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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

The same conditions do not exist in North Korea. In the USSR, there was a clear disconnect with economic reality. Communism was not a superior economic system. In fact, it produced rampant disincentives.

The North Korean regime doesn't rely on such ideology. Rather, the idea is that Koreans are the world's "true" people, and that only the North Korean regime keeps this faith and keeps their culture away from willing economic and political servitude to the west.

The North Korean regime sees itself as the last bastion of resistance for "the good guys." As far as they're concerned, they're like the rebel alliance in Star Wars. As in Star Wars, their weapons are worn and inferior and their industrial power is dwarfed by that of the evil empire that they fight. Yet they somehow heroically fight on, defying the odds because they are "the good guys."

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1. Communism is a political system & ideology; not an economic system (See Communism article in Wikipedia). In fact the country can be a communist society and have a fairly open (liberal) economic system (China).

2. The ideology in USSR was exactly the same - the war against evil west. There were a lot of propaganda about decaying western society and how in 10 years we will build communism and win the Cold War.

3. The economic situation in North Korea is very bad. People would starve there if China would cease it's economic help.

4. Don't think that people there have no understanding of the situation inside their country. In USSR there was an Iron Curtain and totally controlled media but still many people understood the situation and discussed it in their kitchens. People feel the situation very well when they see the dramatic difference between the idealistic picture in government controlled media and in real life.

1. "We will bury you" -- widely taken as a statement that communism would out-compete capitalism. North Korea and the USSR differ because the former doesn't have an ideology like communism that can be shown to be rationally hollow. Instead, it's based on nationalist feeling, which is entirely irrational.

2. I don't think the North Korean regime preaches that the West is decaying and will fall in X years. That's another way the USSR got egg on it's face that the North Korean regime does now.

3. Not disputing this. The "heroic struggle" stance takes care of this. The thing is that it only works if it resonates with the people. It got to the point where no one in the USSR believed it. I think huge numbers of North Koreans do believe it.

4. The USSR failed to maintain a believable alternate reality for enough of their people and they lost the emotional support of virtually all of their populace. From what I've seen of North Korea, I think they do have a viable "reality distortion field" in place and large numbers of people are emotionally involved in it.

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