January 17, 2022
"What is lacking... is the sense of community that the North – for all its disadvantages – had given them, particularly among people from rural areas who struggle to cope with the anonymity of life in a megalopolis like Seoul."
According to Sokeel Park, South Korea country director of Liberty in North Korea, which helps defectors.
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Stockholm Syndrome.
Who cares if it's a murderous prison state. According to the NYT's Nick Kristoff, they have great pizza! Of course the NORKs wanna go back.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nicholas-kristof-in-north-korea-shares-photos-of-fun-and-pizza/article/2636071
"Escape from Camp 14" is an interesting book and a quick read--a true story about a North Korean who was born in prison and escaped in his 20's. When you look at the life they led in the North and what they face when they make it to the South, it's not surprising many can't cope.
There was no sense of community. Everyone was alone to a degree that would any drive normal person insane.
Freedom is hard.
It's something I've been muttering to myself for years as I watch our country and The Great Resignation happen. Freedom has always been tough. We've lost our ability to work hard to stay free. Since...oh, around the late 60's we've gotten more use to Government doing things for us- either by our request or their insistence (with little push-back). We continued to relinquish our own right to handle our lives and look to others to take care of things. Somewhere in the last generation or two, we jumped completely to the other side with more people thinking Government should be taking care of them, than those who believe the best Government is that which governs least. Somehow, making more laws became reported as something good. Making fewer laws became a 'lame duck' Congress.
Maybe that's why I've always found myself smiling alone when Congress threatens to shut down.
Anyway- we're now in a place where employers cannot even find enough employees to operate. This cuts across all industries, at all pay levels. People are just leaving. Government started this by shutting down and paying people to stay down. Others of us just threw up our hands (me included in this) and said, "Fuck it. I'll retire now rather than play this any longer". But our young people, in the prime of their lives, no longer want to fight for things that made us free. They all look toward Washington to 'make it right".
The same in the UK and the rest of Europe- though they never, not one of them, ever had the work ethic we had here. We were once famously ruggedly independent. That meant- independent of our government.
No longer. So, yeah- I get it when people like the North Korean, who never knew how hard the battle to stay free, prefer to just slink back and eat dirt in the North. At least they know what's what up there.
Well, there's always Squid Game...
Compare and contrast to the Cubans who fled to the US to escape Castro.
What is lacking... is the sense of community
Isn't THAT The Purpose of the Korean Methodist Church?
of the defectors that Aren't Happy; how many took Christ as their personal savior?
I read through the article. Out of 33,000 defectors, only thirty decided to re-defect. Perhaps this is more revelatory of the idiosyncrasy of human nature than of the abiding attractions of a police state.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many former East Germans felt the same way. They called it Ostalgie. They didn’t have the option of returning to their old hellhole, though.
"Perhaps this is more revelatory of the idiosyncrasy of human nature than of the abiding attractions of a police state."
Or pro communist agitprop.
Blogger Temujin said...
Freedom is hard.
It's something I've been muttering to myself for years
This is the statement of a delicate hothouse flower. Yes, we have it so rough in our rich and powerful western democracies. Those fucking slackers living inside actual Orwellian conditions just can't handle the level of stress in the lands of milk and honey. It has nothing to do with the enormous psychological damage living under violent tyrannical conditions from birth to middle age.
This level of pathological narcissism the result of unbridled freedom and wealth. Is that what is so hard for you snowflakes?
William makes the most important point- this was a small fraction of the overall defections. What important insights does one really glean from oddballs like people who return to North Korea, who are 1 in a 1000 from the set?
Howard, go put your masks back on and get that 4th booster.
Like long-timers in prison, they've become institutionalized.
Will someone please reboot teh Howard1000?
South Korea is no promised land for escapees from a brutal regime – loneliness and poverty are common fates.
They fled to the wrong country - only America showers refugees with cash.
A swift kick usually works…
I saw an interview with Yeonmi Park and she said that for the 1st few years after arriving in S. Korea that freedom/not having anyone tell her what to do was really frightening, and that if she knew she would have proper food she would have gone back to N. Korea simply for the "stability" it offered. But since her impetus for leaving in the 1st place as lack of food, well... she wasn't going back.
She also said that S. Koreans discriminate against N. Koreans pretty badly, which was why she decided to immigrate to the USA instead of staying in S. Korea like her mother did.
As per Clyde, there are lots of Central Europeans (Slovakia, Poland, Czechia, Hungary), especially older ones, who have that nostalgia of community feeling. Not so different from surviving war buddies who, after enduring privation, hard labor, lousy food & housing & clothing, at least had friends they could trust. 'Ostlgia is especially East (=Ost) German. In fact, physical discomfort that one survives is far less remembered than emotional good feelings. (Where's that Friday night beer dancing?)
There are active Communist & Socialist Parties, legal and often popular.
Freedom is hard.
There are two kinds of Freedom: a) to act, accepting the consequences, and
b) from responsibility, so that others pay for your mistakes.
People want both, but society usually only gives children the freedom from responsibility.
re: Pinochet & Chile - thanks to the Chicago Boys & economic reform in 1973, Chile's had fine economic growth for almost 50 years. From almost last, now the richest S. American country -- and they just voted for a Socialist.
Acting Free, and paying for your mistakes when you make them, makes one much less likely to have wild, irresponsible fun. Since that often requires somebody to pay for some mistakes. But the wild fun feels sooooo good.
"I read through the article. Out of 33,000 defectors, only thirty decided to re-defect. Perhaps this is more revelatory of the idiosyncrasy of human nature than of the abiding attractions of a police state."
Here's why I chose not to include that in the part excerpted for this post. It's very hard to defect and to re-defect. The number of defections doesn't correspond to the number who would chose to defect if it were easy. It is a concentrated number of people who were extremely motivated to get out of North Korea. Then the number within that group who re-defect also represents an extremely motivated subset. That's why I think 1 in 1,000 is an impressive proportion, not just a dismissible anomaly. I want to think about the psychology of someone who grows up in a system where they are under a tremendous amount of control and there's little to compete over, who then tries to mix with a population that has grown up with freedom and competition. You might also want to look at how the other defectors are doing. Are they lonely, homesick, and unhappy with the competition?
There is a scene in the 1960 MAGNIFICENT SEVEN wherein several of the villagers the heroes have been protecting collaborate with the bandidos and let the bandidos into the village, capturing the heroes. Why? "You force them to make too many decisions," the bandit chief explains: "With me, only one decision--do what I say!"
Thus, the eternal appeal of statism.
Love of the familiar. Feelings of community. Attachment. Dependence. There were people who left Russia after the Revolution, but felt like they had to go back to Mother Russia. When they did, things did not go well for them, to put it very mildly. The same may be true for returnees to North Korea. For one reason or another, reporters may not be able to talk to them.
One sees this phenomenon in a lot of different contexts. Far more than 1 in 1000 people who leave an abusive partner will go back to them, for instance.
What is lacking... is the sense of community that the North – for all its disadvantages – had given them, particularly among people from rural areas who struggle to cope with the anonymity of life in a megalopolis like Seoul.
According to Sokeel Park, South Korea country director of Liberty in North Korea, which helps defectors.
As a first pass, can't they just try resettling them in more rural areas?
So many cucks, so easily triggered.
There are plenty of people in jail who prefer the stable prison routine to the chaotic freedom that we enjoy.
I suspect that our current crop of Neo-Marxists understand that very well.
The United States has been using the military to bring freedom to the oppressed at the barrel of gun, since Korea. It always failed. Britain has been trying longer than that, to only be labeled racist colonizers.
You cant strive for something you don't know exists.
Magson said...
I saw an interview with Yeonmi Park . . .
She also said that S. Koreans discriminate against N. Koreans pretty badly, which was why she decided to immigrate to the USA instead of staying in S. Korea like her mother did.
Asians discriminate against outsiders, even and especially against other Asians, more than any other racial group.
What is lacking... is the sense of community
Misery loves company.
I hear that in the North the best restaurants serve a "Surf and Turf" special:
Seaweed and zoysia grass.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8yqa-SdJtT4
“Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and activist whose family fled from North Korea to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009, before moving to the United States in 2014. Her family turned to black-market trading during North Korea's economic collapse in the 1990s.”Wikipedia
Best from the horse’s mouth…
Howard: are u intentionally beating that straw piñata of a man?
My kids have a phrase: Adulting is hard!
A very good source for details about life in North Korea and contrasting difficulty in transitioning in South Korea after defecting:
https://www.goodreads.com/th/book/show/40604846-nothing-to-envy
So many Howards. No wonder Soros and his fellow travelers are successful in destabilizing free societies. Reagan said it best:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” - Ronald Reagan 1-5-67
- Krumhorn
(my preferred adjectives: brilliant/awesome)
Howard seems very upset that the loudest and proudest post-birth abortion/baby body parts harvestering advocate has been lost for Team Dem, blackface/KKK-admirer Ralph Northam.
Or perhaps the death of one on the dems islamic supremacist allies in Texas has Howard on edge?
In any event, thoughts and prayers for Howard during this difficult time.
Howard, did you ever look up the real story about who funded who in Afghanistan after you embarrassed yourself, again, with your "Reagan funded Bin Laden" lies?
You were provided all the details because we know connecting the dots ain't exactly your strong suit, dont we?
think of the 81 million and their guide directors in "free media" who chose tyranny under Biden vs mean tweets Trump
---------
in USA that is 1 of 4
Yes, abused spouses who get away find the same thing. Tyrannies take away more than freedom.
“particularly among people from rural areas who struggle to cope with the anonymity of life in a megalopolis like Seoul.”
Surely South Korea has some rural areas with farms that these people could be sent to.
The thing to remember when reading a story like this is the source of the story has a motivation to publish the story. The Guardian is hard left. So, ask yourself, what does the Guardian want me to think after reading this story?
Hint: It's not a "human interest" story.
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