Just watched this - amazing in so many ways... I tried looking for more information on Ahn Chol and supposedly he is just MIA for quite some time.. Hope he is alive and safe somewhere.
I've watch a number of "inside NK" documentaries and I agree, this is one of the better ones (despite the hipster host's somewhat condescending attitude). There was some good footage of interaction with NK common folks and the host keep trying to push the buttons of the guide. Give you a sense of how repressed they are without even knowing.
I did a similar trip to his in April 2007. While you visit, you have to put aside your issues with the regime, that's not why you're there. You're there to experience something which seems so implausible yet exists, or rather, before it doesn't. We got to meet some really nice people and what we saw was remarkable. If they could make the rest of their country like the capital and the other places I was shown, then it would be a really nice country in the political sense. The culture that is there seems to me to be fragile yet precious. I shudder to think what will happen to it if reunification happens in anything but a gradual way.
I remember watching a video where a man in North Korea was trying to eat bark off of a tree because he was so hungry. It makes me sick even thinking about it...
I wish people would stop using that term, "free country". I don't know of very many "free countries". If you live in the United States, you live in a free-er country than North Korea, and indeed, that's something to be grateful for, but you do not live in a truly free country.
In a truly free country, you would, for example, have the freedom to eat whatever you want (so long as it doesn't impinge on other people's freedoms). You would be able to have sex with whoever you wanted (so long as both parties are 'mature enough' to agree). This too, is not the case in the states. You would be able to marry whoever you wanted. You would be able to do to your body whatever you wanted. In a truly free country, you would have the freedom to do things that in today's non-free country we consider taboo, punishable offenses. Etc.
Clearly, a "truly free country" would fall apart instantly due to the inevitable chaos and evils. Thus why I didn't even bother making the distinction between "free" and "free-er". I assumed it was common knowledge.
My personal definition of freedom is the ability to do anything within the realm reasonable laws. I feel a vast majority of US laws are reasonable. Maybe you don't agree, maybe you do. I'm happy & patriotic US citizen and that's all that matters!
You would be able to have sex with whoever you wanted (so long as both parties are 'mature enough' to agree). This too, is not the case in the states.
Ok I'll bite. What laws are there in the US that restrict who you can have sex with? Laws against minors don't count as there needs to be some legal definition of "mature enough", unless you want a subjective judgment of maturity on a case by case basis.
Agreed. Living in a country pretty much means you're not free. You might be more or less free in country A than B, but you're not going to be free, otherwise there wouldn't really be a country, there'd be pure anarchy. Where you could do anything you wanted, but everyone else is free to do anything they wanted to you.
That is not my meaning. A pure anarchy where anyone can do what they want to you goes directly against the examples I gave and the Harm Principle (see response to apl).
I can never get over how Pyongyang has skyscrapers. Given how underdeveloped the rest of the country looks, I can only surmise that they must dump the majority of their GDP into building up Pyongyang.
The single biggest cost component of building a high-rise is wages, in a planned economy that factor pretty much disappears.
Other than that it's concrete, steel and time. In the former eastblock there are also plenty of highrises, very few of those would meet your expectations in terms of construction quality.
Also, highrises are actually more efficient material wise compared to building individual homes, after all each dwelling shares 4 surfaces with those around it (except for the edges).
If you've been to the South, the comparison is stark, and it's hard to believe the two were one country a few decades ago.
That said, if re-unification, happens I imagine the progress in the North will be rapid, and the country as a whole will become an even stronger regional power.
Re: reunification, Korea has the advantage to learn from Germany what worked and what didn't. I think the contrast is even sharper in this case, though. NK seems to be hopelessly destitute.
there is no comparison - east germany had some kind of industry. The issue was privatization and modernisation.
Also the population was very well educated and had watched west german TV for the last 30 years.
North Korea has no industry and the population has no education.
The unification will be between a high-tech 21st century developed country and the middle ages. The first thing they will have to do is take over the schools so that the next generation in 15 years has a chance to build this country.
GDP 1990
West Germany in 1990 $24,485
East Germany in 1990 $10,430
(I'm not so sure about these figures but the direction is right)
"That said, if re-unification, happens I imagine the progress in the North will be rapid, and the country as a whole will become an even stronger regional power."
South Korea is a prosperous country that has developed in a relatively short amount of time but North Koreans don't have the education or skill to compete in a South Korean economy.
Behind the scenes, South Koreans talk about a staged reunification over decades. The first stage? Use North Koreans as cheap, manual, unskilled labor like we in the U.S. use people from Mexico and South America (that's actually how it's described).
In a sense it's being tested right now in the Kaesong industrial area on the border. It gives the benefits of cheap labor, without having to use the Chinese.
I understand what you are saying, but the incredible challenges the people have just surviving from day to day erase any sense of peace for me. Give me ads all day if it means my kids are fed, clothed, and educated.
I recently read and liked the first three Inspector O novels. For me, the novels added a human dimension that the pictures and travelogs miss--what it is like to live under what I would think of as repression?
It's amazing how little trash a nation of slaves generates. Also, very few emissions. It is always Earth Day in North Korea, as the nation does a remarkable job at conserving electricity[1], unlike decadent Western societies.
"Fuel constraints and the near absence of private automobiles have relegated road transportation to a secondary role. The road network was estimated to be around 31,200km in 1999 up from between 23,000 and 30,000km in 1990, of which only 1,717 kilometers—7.5 percent—are paved; the rest are of dirt, crushed stone, or gravel, and are poorly maintained."
A lot of what they show resembles Artemii Lebedev's experience.