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I found the article to be an interesting read but I wish that someone could talk about the psychology, history behind why the country became that way instead of

by findm 15y ago

I found the article to be an interesting read but I wish that someone could talk about the psychology, history behind why the country became that way instead of just finger pointing on how terrible the conditions were. While its difficult to feel any empathy towards a manipulative, despotic, authoritarian regime, I also think that most westerners misunderstand and underestimate the people and their situation. The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was. This is just how the country was for over 2 millennia. The north, especially due to its easily defensible mountainous terrain, has always played a pivotal role in keeping larger more powerful threats from absorbing the whole. Considering its history it sheds some light into understanding their extreme xenophobia. Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? This is a culture steeped in confucianism, the patriarch is supreme and group cohesion and harmony is of higher importance than the needs of an individual. Even linguistically, social order is embedded into the language with many different levels of honorifics for different rank and class. A little off-topic but just my 2 cents. The Caste System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Korean_caste_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Korean_caste_system

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
CWuestefeld 15y ago
Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name. In any case, your reference to linguistic differences probably doesn't hold up. - - - Quote [1] Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been. When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, “Standard Average European” or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews. - - - End Quote and also - - - Quote [2] ...the strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that language determines thought, is also thought to be incorrect. ... Among the most frequently cited examples of linguistic determinism is Whorf's study of the language of the Inuit people, who were thought to have numerous words for snow. He argues that this modifies the world view of the Eskimo, creating a different mode of existence for them than, for instance, a speaker of English. The notion that Arctic people have an unusually large number of words for snow has been shown to be false by linguist Geoffrey Pullum; in an essay titled "The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax", he tracks down the origin of the story, ultimately attributing it largely to Whorf and suggesting the triviality of Whorf's observations. ... A recent study by Peter Gordon examines the language of the Pirahã tribe of Brazil. According to Gordon, the language used by this tribe only contains three counting words: one, two and many. Gordon shows through a series of experiments that the people of the Pirahã tribe have difficulty recounting numbers higher than three (Gordon, 2004). However, the causal relationship of these events is not clear. Critics have argued that if the test subjects are unable to count numbers higher than three for some other reason (perhaps because they are nomadic hunter/gatherers with nothing to count and hence no need to practice doing so) then one should not expect their language to have words for such numbers. That is, it is the lack of need which explains both the lack of counting ability and the lack of corresponding vocabulary. Moreover, a more recent study suggests that the Pirahã have a basic understanding of geometry despite their language. - - - End Quote [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.htm... [2] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
- sedachv 15y ago
  > I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name. That's probably because you need to study more history. Taking the past 200 years in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cri... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia#Assassination_attempts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia#Assassin... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_Revolt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_Revolt That's just the largest, most-well known events. It would also help to know a bit about current events (NazBols/Other Russia protests, the Caucus wars going on for the past 10 years, etc.). By Germans I assume you're referencing Nazis. Where was the Nazi injustice for the Germans? Given how much ordinary Germans profited (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324446434&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-W...), it's surprising more of them didn't support the Nazi party.
  - euccastro 15y ago
    You forget US citizens after WWII. I've seen bigger fuss than Occupy Wall Street over milk prices over here.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    > That's just the largest, most-well known events. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The fact is that all of those nations I listed have, at one point or another, knuckled under (collectively, if not in the case of every individual) to a despotic government. There's no question that the Russians were cowed to the point that they were afraid to protest, for fear of being ratted out by their neighbors. Are you trying to say that because some people protested, it's a different story? I that doesn't wash. For every one that stood up, countless people were ground down (e.g., accused of being "Kulaks"[1] or "wreckers" [2]), sent to the Gulags. > Where was the Nazi injustice for the Germans? It was positively rampant. If you didn't toe the party line, you were doomed. See, for example, Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner [3]. Quote regarding the latter [4]: The book is carried forward by waves of contempt and disgust — for the Nazis; for the people who believed them; for those who didn't, yet failed to do anything to stop them; and for the German character itself — but reason is the source of its passion. ... The question that always springs from accounts of Hitler's Germany is "Why didn’t the Germans resist?" Some of the reasons have long been obvious. There is a natural human instinct for survival, however odious the forms it takes or the lengths it may go to. ...Haffner takes it for granted that Germans knew about the brutality of Nazi rule — brutality that, logically, would only increase as the state consolidated its power — and that they lacked the will to resist it. ... If by now the incidents that follow are familiar — the intimidation, the erosion of press freedom, violence in the streets, people fleeing or attempting to flee — it’s their novelty to Haffner that carries the book, the distorting mirror effect of the degradation of the ideas of freedom and individuality that should be the very stuff of everyday life. And at the book’s end (Haffner never finished writing it), Haffner sees how easy it is to get swept up in the spirit that was taking over Germany. It’s announced that all law candidates (including Haffner) must, before taking their final exams, attend training camps for ideological indoctrination and to perform military exercises. Haffner goes off with trepidation, determined to keep to himself lest he reveal his true political beliefs... Perhaps we're having different conversations here... EDIT: Added some citations. Upon re-reading the thread, I do think we're viewing this differently. I believe that your point is that some people, maybe many people, did protest. My point, however, is that most people knuckled under. The questions "why did some people stand up for themselves?", and "why were most people cowed?" are both worthwhile, but distinct. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulaks [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_crime) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_crime) [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Haffner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Haffner [4] http://www.salon.com/2002/09/03/haffner/ http://www.salon.com/2002/09/03/haffner/
runjake 15y ago
Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? Because that requires a particular tipping point, which sits on a sliding scale. With the economic crises, and the draconian anti-freedom laws in several western countries, one could ask us the same.
guns 15y ago
> The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was. While your argument is defensible, I think characterizing the NK autocracy as a natural progression of pre-occupation Korea is misleading and perhaps unfair. It's important to remember that at the time of the NK invasion in 1950, Korea had only recently been freed from the 35-year Japanese occupation in which the Japanese actively sought to eradicate Korean culture. The successor to this was another occupation by the US and USSR. Although the new interim governments were more benign I don't think it was clear that the future would hold any kind of true independence from foreign states, and certainly US style democracy seemed quite far fetched. And so it seems to me that if I was a young man of fighting age in Korea in 1950 (and thus born during the occupation), I would have found the NK motto of "Juche" (self-reliance) much more compelling than the murky, foreign roadmap offered by the US. Indeed, the professor in this article, Kim Hyun Sik, expresses this sentiment. Even for many years after the Korean War, it wasn't clear that the US-led South was superior in ideals or in practice. The industry-heavy North (aided by infrastructure built by the Japanese and by Soviet engineers) flew ahead of the South in terms of economic growth and actual standards of living. Meanwhile, South Korea was embroiled in poverty, military coups, and cruel suppressions of student riots. You really couldn't have called SK a democracy until the late 1980s. Of course, fortunes changed for NK. The classic Soviet style N-year plans were failing to meet their quotas, and as this began to happen, Kim Il Sung, who was really a foreign plant from Stalin, began to emulate Stalin's tactics of self-aggrandizement and brutal extermination of opponents. If you wished at this point to question why it was that nobody stood up to Kim Il Sung in his rise as tyrant, you could very well blame Korean Confucianism and the hierarchical nature of Korean language and society. This is a strong reason, but I don't think it's sufficient. There is a simpler answer: NK is a very tiny nation, with a reluctant ally on one border and a perpetual enemy on the other. Total control in a country of NK's size is actually possible, and with a constant menacing enemy, it was relatively easy to manipulate a small society into subservience. Think "1984", or the "War on Terror", but constrained to the state of Indiana.
azernik 15y ago
It is a veil, but not for what you think - see this interview: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/immersion-in-propaganda-racebased-nationalism-and-the-unfigureoutable-vortex-of-juche-thought-colin-.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/immersion-i... Essentially, despite being thought of as a communist country, in reality North Korea is (by ideology) traces its ideological roots to the race-based nationalism of the early-20th-century Japanese colonization. In the book written by the interviewee, he describes how the main ideologues of North Korea were not pre-war communists, but rather pre-war collaborators with the Japanese, who picked up the official line that Koreans were an innocent, childlike sub-branch of the Japanese master race (post-war, they just excised the Japanese from this picture). Hence the North Korean propaganda emphasis on intermarriage with foreigners in South Korea, the effort put in (in the parent article) to eugenicist approaches to disability, etc.

by findm 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

CWuestefeld 15y ago

Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name. In any case, your reference to linguistic differences probably doesn't hold up. - - - Quote [1] Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been. When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, “Standard Average European” or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews. - - - End Quote and also - - - Quote [2] ...the strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that language determines thought, is also thought to be incorrect. ... Among the most frequently cited examples of linguistic determinism is Whorf's study of the language of the Inuit people, who were thought to have numerous words for snow. He argues that this modifies the world view of the Eskimo, creating a different mode of existence for them than, for instance, a speaker of English. The notion that Arctic people have an unusually large number of words for snow has been shown to be false by linguist Geoffrey Pullum; in an essay titled "The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax", he tracks down the origin of the story, ultimately attributing it largely to Whorf and suggesting the triviality of Whorf's observations. ... A recent study by Peter Gordon examines the language of the Pirahã tribe of Brazil. According to Gordon, the language used by this tribe only contains three counting words: one, two and many. Gordon shows through a series of experiments that the people of the Pirahã tribe have difficulty recounting numbers higher than three (Gordon, 2004). However, the causal relationship of these events is not clear. Critics have argued that if the test subjects are unable to count numbers higher than three for some other reason (perhaps because they are nomadic hunter/gatherers with nothing to count and hence no need to practice doing so) then one should not expect their language to have words for such numbers. That is, it is the lack of need which explains both the lack of counting ability and the lack of corresponding vocabulary. Moreover, a more recent study suggests that the Pirahã have a basic understanding of geometry despite their language. - - - End Quote [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.htm... [2] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

sedachv 15y ago
> I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name. That's probably because you need to study more history. Taking the past 200 years in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cri... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia#Assassination_attempts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia#Assassin... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_Revolt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_Revolt That's just the largest, most-well known events. It would also help to know a bit about current events (NazBols/Other Russia protests, the Caucus wars going on for the past 10 years, etc.). By Germans I assume you're referencing Nazis. Where was the Nazi injustice for the Germans? Given how much ordinary Germans profited (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324446434&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-W...), it's surprising more of them didn't support the Nazi party.
- euccastro 15y ago
  You forget US citizens after WWII. I've seen bigger fuss than Occupy Wall Street over milk prices over here.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  > That's just the largest, most-well known events. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The fact is that all of those nations I listed have, at one point or another, knuckled under (collectively, if not in the case of every individual) to a despotic government. There's no question that the Russians were cowed to the point that they were afraid to protest, for fear of being ratted out by their neighbors. Are you trying to say that because some people protested, it's a different story? I that doesn't wash. For every one that stood up, countless people were ground down (e.g., accused of being "Kulaks"[1] or "wreckers" [2]), sent to the Gulags. > Where was the Nazi injustice for the Germans? It was positively rampant. If you didn't toe the party line, you were doomed. See, for example, Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner [3]. Quote regarding the latter [4]: The book is carried forward by waves of contempt and disgust — for the Nazis; for the people who believed them; for those who didn't, yet failed to do anything to stop them; and for the German character itself — but reason is the source of its passion. ... The question that always springs from accounts of Hitler's Germany is "Why didn’t the Germans resist?" Some of the reasons have long been obvious. There is a natural human instinct for survival, however odious the forms it takes or the lengths it may go to. ...Haffner takes it for granted that Germans knew about the brutality of Nazi rule — brutality that, logically, would only increase as the state consolidated its power — and that they lacked the will to resist it. ... If by now the incidents that follow are familiar — the intimidation, the erosion of press freedom, violence in the streets, people fleeing or attempting to flee — it’s their novelty to Haffner that carries the book, the distorting mirror effect of the degradation of the ideas of freedom and individuality that should be the very stuff of everyday life. And at the book’s end (Haffner never finished writing it), Haffner sees how easy it is to get swept up in the spirit that was taking over Germany. It’s announced that all law candidates (including Haffner) must, before taking their final exams, attend training camps for ideological indoctrination and to perform military exercises. Haffner goes off with trepidation, determined to keep to himself lest he reveal his true political beliefs... Perhaps we're having different conversations here... EDIT: Added some citations. Upon re-reading the thread, I do think we're viewing this differently. I believe that your point is that some people, maybe many people, did protest. My point, however, is that most people knuckled under. The questions "why did some people stand up for themselves?", and "why were most people cowed?" are both worthwhile, but distinct. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulaks [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_crime) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_crime) [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Haffner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Haffner [4] http://www.salon.com/2002/09/03/haffner/ http://www.salon.com/2002/09/03/haffner/

runjake 15y ago

Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? Because that requires a particular tipping point, which sits on a sliding scale. With the economic crises, and the draconian anti-freedom laws in several western countries, one could ask us the same.

guns 15y ago

> The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was. While your argument is defensible, I think characterizing the NK autocracy as a natural progression of pre-occupation Korea is misleading and perhaps unfair. It's important to remember that at the time of the NK invasion in 1950, Korea had only recently been freed from the 35-year Japanese occupation in which the Japanese actively sought to eradicate Korean culture. The successor to this was another occupation by the US and USSR. Although the new interim governments were more benign I don't think it was clear that the future would hold any kind of true independence from foreign states, and certainly US style democracy seemed quite far fetched. And so it seems to me that if I was a young man of fighting age in Korea in 1950 (and thus born during the occupation), I would have found the NK motto of "Juche" (self-reliance) much more compelling than the murky, foreign roadmap offered by the US. Indeed, the professor in this article, Kim Hyun Sik, expresses this sentiment. Even for many years after the Korean War, it wasn't clear that the US-led South was superior in ideals or in practice. The industry-heavy North (aided by infrastructure built by the Japanese and by Soviet engineers) flew ahead of the South in terms of economic growth and actual standards of living. Meanwhile, South Korea was embroiled in poverty, military coups, and cruel suppressions of student riots. You really couldn't have called SK a democracy until the late 1980s. Of course, fortunes changed for NK. The classic Soviet style N-year plans were failing to meet their quotas, and as this began to happen, Kim Il Sung, who was really a foreign plant from Stalin, began to emulate Stalin's tactics of self-aggrandizement and brutal extermination of opponents. If you wished at this point to question why it was that nobody stood up to Kim Il Sung in his rise as tyrant, you could very well blame Korean Confucianism and the hierarchical nature of Korean language and society. This is a strong reason, but I don't think it's sufficient. There is a simpler answer: NK is a very tiny nation, with a reluctant ally on one border and a perpetual enemy on the other. Total control in a country of NK's size is actually possible, and with a constant menacing enemy, it was relatively easy to manipulate a small society into subservience. Think "1984", or the "War on Terror", but constrained to the state of Indiana.

azernik 15y ago

It is a veil, but not for what you think - see this interview: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/immersion-in-propaganda-racebased-nationalism-and-the-unfigureoutable-vortex-of-juche-thought-colin-.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/immersion-i... Essentially, despite being thought of as a communist country, in reality North Korea is (by ideology) traces its ideological roots to the race-based nationalism of the early-20th-century Japanese colonization. In the book written by the interviewee, he describes how the main ideologues of North Korea were not pre-war communists, but rather pre-war collaborators with the Japanese, who picked up the official line that Koreans were an innocent, childlike sub-branch of the Japanese master race (post-war, they just excised the Japanese from this picture). Hence the North Korean propaganda emphasis on intermarriage with foreigners in South Korea, the effort put in (in the parent article) to eugenicist approaches to disability, etc.