2,292,133 were in prisons in the United States in 2009 [from wikipedia]. Even though I guess conditions are better, 200 000 doesn't sound like that many after all.
1. It is only hypocritical for the speaker if he supports America's prison-happy justice system. If he opposes it, or has misgivings, or is undecided, it is not hypocritical to oppose North Korea.
2. Even if it is hypocrisy, that doesn't diminish his words in any way, just your personal opinion of him. If his criticism is invalid, it can be disputed directly. If his criticism is valid, he could be as flawed and terrible a human being as we can imagine and his criticism would still be valid.
#2 is the key point. Arguing that his words are hypocritical is a kind of Ad Hominem Abuse, something generally discouraged on HN as a kind of intellectual laziness, a rhetorical appeal to emotion rather than an analysis of the argument being debated.
When "Thou" is plain fucking evil, it's perfectly acceptable to be holier-than-thou.
North Koran Population: 23,906,070
Estimated "Prisoners": 200,000
Percentage in Custody: 0.83%
United States Population: 307,006,550
Estimated Prisoners: 2,292,133
Percentage in Custody: 0.74%
The percentage of people in prison in the U.S. is grotesquely large. It's much larger than any other nation with comparable economic/religious/political freedoms. The U.S. judicial/prison system is quite bad in my opinion but the exact point that fijall was making was lost on me. Hence my request for a clarification.
I will add that the entire nation of North Korea should be viewed as a giant prison. This makes North Korea incomparable to other nations. It's unique in this respect.
Deleted comment
Perhaps if they were 200,000 people you knew... or even one you knew.
Our prison system is far from perfect but it doesn't compare to what these people are going through.
In both cases, people are being denied their freedom and taken away from their families, for engaging in activities that hurt no one, not even themselves.
It's certainly true that American prisons are better. But given the OP's definition: "enduring starvation, torture, and rape while performing hard labor", we do hit a couple of checkboxes. My understanding is that prison rape, with guards just looking the other way, is still a real problem in America. And take a look down at Guantanamo for (an admittedly small number of) people who are imprisoned and tortured "without legal recourse", as the OP says.
So it's just a matter of degree. There's certainly a good deal of ground for comparison.
But why do we automatically view ourselves on the correct side of that line? I've we're engaged, as a matter of policy, in activities that many or most Americans believe to be evil, doesn't that put the drawing of the line into question?
So yes, lets not go ranking countries by evilness - but North Korea is so beyond that that your equivocating is offensive.
It's not nearly so simple. If we drew the line according to what portion of our population we imprison, then the USA would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with North Korea, with the rest of the world nearly an order of magnitude lower.
Consider https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pr...
The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, ...
China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. ...
The United States comes in first, too, ... in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)
The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.
The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.
Why do you think the situation is different in North Korea?
Yes, it's not simple. A single metric will not draw a meaningful line.
Compared to the average person in North Korea (imprisoned or not) American prisoners are very well treated. They have balanced diets, and can read anything they please. Even if everyone in America was imprisoned, I think America would still come out as a more humane dictatorship than North Korea if half of what I've read about that country is true.
Amnesty International estimates there's around 200,000 "political prisoners" in North Korea, out of a population of 25 million.
I think I'd rather be in North Korea.
That so many people in this thread are trying to suggest that the United States is somehow worse than North Korea or that people from the United States can't criticize North Korea saddens me. The United States' prison system has obvious problems. All of North Korea is a totalitarian hellhole.
Due to their own culture. At least they have a choice. They aren't forced to rob, steal, and kill their way through life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...