https://xcancel.com/Reuters/status/2054098106136813829
Cars in North Korea??? That's not supposed to happen. It's ruining our narratives about them having dead rats for dinner. 
DPRK citizens now have access to superior Chinese EVs that amerikkkans can't have. 
Chinese car sellers: "I consent"
NK car buyers: "I consent"
Burger Eagle Freedom Institute brightest boy: "Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?"
What do they mean "aren't supposed to be there"?
The gist of the article is, the boom in vehicle ownership in North Korea is outpacing the infrastructure and systems to management it, e.g. traffic jams and parking spot scarcity.
There are some choice pure ideology moments in the article:
The boom follows changes to North Korean law that formalized private car ownership over the past two years, allowing licensed drivers to buy one vehicle per household through state-certified dealers. Owning a car is still mostly the preserve of the elite and the entrepreneurial class known as donju, analysts say.
Car ownership is simultaneously getting so pervasive that it’s causing backups and overflowing parking lots, but also it’s only the elite that can afford them (much like we were told it’s only the “elite” Chinese on Xiaohongshu).
Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Seoul, said North Korea’s automotive policy is part of a broader push to bring private economic activity under state control.
I’m sure the think tank in South Korea with a white dude on staff is very unbiased and neutral when it comes to North Korea.
20 years ago, a favorite trope of western media talking about the DPRK was how Pyongyang had all these big fancy clean boulevards and roadways with precise traffic control, but the streets were empty of cars. how silly!
it's like those old stories about China's ghost cities of infrastructure with no inhabitants being all fake and communism. now, of course, they're full of people and well integrated into a regional development plan.
and, the cherry on top has got to be, as you point out, the article talking about car ownership being elite only, but the roads are full anyway because the dang proletariat are too numerous. don't they realize they can't have so many elites?! the word "elite" has lost all meaning in these communist countries!
no no, it makes sense. when the workers are in control, they are the elite. and they can all afford cars apparently. it's only the poor aristocrats of north korea who cant.
my grandfather had an egg monopoly and a palace with many servants. and now i must walk the streets like a dust-covered peasant, where any one feels permitted by this authoritarian government to make eye contact with me.
On the way, it struck me that at the foot of the trees some tin sheets completely eaten with rust had been set up which I had not seen there the day before.
I asked why they did not move them out of the way; somebody might be injured by them.
In reply I was given a most resentful look.
"I would have you know," said Zemoeki, "that they are the Bigrusts which are displayed on solemn occasions." From this I understood only that I had made a blunder again, so, much more softly and with respect, I inquired after the nature of the Bigrusts, at which it came to light that that too, was an aneba.
"I'm no boaster," Zeremble said, "but I can tell you that my sheet of iron became holed with rust no less than eighty years ago."
And he looked around proudly.
But Zemoeki remarked that on his sheet of iron the rust was already two inches thick.
Now I was very curious and, to avoid any blunder, on the basis of my previous experiences, I flatteringly praised Zemoeki's Bigrust though I had no idea what that signified.
This method did indeed open their hearts and while we proceeded they explained every rusty sheet of iron.
20 years ago, a favorite trope of western media talking about the DPRK was how Pyongyang had all these big fancy clean boulevards and roadways with precise traffic control, but the streets were empty of cars. how silly!
Basically the same as chinese ghost city propaganda. They can't conceive of planning ahead.
They can't conceive of planning ahead.
Perfidious communist lies. Planning ahead into Q4 from Q3 is planning, sweaty.
The big one that gets me is that they always talk about, "Oh don't you know that they have skyscrapers they put up ten years ago that are falling apart?" And I am like, "Ok how many? One, two? A thousand? Because China has built over 10,000 over five story buildings in the last two decades, and it doesn't fucking look like the majority of them are going anywhere." But the western brainpan cannot comprehend the statistics and numbers of buildings created. In the U.S. this number is less than 1000.
Moreover, who cares if it is falling apart in 10 years, when you can just put up another one if you have the resources? Money is fucking fake.
Elite Chad Proletarians
There is only one road in North Korea and it is 10 feet long. Both members of the elite own a car and they force ten plebs each to push them on the dirt road in a circle, constantly stomping over the corpses of the traitors who didn't get the right haircut.
I’m sure the think tank in South Korea with a white dude on staff is very unbiased and neutral when it comes to North Korea.
This think tank is particularly biased as it was created in response to the Rangoon incident. However, South Korea itself is not a unified monolith of support for western imperialism, and thinking so is also a byproduct of western chauvinism.
Actual leftist anti-imperialist parties in South Korea have historically had more representation and support than leftist parties a lot of western nations. And that is in spite of the government banning the most popular ones every 5-10 years.
Yep, the ROK is extremely divided due to the heightened contradictions from Statesian colonialism, an unfinished civil war, and the ramifications of turning the old colonial government into a new class of chaebol. Trade unionists in the ROK are far more militant than most western countries, and labor struggle is heightened just like pro-Japanese colonialism compradors are also high.
Yep. I always tell people that SK is like a western liberal democracy but if you put it in a pressure cooker. My parents generation basically speed ran the spectrum of highs and lows of what liberal democracy has to offer and arrived at late stage capitalism 20 years before America.
My optimism about the country compared to somewhere like America is that they have a lot more worker solidarity and aren't afraid to throw a Molotov cocktail at cops. Plus they really don't have the reflexive loyalty to the liberal idea of "freedoms" , they are working under their 6th Republic after all.
Yep, I agree! The political instability isn't just because the state is especially repressive, it's because there's also a ton of struggle by the working classes against it. Then there's the massive power of the chaebol and the nihilism brought on by declining birth rates and a feminist movement struggling within this highly misogynistic pressure cooker.
My hope is that the downfall of the US Empire pushes normalization with the DPRK and increased ties with the PRC, potentially even a socialist revolution.
potentially even a socialist revolution
please I just want to see one in my lifetime
Oh yeah, I’m aware of the history of anti-imperialist/leftist/pro-unification groups in South Korea. I’m also sure that Reuters would not turn to them to get a quote on the state of the peninsula.
That's fair, I only commented because there is a prevalence of ignorance on this site about korea that can often compete with traditional reactionary western chauvinism.
I've personally been called a fascist just because my family is originally from Seoul, despite my mom having to flee her homeland because she was a socialist and participated in a student uprising in the 80s.
The western narrative of the Korean War basically erases the historic truth that NK invaded SK because the latter was massacring revolting leftist Koreans.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Imo while America holds the lion's share, both western powers hold blame.
The jeju uprising had a lot less to do with socialism/communism and a lot more to do with Korean independence. After the Soviets and Americans decided to spit the country in half in a shared occupation, there was supposed to be a five year trusteeship until both countries left the peninsula.
Although there was supposed to be a 5 year waiting period the United states wanted to expedite the ending of the trusteeship, which the Soviet state was not in favor of and so they did not come to agreement . After that the US called led a UN resolution for a unified independence election led by the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea.
The Soviets fearing that they would lose influence in the North rejected the UNTCOK, and so the UNTCOK election only proceeded in the south. The people of Jeju so close to the colonizing force of Japan were more resistant to colonization and were rightly afraid that the UNTCOK would solidify the 38th parallel and rebeled.
In reality both sides could have made compromises throughout the process, but we're both worried about losing influence over a strategic location. Imo it's what happens when western nations believe they have a right to occupy foreign nations.
The big ommissions here are that the Soviets were not occupiers and were far less involved than the Statesians, and the Statesians had declared the People's Republic of Korea illegal, and had set up an occupying government called USAMGIK, and then set up the ROK, leaving many of the compradors from the era of Japanese colonialism in power as the new stage and chaebol.
In the North, the democratic processes consolidated around the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, and the WPK in particular. The PRK was not dissolved in the north, and instead transitioned to the modern DPRK. The Soviets did not force the communists into power like the Statesians had forced the new capitalist government into power in the south.
state certified dealers
Why yes, article, uhhhhhhh all dealers are state certified. That's called a business license. If they're not state certified that's usually called tax evasion.
The gist of the article is, the boom in vehicle ownership in North Korea is outpacing the infrastructure and systems to management it, e.g. traffic jams and parking spot scarcity.
That's a hilarious accusation considering how big of a problem those are to every major American city. People commonly assault each other over road rage and parking spot disputes.
The gist of the article is, the boom in vehicle ownership in North Korea is outpacing the infrastructure and systems to management it, e.g. traffic jams and parking spot scarcity
The same thing happened in the US lol. Well that and private interests preventing public transportation to take a load off the car infrastructure. It's why there are certain neighborhoods in LA where one must absolutely rely on owning a car while simultaneously not having nearly enough parking or wide enough roads to actually have them. And of course there's plenty of other capitalist countries where the traffic is legendary in a similar way (India, Philippines, Egypt, etc).
Of course the difference is the state in North Korea can fix it if it's ever truly a huge problem, while the fact that private interests trump state interests in the US and these other countries make it obscenely expensive to solve.
Sarcasm. The joke being that they're broke because authoritarianism so they don't get cars
They hate cars and feel betrayed by the DPRK allowing private transport
HAHA NORTH KOREANS CAN'T AFFORD CARS
..
HAHA THERE ARE TOO MANY CARS IN NORTH KOREA
Damn that's fucked, comrade Kim please unleash infinite trains upon Pyongyang
Just today I saw on YouTube that Pyongyang only has good public transport because nobody has a car. 
Honestly I don't even care, let the crackers whine, I'm just happy North Korea is experiencing an economic boom
LMAO, western cope will always be funny. IIRC the DPRK actually have at least one car factory and brand on one of their special regions bordering China, but I can't find the ad they did for that. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
The one that I know if is Pyeonghwa Motors and it has its main factory in Nampo which is on the west coast, not near the border. It's definitely not their only car factory either. There might be some on the border with China now, I don't know either, but at the very least there's also the older Sungri Motor Plant that has made vehicles for DPRK since like the 1950s, but it's pretty much right in the center of the country.
@couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip, looks like your prediction was shit.
How did you correct him?
Inb4 “the cars are just props to make people think North Korea isn’t that bad”
once a poor country, always a poor country. hand over the car
arent supposed to be there...?
Damn, maybe you should have sold them cars first instead.
dprk no cars? bad
dprk has cars? bad
"What we are dealing with is an unfalsifiable orthodoxy so assiduously marketed that it has infected people across the entire political spectrum."
I can't believe they built all these big wide highways when they don't have any cars to drive on them
I can't believe they're driving cars on these big wide highways, those don't belong there
Seeing just how bad the propaganda is really makes you wonder about how much of this will be lost to time. Like will future history history books talk about how bad this propaganda was? Surely not right? So how many cases like this have we already forgotten about?
Of course not, we don't even talk about how bad the propaganda was back in the day now. Like people were treating Trump's campaign as being 'un-civil and un-American' when, within living memory, John Kerry was swift-boated, and literally James Madison accused his opponent of all kinds of henois shit.
American execeptionalism is a hell of a drug.
"you aren't supposed to have those!"
I want a Chinese electric car, I am driving my American made vehicle all the time as of now and it works alright but that is just about it and honestly if it was a couple years newer i would be worried about it spying on me more than I am worried about any product made in China doing it
Nooooo, you can't have cars we need to believe you're starving and eating vermin to survive while the government eats all your grain
For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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