A Glimpse Into Daily Life In North Korea

[Formaldehyde]

This article does seem to paint a rather rosy picture.

You mean fair and even-handed instead of biased and propagandistic?

North Korea has come under financial sanctions again for its nuclear defiance and has been condemned for alleged human rights abuses.

Some things are entirely foreign: the armed soldiers everywhere, their faces lean and tanned; the banners and posters painted with hammer, sickle and rifle exhorting people to help build the nation's economy; the sense of paranoia that comes with wondering who's watching or listening to you.

More than 60 years of socialism haven't stamped out Korean tradition. Orchestras still play the folk tune "Arirang," along with "The General is our Father."

The poverty isn't immediately visible in the modern metropolis of Pyongyang. We are led through gleaming hallways and cavernous, chandeliered lobbies by guides in sparkling gowns or neat military uniforms, speaking as though from a script. The hedges are trimmed, the begonias in bloom.

But in between the staged visits, candid moments put a human face on a society enigmatic to the West, more complex and textured than typically portrayed.

A query from the state broadcaster prompts all 10 to rise to sing an ode to Kim Jong Il.

North Korea figures large in the Western imagination as a place frozen in a Cold War time warp even as allies Russia and China have embraced capitalism. The government strives to maintain strict control over information — and people — coming in and out of the country.

The article is littered with such passages.

 

[Cannae]

America should have invaded North Korea instead of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes even if China would object to the invasion. But I'd agree North Korea is being painted too rosey by MSNBC. It's not suprising that the article is so rosey. It would be bad PR for North Korea if they actually gave the whole picture, and not just the rosey parts.

 

[RedRalph]

I wouldn't want to live in DPRK, but it's funny how so many people here cannot consider even the proposition that it may not be quite as bad as you imagine.

 

[negZero]

I wouldn't want to live in DPRK, but it's funny how so many people here cannot consider even the proposition that it may not be quite as bad as you imagine.

Maybe because there are dozens upon dozens of articles from N.Korean defectors and NCOs telling us different story then these fools are.

 

[Formaldehyde]

America should have invaded North Korea instead of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes even if China would object to the invasion. But I'd agree North Korea is being painted too rosey by MSNBC. It's not suprising that the article is so rosey. It would be bad PR for North Korea if they actually gave the whole picture, and not just the rosey parts.

This article was written by the South Korea AP bureau chief who is a Korean-American. If anything, she would be biased against NK. MSNBC simply reprinted it.

 

[aelf]

I think the article is fair. It's not too unfavourable, for reasons we can imagine, but that doesn't make it some kind of propaganda for any side. Those complaining loudly of bias probably entertain childish fantasies about the objectivity of media anyway.

 

[Moonbat]

I wouldn't want to live in DPRK, but it's funny how so many people here cannot consider even the proposition that it may not be quite as bad as you imagine.

Yah, it's all fine and dandy if you're a dirty commie but if you're not, you're dead.

 

[Azale]

I haven't read the article (yet, I plan to shortly), but here is what I think in a quick little summary:

North Koreans are on average 3 inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts. That's one good statistic to tell you the state of the country's economy and living standards. It's a militarist kleptocratic basketcase, whose problems only continue to grow.

North Korea is trying to put on a good public face because of the approaching Kim Il Sung centenary. Pyongyang is a potemkin village for gullible journalists, but most people involved with the country (WTO and other NGO workers and the more respectable of the "North Korea watchers") know better.

 

[Formaldehyde]

North Koreans are on average 3 inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts. That's one good statistic to tell you the state of the country's economy and living standards. It's a militarist kleptocratic basketcase, whose problems only continue to grow.

Does this mean the US is a "militarist kleptocratic basketcase" when compared to Europe?

Short North Koreans . . . and Americans

While the conditions for North Koreans are troubling, Americans have a similar height gap to worry about, and it also appears to be due to a lower standard of living, poor health care and inadequate nutrition. Last summer, the journal Social Science Quarterly reported that Americans are, quite literally, falling short of Europeans. In 1880, Americans were the tallest people in the world. But by 2000, American men, at an average height of 5-feet-10.5-inches, ranked 9th, and women, at about 5-feet-5-inches, fell to 15th. Several Northern European countries rank the highest in height, with the Dutch coming in first, at just over 6 feet for the men and 5-feet-7-inches for the women.

The height gap between Americans and Northern Europeans can’t be explained by an influx of short immigrants. Experts say the United States takes in too few immigrants to account for the disparity, and the height statistics cited in the article include only English-speaking native-born Americans, and don’t include people of Asian and Hispanic descent.

The real answer may be that Northern European countries do a better job of spreading the wealth and taking care of their children.

“We conjecture that perhaps the Western and Northern European welfare states, with their universal socioeconomic safety nets, are able to provide a higher biological standard of living to their children and youth than the more free-market-oriented U.S. economy,” wrote John Komlos, professor of economics at the University of Munich.

I e-mailed Dr. Komlos to ask him if he had seen the reference to short North Koreans in the debate. He said he found Senator McCain’s remark “amusing” as he is the editor of the science journal that originally published the data.

“Of course, a similar argument could be leveled against the U.S. as it is not doing as well as its Western European counterparts,” he wrote. “Of course there are many other indicators that the U.S. health care and diet are not as good as in Western Europe. Western Europeans live longer.”

Or does it just mean that both countries could do a better job supporting their own citizens?

 

[Takhisis]

There have been a number of references to North Korea in the forum lately.

Today, the St. Pete Times ran a number of photos taken recently by David Guttenfelder and Jean H Lee. They were even recently allowed to travel in the countryside accompanied by North Korean journalists with no government minders.

A contradiction in terms.

<snipped photos>

It appears that NK isn't actually the completely isolated country that many believe it to be, as it gradually opens its doors to Western journalists and others. That, like Cuba, many people from other countries do visit. And that at least some North Koreans are allowed to travel to other countries. That even though there is still great suspicion directed towards SK and the evil "miguk nom", many from other countries are starting to be allowed to travel there fairly unrestricted.

Does this glimpse change your perspective of NK at all? Or does it just confirm your own feelings about this country?

No pics of the prisoner camps?

 

[Arwon]

I dunno why people are getting the positive vibe from this, the creepiness and undercurrent of Orwellian menace is practically dripping from every word and picture.

This is not incompatible with the idea that ordinary people with mundane daily lives do, in fact, exist in North Korea.

 

[Takhisis]

Doubleplusungood on you Arwon, we've always been at war with Eastasia.

 

[Traitorfish]

I wouldn't want to live in DPRK, but it's funny how so many people here cannot consider even the proposition that it may not be quite as bad as you imagine.

Yeah, some people seem to have gotten into their head that the DPRK actually embodies every Orwellian caricature that they've ever encountered. A guy here the other day, I forget who, actually seemed to believe that every North Korean is given a government proscribed managed and given a schedule and a quota for sex! (As if, aside from anything else, a government as massively incompetent as theirs could handle something that complex.) I mean, yeah, the place is an Orwellian hellhole, but there are limits even there.

Yah, it's all fine and dandy if you're a dirty commie but if you're not, you're dead.

Actually, history tends to suggest that the communists are the first to die in these countries. I mean, presumably you're away that the Kim regime had tens of thousands of Trotskyists, anarchists and council communists murdered, aren't you?

I dunno why people are getting the positive vibe from this, the creepiness and undercurrent of Orwellian menace is practically dripping from every word and picture.

That too. Some people aren't satisfied without their fire and brimstone, I guess.

 

[jtb1127]

I wonder what good things they have to say in that museum.

 

[GamezRule]

Is it bad that I wan't to spend a week in Pyongyang?

 

[Formaldehyde]

Apparently to some.

I guess the photo of a little girl learning how to play the piano in an elementary school just paints too rosy of a picture of Team America's arch enemy and member of the Axis of Evil.

 

[Quackers]

IIRC, Pyongyang is the play city of mid ranking and Elite partymembers. They have access to more luxury, leisure and freedoms off the backs of the other North Koreans.
The real North Korea is in the countryside and other cities - I doubt the $1800/month figure holds true there.

 

[Azale]

Does this mean the US is a "militarist kleptocratic basketcase" when compared to Europe?

Or does it just mean that both countries could do a better job supporting their own citizens?

I said NK was a MKB because it is, I was not comparing it to anything else. A criticism of North Korea is not inherently a defense of America. I would be the last person to defend the developing economic trend in the US.

I don't understand why you feel the need to defend what is probably the most obvious case of severe governmental oppression and neglect in the world. It just erodes your credibility. Don't be the Stalin apologist of this generation.

Or go ahead and try to draw a rational comparison of the shortfalls in the US and North Korea. I'll be gathering wild grasses in my backyard to stave off imminent starvation in the meantime.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I don't understand why you feel the need to defend what is probably the most obvious case of severe governmental oppression and neglect in the world. It just erodes your credibility. Don't be the Stalin apologist of this generation.

Because I'm obviously not defending them, any more than I defend atrocities committed by the US government or any other?

Once again:

Or does it just mean that both countries could do a better job supporting their own citizens?

 

[Takhisis]

Well, Forma, you do sound a bit like a NK apologist. Yes, the US is unjust, unfair, etc. etc. but North Korea is a hellhole ruled by a despotic lunatic with absolute power.