this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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So, I want to engage in as good of faith possible, here.
It's not about whether it's discomforting, it's about whether or not what you're saying is even true. I have zero reason to believe what you posted has any basis in fact. You initially copy/pasted it with no citation.
Now, the links you're giving are decidedly not Korean. The DPRK puts out works of theory and the like, fairly readily. All I'm asking for is a primary source for this.
But let's assume it's 100% true, for a minute.
Even if it is, and Korean socialism does look the way that these 10 points describe, why might that be? What would drive such an insular, personality-cult driven, set of doctrine?
Could it, perchance, be the fact that the United States set about occupying half of the Korean Peninsula? Reinstalling many of the Japanese colonial administrators the Korean people had just spent decades trying to kick out?
Might it have something to do with the fact that the US bombed the entire peninsula so heavily, that US pilots complained that they were no more targets, and that Koreans literally began living in caves and a result?
If you actually care about Koreans, and are unsettled by the centralization of power in the DPRK, then you ought to recognize that it's US imperial policy that has irrevocably shaped the destiny of the Korean peninsula.
If there's any reason to "Stand up" for the DPRK, it's for the exact reasons you've laid out. If a society is too heal, and overcome the sort of backward despotism you've presented, then the answer is surely to not isolate it more. To not continue to fuel the siege mentality that drives the state ideology. But rather, to work for peace and unification, so that the whole of Korea might, once again, be able to shape its own destiny.
So I read through his links. There isn't a citation to any of these interviews (a necessity for actual academic journalism) to make sure things aren't being taken out of context. The first document even says that "North Korean experts disagree with these things because they view North Korea through the lens of their propaganda." And even then there are only three uncited interviews, one which is obviously an absolutely outrageous lie that breaking the frame of a photo of Kim Jon Il while polishing it is grounds for the execution of an entire family.
For context, the atrocities of the Pinochet regime are backed up by literally hundreds of recorded, cited interviews, some even by guards who participated in the violence admitting their culpability years later (though usually with the excuse that they weren't the ones committing the mass rape, etc.).
This is nothing. This is unsubstantial.
"North Korea has shitty policies because it has been isolated from the rest of the world," is a statement that I agree wholeheartedly with, and yes it should be opened to things like international trade. The same holds true for Cuba, etc.