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You know, gently caress it, I think I'm wrong about this deity business. I've got a copy of B.R. Myers' Cleanest Race and flipped to a section on this:quote:The far more obvious and significant influence ... is that of the Japanese emperor cult. Like Kim, Hirohito appeared as the hermaphroditic parent of a child race whose virtues he embodied; was associated with white clothing, white horses, the snow-capped peak of the race's sacred mountain, and other symbols of racial purity; was said to be joined with his subjects as one entity, 'one mind united from top to bottom' and referred to as the Sun of the Nation, the Great Marshal whom citizens must 'venerate' and be ready to die for. A significant difference is that while the Text likes to draw bemused attention to outsiders, including Americans and South Koreans, who allegedly regard Kim Il Sung as a divine being, it never makes such claims for him itself. But the similarity between the two cults remains to great to be explained away, as it is by some observers in terms of borrowed 'elements.' They are fundamentally alike, because they derive from a fundamentally similar view of the world. 
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May 2, 2017 00:07
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:You know, gently caress it, I think I'm wrong about this deity business. I've got a copy of B.R. Myers' Cleanest Race and flipped to a section on this: North Koreans are clearly asked to believe grandiose claims that cross into absurd but there really is little evidence of purely mystical claims that aren't just imagery or misunderstanding.
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May 2, 2017 00:26
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In tropico you could have up to 2 president's childhood home's and you could build them any time. That's just how dictatorships and cult of personality works.
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May 2, 2017 00:44
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Baronjutter posted:In tropico you could have up to 2 president's childhood home's and you could build them any time. That's just how dictatorships and cult of personality works. So how many research points is North Korea holding on to now? are they close to a pacifist win?
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May 2, 2017 02:45
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Imperialist Dog posted:During the occupation, Japan invested most of its heavy industry projects like factories and dams for hydroelectric power in the North while the South was hillbilly farmland. They kind of had a head start. Up until McKay flattened the place.
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May 2, 2017 06:40
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I think the standard rule should be to be very dubious when a South Korean paper reports that a general has been executed by being eaten alive by dogs, as there is a good chance they'll re-appear at the next party conference, and be very dubious when some super silly claim about North Korea gets reported in the western press. A good example of this is the 'tee hee North Korea believes in unicorns!' stuff. Actually that was a confusingly worded translation from an archaeological dig, which was nonetheless clear when taken in context, that was taken right out of context and further paraphrased. It's like if UK news reported an archaeological dig on Dragon Hill, Oxford, and foreign media was like "tee hee! the UK believes in Dragons!"
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May 2, 2017 13:32
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mediadave posted:I think the standard rule should be to be very dubious when a South Korean paper reports that a general has been executed by being eaten alive by dogs, as there is a good chance they'll re-appear at the next party conference, and be very dubious when some super silly claim about North Korea gets reported in the western press. Same with all the videos of north koreans crying super weird at the Kim Jong funeral. All theatrical and fake. That really happened but theatrical crying is just part of (some types) of korean funerals. It's just a thing that at a funeral if you start crying you are also supposed to scream and shake and have a fit even if it's put on, because a funeral is seen as the place you are supposed to get loud and get everyone joining in and not the place you cry quietly and politely to yourself. Everyone one upping everyone else at how big they can cry is just a thing in general that people do at korean funerals. Like in general north korea is one of the worst dictatorships in history, one of the worst police states, has some of the worst human rights abuses, etc. But people want it to be a storybook land and it's just not. It's a "normal" place with humans living in it and people keep trying to make a bunch of fanciful stories about it as some dreamy exotic otherworld that just aren't true. Like 90% of "news of the weird" stuff about north korea just turns out false if you spend even a minute looking into it. Like the suffering is real, but people want it to be entertaining I guess so any made up story gets mangled into some kooky nonsense that never happened or has a mundane explanation.
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May 2, 2017 14:15
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I thought it was about narrative building. North Korea is a totalitarian state, but much useful paint it as completely insane country that just a really repressive one. Once you do that you have complete control over any narrative since they seem barely human over there. Granted, I am life in North Korea is punishing and people have very little autonomy from the government, but that probably isn't enough to make a very attractive narrative on its own. You need to spice it up a bit. During the time I spent in the former Soviet Union, there were some pretty gross exaggerations from our side. It isn't that everything we thought we knew about the Soviet Union was untrue, but a fair amount of it was.
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May 2, 2017 14:25
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Ardennes posted:
Such as?
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May 2, 2017 14:47
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There Bias Two posted:Such as?   
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May 2, 2017 15:02
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I don't think propaganda pieces are indicative of what the general populace actually thought was occurring in the Soviet states.
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May 2, 2017 15:07
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Same with all the videos of north koreans crying super weird at the Kim Jong funeral. All theatrical and fake. That really happened but theatrical crying is just part of (some types) of korean funerals. It's just a thing that at a funeral if you start crying you are also supposed to scream and shake and have a fit even if it's put on, because a funeral is seen as the place you are supposed to get loud and get everyone joining in and not the place you cry quietly and politely to yourself. Everyone one upping everyone else at how big they can cry is just a thing in general that people do at korean funerals. I'm not saying it's some dreamy exotic world. I'm saying that they have a totalitarian government that sends dissenters and their families to labor camps. These are things that happen. This whole conversation started because someone said that the government strictly controls tours and that horrible poo poo happens to people that deviate from what they're supposed to be doing. No one ever suggested that the vast majority of NK people were anything other than normal people with an extremely oppressive boot on their neck. They just said the tours are largely fake and specifically taken through routes that hide or obscure the horrors that people aren't allowed to see.
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May 2, 2017 15:11
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Y'all are getting things mixed up. No, of course koreans don't believe in unicorns or that the Kims invented calculus, yes, tours with western tourists are micromanaged by state censors. It's not a loving binary.
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May 2, 2017 15:14
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Tias posted:Y'all are getting things mixed up. No, of course koreans don't believe in unicorns or that the Kims invented calculus, yes, tours with western tourists are micromanaged by state censors. It's not a loving binary. Exactly this.
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May 2, 2017 15:19
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Tias posted:Y'all are getting things mixed up. No, of course koreans don't believe in unicorns or that the Kims invented calculus, yes, tours with western tourists are micromanaged by state censors. It's not a loving binary. I guess I am being doubtful that if you turned from a tour and ran as fast as you can into the forbidden zone that you'd actually see anything all that different. Like the tours are curated and clearly the best face possible. But it's still in a real city, where people really live, and if you yank back the curtain you are probably just gonna see the same sort of issues but worse, not some other secret world like the fantasy land western media projects about north korea.
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May 2, 2017 15:44
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Ardennes posted:I thought it was about narrative building. North Korea is a totalitarian state, but much useful paint it as completely insane country that just a really repressive one. Once you do that you have complete control over any narrative since they seem barely human over there. I think part of it is just the media void in North Korea combined with general public perception of North Korea. Since local media can't get much info out of the North, they're less inclined to worry about the accuracy of what little they can get and more inclined to look for excuses to pad stories or make a bunch of speculation out of nothing. And since the "they're so weird and crazy" perception of North Korea is fairly widely accepted, the media can repeat even the craziest-sounding rumors (with the most sensational-sounding headlines) without worrying that people might not buy it. Even if something they report later is later discovered to be wrong, it probably won't be till far later, and they can just blame North Korea's secretive society. And since there isn't really any solid original source, every other news site just reprints the original report faithfully without any verification, mentioning somewhere in the article that the report is unsourced while making sure to leave that bit out of their sensational headline. For example, the reports that KJU's uncle was executed by being torn apart by wild dogs were picked up by a number of less reliable news sources, including Fox News, before someone noticed that the original report came from a Chinese satire writer, whose post was apparently picked up by a Hong Kong tabloid and spread through the media from there.
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May 2, 2017 15:50
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I guess I am being doubtful that if you turned from a tour and ran as fast as you can into the forbidden zone that you'd actually see anything all that different. Like the tours are curated and clearly the best face possible. But it's still in a real city, where people really live, and if you yank back the curtain you are probably just gonna see the same sort of issues but worse, not some other secret world like the fantasy land western media projects about north korea. It's a moot doubt, since you will be restrained by your handlers if you tried. One guy who I think was there on a commercial venture went for regular runs in the morning, and while he didn't see anything interesting, they freaked out and confined him to his handlers when they discovered it.
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May 2, 2017 16:01
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WarpedNaba posted:Up until McKay flattened the place. Yeah. However the two sections of the peninsula are naturally suited that way. Southern Korea has great land for farming, Northern areas don't. Northern Korea has a lot of relatively accessible mineral resources, Southern areas don't to nearly the same extent. And of course you're going to build the industry that needs the mineral resources close to most of the mines.
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May 2, 2017 16:05
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There Bias Two posted:Such as? The GULAG system for example was significantly smaller than most Kremlinologist had predicted. Material culture in the Soviet Union was also more varied than portrayed in the US , especially from the 1950s-early 1980s. Also, the whole thing about leadership of the Communist party all living "like the Tsars" didn't pan out either. It isn't that the GULAG system itself was a lie, or there weren't lines for goods during crises, or the leadership didn't live better than the average person, but it was all greatly exaggerated as much as possible. Hell, it even occurs today, there was a report coming out of Poland "of a secret Soviet plan to invade Germany during the Cold War." It is true while the plan existed, the little detail that was politely ignored was that it was predicated on an NATO nuclear first strike in the first place. In the case of North Korea, I am sure there is plenty of repression and purges, but we simply need more evidence to understand the scale. --------------------------------------------- Also, it makes sense that North Korea would initially be more industrialized to due its mining, but at the same time, it isn't exactly a secret why South Korea experienced massive economic growth during the 1970s either. i.e the US used its economic muscle to subsidized South Korea though trade. --------------------------------------------- Another thing I wanted to mention, North Koreans have a fair reason to dislike the US. I mean the Korea War and US bombing campaigns did in fact devastate the north, there is officially still a war going on (including occasional skirmishes), and North Korea is still under crippling sanctions. One reason why the propaganda of the Kims still works...is there a little bit of truth to it.
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May 2, 2017 16:31
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Tias posted:One guy who I think was there on a commercial venture went for regular runs in the morning, and while he didn't see anything interesting, they freaked out and confined him to his handlers when they discovered it. See, you are taking Katie Stallard's photo essay about her morning runs in north korea and adding a bunch of made up extra story to spice it up. Like changing the story of her getting permission amicably to take unsupervised runs as long as she only stayed in a certain area where she took a bunch of mundane photos then published it and adding an extra story where they FREAK OUT and then have him (her) CONFINED and locked up or something. Like that seems like a perfect encapsulation of how north korean news is reported. Like a mundane story that does already contain stuff like her needing permission (but getting it) to go running every morning and a promise to keep within bounds that is authoritarian and bad but really dull and mundane but that story not having enough sizzle on the steak and getting a little spicier in retelling with some added drama and conciquences.
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May 2, 2017 16:38
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Nah, I'm sure this was a guy.
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May 2, 2017 16:44
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Tias posted:Nah, I'm sure this was a guy. Link?
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May 2, 2017 16:47
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Another story about NK's economic transformation* under Un: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html?_r=0 quote:since 2010, the number of government-approved markets in North Korea has doubled to 440, and satellite images show them growing in size in most cities. In a country with a population of 25 million, about 1.1 million people are now employed as retailers or managers in these markets, according to a study by the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. *all relative
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May 2, 2017 17:00
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So it's crazy that someone could be executed by wild dogs but sane that someone could be executed using nerve toxin in a reality tv prank show?
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May 2, 2017 17:04
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Ardennes posted:Another thing I wanted to mention, North Koreans have a fair reason to dislike the US. I mean the Korea War and US bombing campaigns did in fact devastate the north, there is officially still a war going on (including occasional skirmishes), and North Korea is still under crippling sanctions. One reason why the propaganda of the Kims still works...is there a little bit of truth to it. I mean, if they want to dislike us, they can, and that's clearly what they've chosen. I think the example of Vietnam demonstrates that, if they had preferred, they could have had friendship over enmity. Even our insane grudge against Cuba has been slowly fading. But Kim Il-Sung clung to delusions of reuniting Korea under his rule until he died, and subsequent Kim dynasts have deliberately stoked hostility between our nations for their internal political benefit.
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May 2, 2017 19:34
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Bip Roberts posted:So it's crazy that someone could be executed by wild dogs but sane that someone could be executed using nerve toxin in a reality tv prank show? Maybe North Korea didn't do that either
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May 2, 2017 20:23
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:I mean, if they want to dislike us, they can, and that's clearly what they've chosen. I think the example of Vietnam demonstrates that, if they had preferred, they could have had friendship over enmity. Even our insane grudge against Cuba has been slowly fading. But Kim Il-Sung clung to delusions of reuniting Korea under his rule until he died, and subsequent Kim dynasts have deliberately stoked hostility between our nations for their internal political benefit. In all honesty, I don't think China would let them even if that was ever a possibility. Also the "turn" with Vietnam came after Vietnam had their own war with China and thus a reason to mend fences with the US. Also, the Vietnam War actually ended in a definitive victory, while Korea remains as divided as it was during the 1950s. Also I think Cuba was always more one-sided in that the Cubans really didn't want the embargo in the first place and probably would have always had preferred a better relationship with the US...just as long as they could retain their independence. It isn't we wouldn't let them. It is clear the Kims use the situation for their own internal legitimacy, but at the same thing, we still haven't given up our part to play as well. In a sense, everyone is happy with the status quo: the Kims get to sit on the throne, China retains their puppet, and the US had a rogue nation to shake its fist at.
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May 2, 2017 20:45
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Ardennes posted:It is clear the Kims use the situation for their own internal legitimacy, but at the same thing, we still haven't given up our part to play as well. In a sense, everyone is happy with the status quo: the Kims get to sit on the throne, China retains their puppet, and the US had a rogue nation to shake its fist at. Purely as a side note, I feel like people should stop using the word "puppet" for "satellite." Quisling was a puppet: when his lips moved, it's because of Hitler's arm up his rear end. Most local dictators supported by imperial powers aren't mere toadies; they usually have a strong independent power base, and are frequently a huge nuisance for their patrons. Diem is a good example. Anyway, inasmuch as internal US politics make it difficult to impossible for us to make peace with the world's last Stalinist state and leave Korea to their own devices, I agree that we have our part to play. But I don't think it especially suits the interests of the American ruling class to have NK as "a rogue nation to shake its fist at," because more than anything else, the Korea situation actually demonstrates how humiliatingly impotent America really is. If we could make the entire situation quietly go away, that would be in the interests of all of the non-Sinophobic elements of the political establishment. So of the three principle parties involved, I think the US has the least free agency.
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May 2, 2017 21:24
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I don't think "humiliatingly impotent" is a great descriptor for why the USA hasn't launched a land war in Asia even though it would almost certainly win it in the end. Everyone knows that when the chips are down the US has the advantage. The whole objective is to avoid that scenario.
Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 21:30 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 21:27
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Fojar38 posted:Everyone knows that when the chips are down the US has the advantage. The whole objective is to avoid that scenario. The only thing that makes the topic of NK interesting at the moment is the fact that Donald Trump might be crazy or stupid enough to call their bluff. Under normal circumstances, so long as they keep to their own kingdom, we'll always fold when the chips are down. War against another nuclear power is only something that could ever make sense in a case of absolute necessity.
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May 2, 2017 21:39
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Link? Sorry, this was ages ago. I can try to dig it up, but I honestly don't remember where I saw it.
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May 2, 2017 22:09
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Tias posted:Sorry, this was ages ago. I can try to dig it up, but I honestly don't remember where I saw it. i mean it really very much seems like you just spiced up the story of the reporter going running with more drama than existed.are there really multiple stories of westerners going running in North Korea?
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May 2, 2017 23:24
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Ardennes posted:Another thing I wanted to mention, North Koreans have a fair reason to dislike the US. I mean the Korea War and US bombing campaigns did in fact devastate the north, there is officially still a war going on (including occasional skirmishes), and North Korea is still under crippling sanctions. One reason why the propaganda of the Kims still works...is there a little bit of truth to it. Oh Boy . I poke my nose in here and the first thing I notice is this nugget from the apologist Ardennes Take a wild guess as to who started that war. C'mon, you can do it!!! Even a bonehead apologist can't ignore the facts as they happened. Can he?
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May 3, 2017 03:05
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Was it America, for partitioning the country in an ill thought out, arbitrary and unstable way, against the wishes of the entire population; the USSR, for going along with it; Japan, for annexing it in the first place? The whole bold faced war of aggression narrative we have towards the North Koreans for trying to reunify their nation after half a century of occupation is lacking a hell of a lot of context.
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May 3, 2017 03:12
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Nucken Futz posted:Oh Boy . DPRK apologists believe that authoritarian autocracy is a legitimate, even preferable, form of governance and so don't see why naked aggression on the part of such countries is such a big deal and don't believe such aggression needs to be stopped, so yes, they genuinely believe that the UN stopping the North Korean invasion of South Korea was wrong. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 03:25 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 03:20
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There are some dumb as hell attitudes in this thread, but the notion that the Korean War was started as naked aggression akin to Hitler rolling into Poland is also incredibly one dimensional.
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May 3, 2017 03:28
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Nucken Futz posted:Oh Boy . Fojar38 posted:DPRK apologists believe that authoritarian autocracy is a legitimate, even preferable, form of governance and so don't see why naked aggression on the part of such countries is such a big deal and don't believe such aggression needs to be stopped, so yes, they genuinely believe that the UN stopping the North Korean invasion of South Korea was wrong. Since when is Ardennes an apologist for North Korea? Since, uh, never, as near as I can tell from a quick glance at his post history itt.
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May 3, 2017 03:52
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I guess the argument is that North Korea wasn't really invading, they were liberating the south from the yoke of the US so the country could be unified under the yoke of the Kims
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May 3, 2017 04:11
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Since when is Ardennes an apologist for North Korea? Since, uh, never, as near as I can tell from a quick glance at his post history itt. I dunno about Ardennes that was aimed at general DPRK apologists
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May 3, 2017 04:17
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Guy Goodbody posted:I guess the argument is that North Korea wasn't really invading, they were liberating the south from the yoke of the US so the country could be unified under the yoke of the Kims IIRC there were already minor clashes along the border, executions of uppity peasants and laborers in the south. The narrative of naked North Korea aggression conveniently ignores that the U.S. mostly installed Korean collaborationists when there were viable, non-Communist alternatives available.
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May 3, 2017 04:46
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