Life Outside PLT1

Musings: North Korea

November 13, 2009 on 7:34 pm | In Contemplation | | Balinor

Whilst paruzing through the internetz I came across a discussion on North Korea at GP Forums that can be found here. In amongst the jib jab came a link to quite an interesting documentary.

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-2-of-3
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-3-of-3

A vbs.tv presenter, citing that “no one knows anything about North Korea”, ventures into North Korea and embarks on one of their ‘tours’ to see their sites and sounds. What’s interesting is the fact that you get to see what North Korea is like through a video camera. I’ve seen photos taken of people who have been on these ‘tours’ and read articles on them but never actually seen moving images of one of the most secret places in the world. It’s very well presented showing how entrenched the nation and just your joe average citizen is into Kim Jong Il’s behind. This got me thinking, how would you integrate North Korea to the rest of the world?

One cannot just kill Kim Jong Il. Someone else will just replace him. Not only that, the populace has been lead so long to believe that Kim Jong Il and his regime is the only government to follow. You cannot just replace the government either, the entire populace (those that are not starving) will fight back to maintain what they know. How would you like it if someone were to replace your parents all of a sudden? That’s their mind set as scary as it maybe. It sounds like they’re all in a massive cult.

However way you look at it, there will be bloodshed, and lots of it. Unless for some reason they government starts to allow the rest of the world in and the whole country starts to change slowly. It’s doable, look at China. If that was the case though, how does an individual handle this? North Korea is probably 40 years behind everyone else, what happens if you introduce today’s technology to them all of a sudden?

Technology isn’t the only thing. Think the arts. North Koreans known only songs and art from the current regime. How would you introduce the likes of heavy metal or rap? How would you explain rebellion, human right movements? How would you explain the Internet?

It’s interesting to think about and I wonder if the day that North Korea gets to join the rest of the world will be within my life time. Probably I suspect. At least not without something catastrophic happening first, followed by civil war, famine and re-integration.