Challenges facing North Korean defectors [video] | Hacker News Reader

Challenges facing North Korean defectors [video]

wsj.com

49 pointscaptainmuon30 comments

"Looking to the future, experts on the region are focusing on what happens ... when North Korea inevitably collapses"

I'm no fan of the DPRK regime, but isn't it naive to assume that any state, even a completely mismanaged despotic one, will "inevitably" collapse?

True, they rely on China just for bare survival, but they have their stuff together enough to create a functioning nuclear weapons program in the face of crippling sanctions, so it's not infeasible that they could find a way to continue on if they were totally isolated - maybe they'd kidnap some Monsanto scientists to provide them with GMO and fertilizer technology. Basically, they don't currently bother feeding their people because they don't currently have to, but there's nothing proving they can't adapt if circumstances change.

And I'm not saying they're likely to conquer the world, but with the nuclear deterrent, it's not terribly likely that the US or anyone will invade them without direct cause.

>I'm no fan of the DPRK regime, but isn't it naive to assume that any state, even a completely mismanaged despotic one, will "inevitably" collapse?

I could not agree more, and if it does collapse there will be a lot of credit taken for prescience that will amount to having said the same thing for 60+ years. I think the problem is that the intellectual space around the DPRK is dominated by loud people with minimal expertise, but since expertise is so lacking, loud counts for a lot. I've read as much as I could on the subject of the DPRK, and even thoughtful scholars who make very guarded predictions seem very aware of the limits of their knowledge.

One thing that most of them seem to agree on, is that most of us in the West underestimate the degree to which the North Korean people are into their own propaganda/mythology. That at least, seems to match with the struggles that defectors seem to face with adjustment. In essence, the people in the DPRK might not buy into the official line in all things, but what they do believe is no less bizarre.

     us in the West underestimate the degree to which the 
     North Korean people are into their own propaganda/mythology.

A lot of people truly do underestimate this. It is hard for Westerners to fully conceptualize but the ideological roots of Juche religious aspects.

A surprising number of North Korean experts actively refuse to read Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il writing on the subject. Which the DPRK actively distributes online. Ignoring primary sources is weird when you're an expert in subject matter.

The main purpose of Juche (from the ideological, not material stand point) is inscribing the significance of the socialist revolution into the consciences of the people at a religious level. As Kim Jong-il goes on to explain that people _need_ some social construct of a deity figure on a sociology-psychicological level. The goal of Juche is to place the importance of the revolution there (as communism is famously extremely anti-religious).

Kim Il-Sung's writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. Without that daily constant re-enforcement people may lose site of its long term goals. He goes on to blame the failure of the USSR on this, one of his many critiques of Stalin.

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We rarely think but in English the expression, "Oh God." Is one deeply rooted within the western Juedeo-Christian tradition. It links our culture back to history of everything Caesar to Charlemagne to WW1 to the present.

Once you can conceptualize that sociology-psychicological connection you can really see how deep ideological indoctrination can run. Furthermore what Juche and the DPRK has achieved.

>writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life.

The shaping of cultural life via the relations to the means of production refers to the shaping of the superstructure by the base, Marx claims. Although Bookchin has his own ideas (that the superstructure is not entirely shaped by the base, as evidenced by societies involving shamanism, something which he claims does not arise out of the economic base) most Marxists believe that every aspect of society is given rise to by material conditions, i.e the relationship of people to their means of sustenance. For the proletariat under capiatalism, this means their culture and way of life is shaped by working in return for wage-labour.

However I feel as though Il-Sung may have been hinting at something we already recognise in our own societies; the "American Dream" may be such a substitute for a deity figure which encourages blind faith in the capitalist system, in which "anyone can be anything with enough hard work".

So the question is: does Socialism require such a system of belief, or can it as Marx claims go without due to the normalisation of the Socialist mode of production? This dilemma is a common theme of debate within Socialism, with one camp of Orthodox Marxists saying that everything can be explained in terms of the economic base, while communalists and "identity politicians" claim that changing the relationship to the MoP does little to eradicate the cause of non-economic power structures, including shamanism, racism, sexism etc.

Regardless of the likelihood of a collapse, it is a possibility. No plan is a plan for failure. What's fascinating for me about this video is that it shows how the DPRK citizens have a hard time with capitalism (implying that it isn't "natural" as the capitalism marketing machine would have us think). Usually stories on the DPRK focus on the problems inside that country without turning the same eye on our systems.

I agree with you that 'collapse' is not really something that is inevitable. I do expect however that there will come a point when either China or South Korea will see it as the 'least painful' option to annex it. And in some ways I find it interesting to interpret moves by China and the rest of the world in that light.

They had a famine in 90s with a million deaths without a collapse. The reason that can cause the collapse of the government is that people there are getting richer due to a mild capitalistic reforms, and they have access to more information, e.g. more and more families have a DVD player and watch South Korean dramas.

When enough people realize, that South Korea is a better place and considers them citizens, the wall will fall.

People made exactly the same predictions about the Castro regime in Cuba. They were wrong about that. I predict they are wrong about this.

I think people underestimate the power of indoctrination. Predicting that the Kim regime will fall when people realize how much better life is in South Korea is like predicting that the Trump regime will fall when Americans realize how much better life is in Denmark.

Arguably there is a difference - Castro regime do not have half of Cuba with people of the same culture living in a drastically better conditions and most of population unaware of that fact.

Castro has people with the same culture living in much better conditions 100 miles away and everyone is aware of it. It's not quite the same, but if anything, the difference would make Castro more likely to fall, not less.

Is this really the same culture at this point?

Two things: First, Cuba is different because the Castro regime is in fact going to fall, soon. It just waits for one old man (Raul Castro) to die. After that comes... something else. North Korea won't fall like that if the "Dear Leader" produces children, because they've somehow become a hereditary Communist dictatorship.

Second, the difference between Denmark and the US is massively less than the difference between South and North Korea, so that comparison doesn't prove your point as well as you think.

Justify your second claim, please. I am no expert, but that seems very unlikely.

It seems unlikely that (South Korea - North Korea) >> (Denmark - US)? You want me to justify it?

Just in case you didn't read my previous post backwards, I'll take a stab at it. /wiki/List_of_countries_by_Social_Progress_Index lists countries by "social progress", which they define as basic human needs, foundations of well-being (whatever that means), and opportunity. (I didn't cherry-pick the source; this is the first one I found that included North Korea.) The data are from 2015. On this ranking, Denmark is 8th, with a score of 86.63, the US is 16th (82.85), South Korea is 29th (77.7), and North Korea is 134th and last, with a score of 20. (Something like 60 countries didn't supply enough data to be ranked at all.) North Korea is 11.42 points behind second-to-worst (Central African Republic). So by this measure, (Denmark - US) = 3.78, and (South Korea - North Korea) = 57.7. So, yeah, I'd say that my statement that " the difference between Denmark and the US is massively less than the difference between South and North Korea" is quite accurate.

You could also look at the Satisfaction with Life Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index), except that it doesn't seem to list North Korea at all...

My fault: I read your comment in the context of the two comments directly above it visually, which were talking about differences of culture, rather than in the context of the comment you were directly replying to, which was talking about standard of living. I certainly agree that Denmark and the US are closer in standard of living than North and South Korea are.

Sorry for making you pull that data, but thanks for responding with data.

Culturally, a Communist nation will be significantly more different from a Capitalist nation (compared to U.S. vs Nordic capitalism)

> because they've somehow become a hereditary Communist dictatorship

Shouldn't we just call it a Monarchy then? The "communism" in DPRK is just some red paint applied on top of a religious monarchy, in which the Kim family is blessed by the gods to be the leaders of the people. This is as far from the ideal of communism as you can get. Or is the battle for preserving the original meaning of the word as the ideal of the workers collectively owning the means of production and directly profiting from them, rather than making one person on top exhuberantly rich, now completely lost?

Some South Koreans have been predicting NK's demise since the 90's. They didn't collapse then, and I don't think they would now.

For nearly a decade South Korea's conservative government said they may collapse any time, and South Korea's strategy to deal with it was essentially "cut whatever ties we have, guard our borders tightly, starve them out and (some magic happens here)." First, it deprived us of whatever small leverage we used to have, and second, collapse of NK will be a total economic disaster for SK. Europe has trouble dealing with five million Syrians. North Korea has 25 million people and all they have to do to enter South Korea, should their nation fail, is to walk south.

That's not discrediting that North Korea is a thoroughly unpleasant criminal state which has no right to exist. But they do exist, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, and anyone trying to deal with NK had better take that into their plan.

North Koreans can't really simply Walk to South Korea because of DMZ. It would be easier for them to walk to China.

And S Korea and others are planning for possibility of NK collapsing. But I honestly believe no planning would be enough. NK people will have to be fenced into NK for like 10 years to be reprogrammed. And allowed out to rest of world slowly.

The North Korea we know, with its God-king dynasty and intense insularism, is thoroughly the creation of Kim Jong-Il. He manipulated himself into power, usurping his father. Truly, one of the greatest modern talents in bastardry. Kim Jong-Un is a kid who was mollycoddled his whole life and is now in charge of a country that he is far from the most powerful character in. If North Korea will survive, it will likely not be with the Kim dynasty at the helm. I would put money on a coup by those closest to Kim Jong-Un, followed by China immediately stomping on them. I'm just an armchair NK enthusiast though so don't take that as gospel.

If you're interested in this topic, I recommend "Nothing to Envy" as an excellent and illuminating book. It follows defectors mostly before they leave, but includes a portion afterward. Money struggles are discussed in detail, along with other difficulties assimilating.

Interesting side note that is rarely mentioned, a surprisingly large amount of defectors actually defect back to DPRK. When you are enclosed in something like DPRK a lot of the time people can't handle the stress of not being in that sort of system anymore.

One thing to note, there was a study that showed that even when they are in countries with an abundance of food, their eating habits remained the same. They ate the same sized small portions that they used to in NK.

As a comment on the article, I think it would be very easy for China to transition them into a sucessful Chinese model with capitalist reforms whilst still being totalitarian. The people don't necessarily want 'freedom' as long as they are adequately taken care of, transposing western mindsets onto them and assuming that they consider things like 'freedom of speech' as necessary isn't generally helpful.

> a surprisingly large amount of defectors actually defect back to DPRK.

Do you have source for this?

A typical north korean escaping to china usually has the option of becoming a slave/wife to a chinese farmer. I would assume that was still a better option during 'arduous march' days but have things imporved that much since then ?

There are loads of sources for it, it isn't as odd as you would think, it is even listed on wikipedia with lots of nice sources. Apparently "their number is thought to be increasing." and "In one case, a double defector re-entered North Korea four times." [0]

Edit: I added the link to the nutrition study below also. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_defectors#Double_...

[1] https://synapse.koreamed.org/search.php?where=aview&id=10.41...

I was questioning your claim of "surprisingly large" double defectors not that there are defectors. 13 out of ~1600 is not a significant number. Your second source is not relevant.

>"In one case, a double defector re-entered North Korea four times."

Constantly sneaking in back forth is a common thing from the documentaries I've watched. 1. People stealing goods and selling them back home 2. People stealing supplies to feed their family back home .

Thirteen publicly acknowledged by South Korea, and 700 missing. Most of which, if you read the cited article are thought to have defected back or attempted to.

This is a small sample of what's to come should North Korea collapse.

I can see that south korea can experience a huge boost in their labor force that's currently filled by foreigners.

On the other hand, feeding, educating, housing, employing North Koreans to integrate into South Korea is going to be pretty hard.

China is also unlikely to allow US bases so close to the Yalu river.

When I factor in all these things, I believe that Korea will go through a transitionary state where two systems in one country emerge.

All in all, it could be that the unification collapses due to the structural pressure it places on South Korea and it's citizens to oppose it-Nobody in a capitalistic society is willing to trade away their good life.

Whatever happens, I only wish North Koreans live a free life, whether it's under South Korea's control or not.

Because North Korean collapse could mean a significant economic burden as East Germany's collapse was to West....but they've only had couple decades apart, North Korea is like dealing with Chosun dynasty.

In my opinion, the US should make it clear to China that if North Korea gets absorbed by the South, as long as China is not threatening Korea, the US sees no need for US forces anywhere in the country, let along north of the current line.

If US withdraws from Korea, it's forfeiting it's sphere of influence in the region. Will it happen one day? Of course. But until that day comes, the US will not budge until China too is conquered (unlikely).

From what I have read, China hates the North Korean regime, but is afraid of what would happen if it collapsed, so it keeps supporting it economically.

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