Arius (ariusderr)

By any measure of human well-being, North Korea ranks at the bottom of “places you want to live.” Day-to-day life consists of long, largely compulsory work hours in low-tech, manual labor. All men must serve in the military for 10 years, active duty, where they are treated as free farm and construction laborers. There is very little choice about school, careers, housing, or other aspects of life because the North Korean regime sees individual freedoms as a threat to Kim Jong Un. North Korea truly is a garrison state. I don’t envision significant improvements so long as Kim remains in power.

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Many defectors, like your colleagues, leave behind family and loved ones. They may use the trafficking network they used before to escape, or another broker they hear about through the defector community, to send money back to the North. It works like this: Lee escapes to South Korea thanks to Chen’s help. Lee sends Chen 50% of their resettlement money, plus another 10% they want Chen to get to their family in North Korea. Chen takes another 40% off this 10% for the risk. Chen uses his cut to either/or 1) pay off security guards at the DPRK-China border 2) sneak into North Korea 3) pay someone else to sneak across the border with the cash. If your colleague’s family lives close enough to the Chinese border they may have a Chinese smartphone that connects to Chinese mobile networks. But it’s incredibly risky – North Korea will execute people for having any contact with South Koreans, and imprison them in concentration camps for consuming any sort of foreign media.

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North Korea has multiple theme parks with roller coasters, water slides and other familiar activities. Of course, these parks are off limits to most people in the country and reserved for elites only. Here's Kim Jong Un on a rollercoaster.

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The vast majority of North Koreans cannot access the internet. A very select few are allowed web access for either propaganda purposes — lots of North Korean state media available in different languages — and more seriously, cybercrime. The UN estimated last year that the DPRK has stolen at least $3 billion in crypto since 2017. That’s over 10% of the country’s entire GDP!

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By any measure of human well-being, North Korea ranks at the bottom of “places you want to live.” Day-to-day life consists of long, largely compulsory work hours in low-tech, manual labor. All men must serve in the military for 10 years, active duty, where they are treated as free farm and construction laborers. There is very little choice about school, careers, housing, or other aspects of life because the North Korean regime sees individual freedoms as a threat to Kim Jong Un. North Korea truly is a garrison state. I don’t envision significant improvements so long as Kim remains in power.

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Many defectors, like your colleagues, leave behind family and loved ones. They may use the trafficking network they used before to escape, or another broker they hear about through the defector community, to send money back to the North. It works like this: Lee escapes to South Korea thanks to Chen’s help. Lee sends Chen 50% of their resettlement money, plus another 10% they want Chen to get to their family in North Korea. Chen takes another 40% off this 10% for the risk. Chen uses his cut to either/or 1) pay off security guards at the DPRK-China border 2) sneak into North Korea 3) pay someone else to sneak across the border with the cash. If your colleague’s family lives close enough to the Chinese border they may have a Chinese smartphone that connects to Chinese mobile networks. But it’s incredibly risky – North Korea will execute people for having any contact with South Koreans, and imprison them in concentration camps for consuming any sort of foreign media.

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“North Korean culture” is distinct from “Korean culture” because the former has only been around for 75 years or so while the latter is thousands of years old. Like many communist revolutionaries, Kim Il Sung did everything he could to “reset” culture and history when he took over. As a result “North Korean culture” is very much a personality cult built on authoritarianism, illiberalism and oppression and is mostly disconnected from what came before 1948. South Korea is much closer to “Korean culture” but also grapples with their own “resets” – first the 1910-1945 colonization by Japan and then the division of Korea into North and South. In other words, what is and isn’t “Korean culture” is a source of much debate among scholars.

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