Which do you like better: North- or Southkorea

Well, it's a tough choice for me. There are lots of positive and negative aspects to both countries. I like socialist economics, but I also like to have a (real) vote.

People here talk like North Korea is the most Third World of all Third World countries because they don't like socialist economics. That's just ignorance. North Korea has lots of economic problems for sure, but no more than most countries on this planet. The typical North Korean has a pretty average standard of living by world standards (as contrasted with our privileged standards here in the United States). The average life expectancy in the world overall is 65 years, for instance. Life expectancy in North Korea is 67 years. That's a little better than in modern Russia and slightly worse than modern China. The literacy rate is roughly 100% like it is here, so they clearly have a functioning education system. And yet one-third of the country (basically the rural part, where a minority of the population still lives) is going hungry at any given time. And, in the urban areas, there are regular power outages. That's pretty average overall. In fact, those results overall are actually fairly impressive considering that North Korea has only one major trading partner. North Korea's economy is not growing, there's no question about that. But the living standards of typical people there aren't getting worse either. People here are just so spoiled and arrogant that they can't figure that out, and refuse to respect any people who aren't white or have a different approach to life. North Korea is different, not inferior. It is also somewhat less chauvinist a society than South Korea, which counts for something to me. North Korean workers also get to vote on who some of their bosses will be, unlike here in the United States. That counts for something to me too.

The drawbacks to North Korea are obvious: it's a patriarchal, mono-culturalist monarchy that's largely run by the military. That's the political system. I don't like their political system at all. But I understand it. Warlordism and monarchy are part of the longstanding cultural traditions of the region. Socialism can be democratic or authoritarian. In North Korea's case, it's largely authoritarian.

In the choice between living in North or South Korea, the choice for me boils down to how much I value American living standards and the right to vote. It's a tough choice for me. I'd rather not have to make such a choice. But I guess I'd still marginally go with the North actually, on spiritual grounds (i.e. I like the spirit of the country marginally better). Well, I'd try it on for size for a month if I could and see.

 

I like America best.

 

Thank you for your informative and objective posting.

The economy of North Korea grows. Not so much in its total output, but currently in technologies. North Korea will soon proceed to equip its entire economy with selfmade, very modern production means and devices, like world class machine tools for CNC. This will result in a big anual growth.

"North Korea, the subject of US economic sanctions for several decades, has independently developed the world’s most advanced technology in defiance of such sanctions and is now seeking practical gains to contribute to the improvement of its people by introducing advanced technologies to overall industries. North Korea aims to break away from US economic sanctions and become an economically sound country, as it aims to become a "powerful country" in 2012, at the occasion of 100th anniversary of the birth of the country's founder, Kim Il-sung. The major import of North Korean development of CNC technology is that its power production is gradually stabilized."

"North Korea has developed ‘about 1,000 small and medium-sized power plants in 1999, 130 in 2000, 80 in 2001, 40 in 2002 and several tens in 2003. The urge to build various small and medium-sized power plants for power supply seems to have contributed to solving the power shortage, leading to stable power supply sustaining the processing of machine tools."
http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/1...uring-develops-computer-numerical-control-cnc

The North Korean form of government ist not only based on the Juche-ideology, but is also necessary to keep the nation in existence. There are military reasons for North Korea to maintain and fund a large and powerful army and a tautly system to prevent secret services from infiltrating the nation.

What is a right to vote really worth, when you have just two parties which differs mainly in rhetoric? From outside the USA people do not see any changes when the government changes its party. The domestic differences are minimal and do not take effect. Your entire system is made not to allow any relevant changes.

 

I have never read so much ignorance than the OP has given in his claims for North Korea .
It is the most repressive regime on the planet and people live at starvation levels .
One word out of place and you are beaten and banged up .Ordinary people live by the Black economy and it is so awful that Russia seems paradise in comparison .
The difference of the OPs belief versus reality is mind boggling .

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/economics-trade/243274-food-wealth-situation-northkorea.html

 

BELOW Speaks for itself


Pyongyang has reportedly asked a number of countries for food aid.

The United Nations has a team of international experts on the ground assessing the situation.

North Korea has suffered major food shortages in the past.

A famine in the 1990s saw hundreds of thousands of people - perhaps as many as two million - die of starvation.


Did it say up to two million died of starvation , above?
By jove . I can't wait to get there . Sounds great .

Poor harvest
It is well documented that during food shortages in the North, people will forage for weeds, herbs and wild grasses to supplement their meagre diet.

What is harder to know is the extent to which this is normal or something out of the ordinary.

The charity workers - from Christian Friends of Korea, Global Resource Services, Mercy Corps, Samaritan's Purse and World Vision - spent a week in North Korea earlier this month, invited by the government.

In their report, they say they visited hospitals, orphanages and homes as well as farms and warehouses in the north-west of the country.

The agencies report the Pyongyang government saying between 50% and 80% of the wheat and barley planted for harvesting in the spring has been killed by the extreme cold of the past two months, as well as potato seedlings.

The team also says hospitals reported an increase in malnutrition over the past six months - the aid workers themselves saw acute cases too.

The United Nations currently has a team of food experts in North Korea.

A spokesman said as well as there being a known shortfall of nearly a million tonnes in cereals, the last vegetable harvest was much poorer than expected.

It is understood that North Korea's embassies have been asking foreign countries to provide aid.

 

North Korea.

AS there are many americans on this forum who seem to hate it with a passion but they lack any intelligence to explain the reasoning why. Their ignorance amuses me. I like to learn more on the North.

 

Yes, that´s true. It proves that the govenment does not let its people hunger, when it is not enough for all.
Only 14 % of North Koreas ground can be used for agriculture due to its geography and that at a population density of meanwhile over 200 people per km2.

 

Any specialized interests? Post it. Maybe I can help you.

 

North Korea does not have a long history of brute raids against international law. Nato leaders do. All that propaganda lies are placed to distract attention from the West´s war crimes.
One example: The Christianity is not forbidden in North Korea. There are not more than 20.000 Christians in North Korea but they have three churches just in Pyongyang. The government counts 500 Christian communities.

 

You are not reading and listening .
The place is a Hell hole


The Casual Horrors of Life in a North Korean Hell
‘Escape From Camp 14,’ by Blaine Harden


Blaine Harden
Shin Dong-hyuk, the subject of "Escape From Camp 14."

Published: April 11, 2012

When Blaine Harden wrote his shocking 2008 profile of Shin Dong-hyuk for The Washington Post, Mr. Shin was living in Seoul, South Korea, and already a published author. He had written “Escape to the Outside World,” a 2007 Korean-language account of his horrific upbringing.
ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14
One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West
By Blaine Harden

Mr. Shin was born in a North Korean forced-labor camp and then found his way to freedom. There were some problems with playing back this account verbatim. So Mr. Harden’s dramatic front-page article, “North Korean Prison Camp Escapee Tells of Horrors, Worries About Those Left Behind,” took care to include a disclaimer: “Shin’s story could not be independently verified, but it has been vetted and vouched for by leading human-rights activists and members of defector organizations in Seoul,” The Post article said.

Unfortunately, the disclaimer turned out to be necessary. As Mr. Harden now acknowledges in “Escape From Camp 14,” his blunt, best-selling book about Mr. Shin’s life, Mr. Shin had built his own memoir upon a gigantic lie.

In his account Mr. Shin claimed to have been a helpless innocent witness to the execution of his mother and brother when Mr. Shin was only 14. He had indeed been helpless, and he had the torture marks to prove it.

But, as Mr. Harden discovered about a year into the interviewing process for this book, Mr. Shin’s original account omitted a crucial detail: He was responsible for the executions. He had snitched to a prison guard about an escape his mother and brother were planning, knowing full well that escape plans were punishable by death.

Mr. Shin admitted to Mr. Harden that he had made this trade-off to get more food and an easier job at school. And he said he had done it without regrets. He thought that his mother and brother deserved to die.

“In writing this book, I have sometimes struggled to trust him,” Mr. Harden writes understandably in “Escape From Camp 14.” Mr. Harden tries to fathom a cryptic, troubled and not entirely sympathetic young man whose circumstances lend themselves to exaggeration.

What’s more, the new book uses dialogue borrowed from Mr. Shin’s disingenuous 2007 version. “Escape From Camp 14” also includes simple line drawings (as Mr. Shin’s book had) that give the most traumatic parts of his story — torture, imprisonment, maiming, executions — the look of action comics. The most benign of these pictures carries this caption: “Children in the camps scavenged constantly for food, eating rats, insects and undigested kernels of corn they found in cow dung.”

Readers may well be won over by the sharp, declarative, young-adult style of Mr. Harden’s adventure writing. They will respond to urgent concern about conditions in North Korean prison camps, which are now visible via satellite photographs. And most misgivings about “Escape From Camp 14” will be outweighed by the power of a fast, brutal read.

This is not a familiar prison camp story; as Mr. Harden points out, Shin Dong-hyuk is not Elie Wiesel. “God did not disappear or die,” Mr. Harden writes. “Shin had never heard of him.”

Mr. Shin did not spend his imprisonment missing love, joy, civilization or comfort, because he had never experienced such things. As the spawn of a “reward marriage” — considered “the ultimate bonus for hard work and reliable snitching” — he had no real family ties.

The book says that he regarded his mother as a rival for food and was right to do so; she once beat him with a hoe for eating her lunch. As a young child, he saw schoolmates maimed or even killed for minor transgressions and he learned to obey the camp’s totalitarian rules.

Much of this book’s impact comes from its nonstop parade of ghastly details. Mr. Harden writes of how prisoners harvested frozen human excrement — chipped from toilets — to make up for North Korea’s shortage of other fertilizer; how eating rats could help stave off pellagra; how a former North Korean Army officer in another camp, despairing, jumped down a coal mine shaft, hoping to die.



The Books of The Times review on Thursday, about “Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West,” by Blaine Harden, misidentified the prisoner who tried to kill himself by jumping down a coal mine shaft. It was Kim Yong, a former North Korean Army officer — not Shin Dong-hyuk, the subject of the book.

 

What is the culture to North Korea, the cuisine. What do they enjoy for sport, i know they like football the real kind but anything else.

The positives of the nation, as too many negatives from members of this forum who are far too negative to be taken seriously.

 

Not to talk about Abu Ghuraib or Guantanamo:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

http://americantorture.com/

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/20/18709733.php

 

Yes, North Korea is one of Aisas top football nation, male and female. North Koreans also like hockey. Well known are North Korea´s mass gymnastics.
Their shows like Arirang with up to 150.000 members are fantastic:


North Korea´s theaters are popular, too.
Music is also a big part of the people´s life in North Korea. Every child plays a musical instrument. And for example: The New York philharmonic orchestra played in North Korea in 2008.

Cuisine:
The local cuisine is based on cooked rice. The most common foods are cakes, porridge, crackers, jelly, each mixed with other ingredients. Rice cakes can be cooked in 50 different ways. Supplements are as soup (tang), stew (jjigae) and Kimtchi, a kind of spicy, fermented cabbage salad, beets and garlic. Baked goods and desserts are made from corn and mixed nuts, soy, pine nuts, peanuts, etc. The cold noodles in Pyongyang, a local specialty, made ​​of Korean buckwheat flour and potato starch and are served with a refreshing soup of pheasant, chicken and ground beef. Another specialty Shinseollo, a stew of over 30 ingredients.

And wikipedia gives a good overiew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_cuisine

North Korea is one of Asia´s biggest producer of TV broadcasts for its two channels. Documentations, films and and Music are the biggest parts.



North Koreans are very studiously. North Korea is called the "Land of the clean clothes" in Aisa.

 

South Korea is the best.