unjust they might be.
I think the healthy, moral response is to be very suspicious of the mysterious, especially in politics. Bhutan is another country that I suspect of being much less wonderful than its popular image: were it not, why would it need censorship to keep the truth hidden?
I agree with you that something may be hidden inside; however, your article makes me new ideas that link to the movies you said. The divergent or insurgent I saw told me that bad and good things in the world that we don't know has a lot; however, we have to help with each other to overcome the bad things.
ReplyDeleteFor North Korea, before I read your blog post I think that the country is quite bad and people lacks freedom to do everything. However, I change my mind when I read this post because we, outside people, do still not know the fact why North Korea has to do weapons or activities.
I don't agree. I think that we outside people must be able to know the truth about what is happening in North Korea much better than the ordinary North Korean people. We don't have a lot of detailed information, but we can be pretty sure, with evidence from satellites, from defectors and the like that most people are very poor, that they blindly love and respect their evil leader and his government; and we can know that are totally wrong about him and his repressive government.
DeleteI think this must be true of every topic on which there is strong censorship and suppression of free speech: the outsiders can know better than the officially and legally blinded insiders.
For example, we do know that the North Korean people lack freedom to do almost everything from such facts as the internet censorship and restriction, the reports of people who have escaped, and the reactions of ordinary people as seen by carefully escorted visitors.
DeleteSounds interesting ! Your story reminds me of this video on youtube. Just take a look!
ReplyDeleteLink ----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2_jWSm0Bds
According to this video, some North Korea refugees tried to escape from their country to have a better lives in the new country. Some of them tried to trade their bodies for money,some of them joined in human trafficking for escaping to another country, and some of them were killed while escaping to china. On the other hand, if they were caught while they escaped and were sent back to North Korea, the punishment is death. Such a sad and cruel story.
I do agree with Pond, "we should not underestimate it just because it is communist. Each country has their own regime". What if some countries in the middle east , Chinese, and Russia are democracy, do you think it will work? Do these counties control their people? Are you sure that they have better life?