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South Korea has given up on talking to the North (www.economist.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And I’m not going to be able to argue against your first hand account of rural North Korea.

Unless you are from the US or SK, when things open up a bit more that is looking to be possible again. I would encourage you to try visiting if you have the time and means. Even if we totally divorce things from the politics, there's a lot of beautiful nature there.

Anecdotally, you seem relatively reasonable and I think it would be an interesting experience.

However, I don’t see the people of North Korea being able to put political pressure on their government to change policies.

It does depend to what extent, people can definitely enact policy change. While all political organizations do ultimately belong to the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, they have multiple political parties under that umbrella that do different on some issues. Obviously they aren't going to suddenly pass laws making the place capitalist, but they can do and do change some things. The Social Democratic Policy is notably more liberal in their attitudes as it was formed by a lot of the petite bourgeoise. They actually have published journal articles that are critical of the ruling party.

[–] HobbitFoot -1 points 1 year ago

I'm sure North Korea is beautiful with its mountain vistas.

But when it comes to the government, the government is on its third generation hereditary ruler. That is a major outlier for Communist countries and a major outlier for republics in general. That isn't generally a good sign for a government to show that it can change. There might be a balancing of factions that the Supreme Leader has to deal with, but it generally leads to governments that don't change policy significantly except during transfers of power.

And, a lasting peace with South Korea involving the demilitarization of their mutual border would be that kind of change I don't see the current government being able to implement.

This isn't a discussion regarding the morality of the North Korean people or a dissection of Juche philosophy, but an analysis of how the government is set up.