@Hygro: not dismissing the forum, just saying I am offering the perspective. Don't care if anyone believes me, because you have all made up your minds about DPRK and that is a shame.
@Alassius: IF Stone's The Hidden History of the Korean War cites official communiques that state explicity the Air Force had "run out of targets" and had bombed every structure in the North they could.
But, still, those people are dead. Those buildings were destroyed.
All of the posters save Gary Childress and Cheezy have taken the mainstream media allegations of DPRK as gospel and you have already made up your minds.
Like I said, I can only put the data out there. I have no axe to grind.
America has a far worseoff, far less happier population. Quote me, I just said it on the internet.
So, you are agreeing that you cannot find a source for that specific quote? How do you know the communique was talking about "every structure in the North", rather than, say, "militarily valuable" buildings? Did you fill in the blank yourself?
I have made up my mind because I have actually lived in one of those countries. I saw the "greenery of the fields, children playing at the roadside, soldiers returning home to their villages for a short home-leave, women facing the sun at dusk". Heck I was one of those children. But I didn't see colorful traditional dresses. I saw dirty, thick clothes with patches all over. You didn't even have to see, you could smell it from twenty feet away - washing machines were a luxury that you might get one when you got married, maybe. I saw a 17" colour TV set that was the envy of my neighbours. My dad got it using his
guanxi. I saw people frying congealed pig blood because it tasted somewhat like meat. I saw Magnum ice cream that I wanted so much but never got one, because it was so expensive. I saw old houses built without running water or flush toilets. I saw worker's dormitories that were dark, damp, and smelly. Dormitories where an entire floor - maybe twenty people - shared two toilets, a few sinks, and no kitchen. People cooked on coal stoves in the corridor because their rooms were just big enough for a bed. There was no ventilation other than the door, which of course had to be kept closed during the winter, because there was no heating. I saw the public showers with no stalls, no curtains, just pipes smelled of rust. I saw the public baths where they changed the water once a day - and they were always full of people. Where else were you going to take a bath if you didn't even have a flush toilet at your home? I saw those public toilets in factories and schools that were basically a open cesspool half covered by concrete with slots to squat on. In winter the urine on the floor would freeze, and you could easily slip.
But sure, you could say we were happy. Maybe even happier than the Americans. But I know for a fact that it was the bliss of ignorance. We were happy with life because we didn't know it could be better. And we were plenty unhappy about life too. We were meticulous about every penny because we had so few of it. We haggled with peddlers over the price of one spring onion. We fought with our colleagues over a raise that let you buy another 5 pounds of pork a month. And we fought really, really hard over such fantastic opportunities to move in those new purpose-built one-bedroom flats with running water (that was cut off during the day), flush toilet (still no shower), and central heating. But that was already the late eighties, a decade after we've had enough with a planned economy.
That was the same time we learnt about American life. We've literally just discovered heaven. For twenty years the phrase "going abroad" meant an escape to paradise, where everyone is so rich that nobody needs to worry about the price of one spring onion. It was only recently that the phrase lost much of the snobbishness associated with it, because in the big cities we're having it nearly as good or happy as the Americans. We don't have to go abroad any more to live in paradise. And certainly we don't want to go back to the life in the collective dormitories.
That's what I saw with my eyes. Now what have you seen to make you think "America has a far worseoff, far less happier population"?
And to everyone, feel free to tell me off if I get on your case. I snarked on a close friend's tweet last morning he tagged me into and then did terribly on an econ final this afternoon so it's all my own thing).
