Almost certainly, yes. As best I recall, the average North Korean child is three or four inches shorter than their South Korean counterpart — the North Korean elites probably wouldn’t be that badly malnourished. Of course, in America there’s some physical difference too, just in the opposite direction…
You know, if Korea ever is unified, any thorough de-Communization of the North is going to be unthinkable. Some top NK leaders might be locked up for this or that, but, you know, everybody’s a Communist, everybody who runs things is a Party member, you had to join to get anywhere, you can’t put Southern carpetbaggers in every management or government position.
Not only that, but the Workers’ Party of Korea or a successor organization is going to have to have some representation in parliament and, perhaps, have to be included in the government/cabinet. Even if most of its present leaders are locked up for this or that, the party almost certainly will survive in some form – doesn’t matter how discredited it is, millions of North Koreans will, offered a free choice, vote WPK for a while because anything else is inconceivable. That will change eventually, and other parties will gain footholds in the North and the Communist vote share will decline, but that could take anywhere from years to decades.
Okay. I’ve held off long enough…
TROLL!!
The last thing the US needs is a unified Korea because, with the level of inculcated fanaticism apparent in the country, the only way that will come about is if this ‘unified Korea’ were Communist, almost certainly headed / infected by an ‘Ill’ and (most importantly) bent on violent reparation for what they perceive the US did to them in the 50s.
Drop three greased pigs marked “1”, “2” and “4.”
I must agree with Commissar on this point, at least.
All this trumpeting of the superiority of capitalism sounds a wee bit like the cock crowing from a manure pile.
Next time, hold off until you’re in the Pit. You are not allowed to call other people trolls unless you’re posted in that forum. This is a formal warning not to do this again.
And the corpses, don’t forget the corpses in Stalin’s 5 year plans for industrial expansion and Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Beats a pile of bodies any day.
And much as the notion of breaking a few eggs to make an omelet is repugnant to most of us, these days North Korea has lots of broken eggs and can’t serve any omelets.
So this tradeoff is a fiction - North Korea has poor education and much of that propaganda, poor medical care, poor and unequal housing, and the lot.
Except his statements make little sense since he’s bragging about not just North Korea but China.
Sorry, but the idea that China has the universal access to education, good housing and healthcare is absurd since most of the country are illiterate peasants living without electricity.
Similarly, in an earlier thread he bragged about workers rights and constraining corporations but China has far fewer protections on workers and far less constraints on corporations when it comes to safety issues then the US.
In fact pointing to China as proof of how glorious communism is makes no sense since China hasn’t been communist in any meaningful way for several decades.
Karl Marx would find France, Canada, and even the US closer to his vision than China regardless of whether or not they insist they’re a “People’s Republic”.
We will de-Communize North Korea the same way the US de-Nazified Germany.
De-nazifying Germany wasn’t as hard as de-communizing them. The East is still seriously lagging behind in employment and economic development, and at a local level at least, there has been a mild resurgence of the far right and far left parties. Not the best analogy to use to make your case!
Stop confusing the issue with facts.
Hrm… Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s policies are pretty brutal and disliked among most people on the right and the left in America. Therefore, I would like to claim that the Glorious Nation of Zimbabwe is right, proper, and beyond reproach and the Empire Empire Empire of Amerikkka is bad and Glorious Zimbabwe should totally kick its ass.
QED.
You mean, kinda halfway and let’s move on now, shall we? That’s what I described. In postwar Germany, the Nazi Party and state were dismantled, but it was not necessarily the case that having been a Party member was a career-ender. I mean, everybody joined to move up, and so on. Just like the Communist Party in the USSR, the fall of which involved no general purge of Communists from public life. But, unlike the Nazi Party, and like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Korean Workers’ Party can reasonably expected to survive its fall from power, in some form.
I don’t think that is a good criterion since those in charge of the gov vs. those not in charge see massive discrepencies in income. North korea supposedly has a small ruling elite, a quasi-lower middle class in pyongyang and tons of rural poor. THeir inequality is probably worse than what is in Latin America.
I said legitimate, not good. 
You will wait until a glorious socialist nation does all of the work for you, jump onto the “Me too!” wagon at the last second, and then make up fairy tales about how indispensible you really were to the whole process? :dubious:
That’s a nice bit of misdirection, but I’m going to have to call you out on it. Last time I checked, neither socialists nor anyone else had a monopoly on political killing. For example, you may wish to read up on those wonderful capitalist dictatorships that the Empire set up left and right in Latin America during the Cold War. They weren’t exactly known for their pacifism and tolerance towards political dissent, let me tell you that. And just this morning, on my drive to work, there was a nice little report about political killings being carried out by the Empire’s best friend Pakistan’s security apparatus. So, yeah, take care not to strike your own glass houses when flinging your stones our way, friend.
That’s just a cover. The real motive is that they don’t want the students all concentrated together and rising up to make trouble for the bosses. The Arab Spring has left North Korea’s leadership with brownies in their shorts.
(Leaving aside your attempt to deflect this into a discussion about socialism and move the goal posts)
Well, we could look at body count I suppose. According to Cecil’s article here, “communist and fascist regimes accounted for 84 percent of democidal deaths during the period studied”.
One thing about the above springs to mind immediately…not many of them were democracies by any definition of that term. All of them were totalitarian governments…you know, like North Korea. According to this, your Great Leader in the North (father to the current scum bag loony in charge) has killed “1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)”. This figure, of course, is very tenuous since no one really knows the exact number he killed, and, of course, doesn’t count those who just starved to death due to monumental mismanagement. I will admit that this particular cite is controversial, but I couldn’t find another easy to read estimate of the numbers of people deliberately killed by the North Korean regime…basically because ANY figures would be estimates considering the level of secrecy and fear in that country. I’ve seen estimates in the 10’s of millions, but I think those are a bit out there unless you count the deaths due to mismanagement, starvation, poor nutrition and the like, which would be even more difficult to quantify due to how opaque North Korea is.
That said, don’t you find it interesting that the top 2 killers AND the top 2 most murderous regimes in the 20th century were also the top 2 communist countries/leaders during that time frame?
-XT
I understand that, and I agree. I just thought Commissar might have something to say about the end of advanced education in N. Korea, which is so desperate that intelligent people like him are being sent to work in the fields.
So far, not.