sources
on the dprk
- right to housing and retirement, multi-party peoples democracy: constitution of the dprk
- power checks and balances: infographic: why the us is a dictatorship and the dprk isnt.
- welfare economy: prolewiki article about the dprk, section on economy (that whole article is generally really great and debunks a lot of western propaganda)
- democratic since inception: kim byong sik. "modern korea: the socialist north, revolutionary perspectives in the south, and unification." 1970.
on the rok
- poverty, slums: prolewiki-article on the term "hell josoen"
- political prisoners: western source confirming the existence of the national security law, stephen gowans (2018). patriots, traitors and empires: the story of koreas struggle for freedom: 'the political partition of korea' (pp. 115–116) , and the prolewiki-article on the rok, sections "national security law" and "unconverted long-term prisoners"
- widespread corruption: a lot of reporting can be found on this topic, even in western media. lets just take the government-sanctioned prostitution and sex trafficking as an example, though there is other equally horrific stuff, including the usage of disabled people as agricultural slaves.
- worlds second highest suicide rate: katrin park (2021-10-5). "south korea is no country for young people" doreign policy.
- tyrannical history: prolewiki-article on the rok, section "history" warning: very bleak read
debunking of anticipated liberal comments
norf korea no food
malnutrition was in fact a thing during the 1990s, though the portrayals of this time period, the so called "arduous march" in westen media are usually exaggerated. mostly omitted by american-allied media is the fact that those difficulties were caused by the inhumane and terrorist western sanctions and embargo against the dprk, as well as the cia-backed illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr. nowadays problems regarding food security have pretty much ceased to exist in the country.
hermit kingdom
first of all, the term itself is nothing but racist, orientalist nonsense, but whatever... the dprk is in no way a kingdom, its democratic model of governance, while obviously imperfect and worthy of (constructive) criticism, is explained in the constitution and infographic linked above.
furthermore, the county is neither "reclusive", nor internationally isolated. the dprk enjoys very friendly relations with fellow aes china, cuba, laos and vietnam, as well as anti-imperialist nations like iran, russia and palestine. the reason you dont hear much from inside the country is due to western press not wanting to report the truth.
no lights, no electricity
the famous "no lights"-photo is a photoshopped fake initially circulated by a southern far-right tabloid. here is an actual image of east asia, including the korean peninsula:
haircut police
unlike south korea, the dprk never had such policies. here is a very entertaining video debunking that myth.
I mentioned it because it's quite easy to find. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761156048/in-south-korea-anguish-over-deaths-of-north-korean-defectors-who-may-have-starve
I slightly misremembered, "starved to death" is speculation (and the most prevalent speculation!) but I personally think that severe malnourishment leading to succumbing to disease or something like that sounds more plausible from the description this and other articles gives, but also such a death is still referred to in many contexts as effectively being starvation (e.g. if you're counting famine deaths).
Ok thanks. I'm going to look into this deeper. Actually I just sent this link to South Korean leftist buddy of mine who I incidentally met over on the old CTH sub back in the day. I'm gonna see what he has to say, he is quite knowledgeable
I tried to google around for it, but any google search with keywords about 'starve' and 'Korea' and so on just brought up stuff about the Arduous March.
Anyways, this story is certainly very tragic and disturbing.
Here's my initial thoughts. This wld be a really extreme situation, very rare, which is why it's getting reported even all the way over here in the western press. The reason this kind of story is so incredibly shocking is because death by starvation in SK is just incredibly rare in the present age.
My impression is that this likely has less to do with actual lack of access to food and more to do with mental issues. What I mean is that looks something like a suicide. Obv starvation is an extremely rare form of suicide bc it is slow and extremely painful, but there are documented cases of people doing it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suicides_by_starvation
Notice how the people they interview talk about depressed she was, and how the North Korean emigre community were so distressed and shocked by it. There's just absolutely no way that the North Korean community there in Seoul would have allowed that to happen to one of their own if she had gone to them for help. There's also private (religious and secular) charities. This woman also came of age in the Aldous March. Those North Koreans who went thru that are some hard core people, they know how to find and get food if you are literally dying. Digging thru the trash in Seoul would have given honestly scrumptious meals when compared with the kind of nasty stuff they were forced to eat to survive in those days. She also could have given her son over to a government agency.
The fact that she didn't do any of that, combined with the well known fact that a lot of ppl in S Koreans struggle with mental illness and that she looked sad all the time supposedly all point to this being a woman with severe mental issues. That to me looks like a sort of murder-suicide. It's simply a fact that food would have been available to her, had she sought it out.
That's not to victim blame or say that this isn't tragic or its just her fault and thats the end of the story, North Korean emigres to the South face a lot of discrimination. Leaving North Korea is fucking hard, people don't do it unless they have a really good reason. She obviously lived a hard live, both in NK, in China and in SK. It is completely understandable how something like that could produce someone with mental issues bad enough that someone might just say "ok, fuck this life, I'm just gonna lay down and wait for death."
Unrelated note, but I can't help but chuckle at the guy trying to blame this on Pres Moon for not being sufficiently hawkish on NK. A lot of those groups are psycho and are kind of like cuban gusanos in their zeal for sanctions and hawkishness on their family and countrymen back home.
I encourage you to work on thinking of keywords. "North Korea defector starves to death" yields:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korean-mother-son-defectors-die-suspected-starvation/story?id=65777523
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/03/28/asia-pacific/north-korean-defectors-lonely-death/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49408555
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/21/asia/north-korean-defector-funeral-intl-hnk/index.html
And on and on. As I said, it's a story that is very easy to find.
I think mental health is a reductionist answer here, even if it was a suicide. Something the NPR article rightly puts some emphasis on is that she was dirt poor, dying after spending the equivalent of like $3 on produce after emptying her bank account. The same article also mentions:
There are still serious structural elements here that caused it, especially since I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that getting hired for a normal job in SK as a N Korean can be very, very difficult.
Suicide or not, this was done by Seoul.
Like many "defectors", she is a trafficking victim, albeit in this case she was sold to some Chinese man rather than the more modern trend of being sold directly to South Korea to fuel the "defector" industry (do the traffickers get a cut of the reward money? idk). Not that there aren't also defectors, whether they are people just fleeing crushing poverty or they're wanted for having committed some heinous crime. You know, a whole range of things.
I don't tend to spend a lot of time googling around for sources for someone else's claims, there's limited hours in my life. The person making the claim can do the googling imo. If i try two or three times and don't see it, I just tell them to cite their source.
Yea, being dirt poor tends to do a number on your mental health, she seems to have been dirt poor her whole life thru, both in NK, in China, and in SK.
Did I say there's no structural elements? You might have heard about this idea before but we do in fact live in a society. There's always a structural element.
Someone starving to death in SK in the modern era is extremely rare, by which I mean that it is so rare that it is literally comparable to deaths by lightning strikes.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/06/12/national/socialAffairs/korea-yangyang-surfing/20230612183746767.html "From 2013 to 2022, seven people in Korea died from a lightning strike, while 18 others were injured, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety."
A death by starvation is literally 1 in a million, and in fact, given as a deaths per year stat, it's probably less than 1 in a million, given that the pop is 52 mil, and it is truly impossible to believe that deaths from starvation could be as high 52 per year. I don't say this to excuse it, but merely for perspective. I mention suicide as the likely cause of death because deaths by suicide, unlike deaths by starvation, are common in Seoul. I'm not out here to say that Seoul is a utopia, as I have made abundantly clear in nearly every reply I have given.
I don't even even use the word 'defector' because it is loaded terminology. I also don't judge people for what reasons they might leave NK. I wasn't there, I don't know, and I can't judge.
Anyways, my buddy got back to me, said he didn't know much about the case, looked into it, commented that her inability to get welfare due to having a husband she had divorced in China seems to have been a "weird gap" in the welfare system for the emigres, said that his first impression is similar to mine, that she could have gotten food, but mounting psychological troubles from a lifetime of misery probably stopper her from doing so. He also sent me this video if you care to check it out, altho it's an hour long and with only automated machine translated English subtitles . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-BGhLoMJfE
Again im not out here to say SK is a wonderland. There's abundant problems to criticize and I have made that clear. I came in to correct the record about OP's bullshit, not to spread bullshit of my own about SK is perfect. And to return to the point, OP said that SK "lacked even the most basic fundamentals of human dignity." I don't think it is fair to take a single death from 5 years ago, even one as fucked up as this, and then use it as evidence to say that SK "lacks even the most basic fundamentals of human dignity."
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: