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Comment by monort | Hacker News Reader

They had a famine in 90s with a million deaths without a collapse. The reason that can cause the collapse of the government is that people there are getting richer due to a mild capitalistic reforms, and they have access to more information, e.g. more and more families have a DVD player and watch South Korean dramas.

When enough people realize, that South Korea is a better place and considers them citizens, the wall will fall.

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People made exactly the same predictions about the Castro regime in Cuba. They were wrong about that. I predict they are wrong about this.

I think people underestimate the power of indoctrination. Predicting that the Kim regime will fall when people realize how much better life is in South Korea is like predicting that the Trump regime will fall when Americans realize how much better life is in Denmark.

Two things: First, Cuba is different because the Castro regime is in fact going to fall, soon. It just waits for one old man (Raul Castro) to die. After that comes... something else. North Korea won't fall like that if the "Dear Leader" produces children, because they've somehow become a hereditary Communist dictatorship.

Second, the difference between Denmark and the US is massively less than the difference between South and North Korea, so that comparison doesn't prove your point as well as you think.

> because they've somehow become a hereditary Communist dictatorship

Shouldn't we just call it a Monarchy then? The "communism" in DPRK is just some red paint applied on top of a religious monarchy, in which the Kim family is blessed by the gods to be the leaders of the people. This is as far from the ideal of communism as you can get. Or is the battle for preserving the original meaning of the word as the ideal of the workers collectively owning the means of production and directly profiting from them, rather than making one person on top exhuberantly rich, now completely lost?

Justify your second claim, please. I am no expert, but that seems very unlikely.

It seems unlikely that (South Korea - North Korea) >> (Denmark - US)? You want me to justify it?

Just in case you didn't read my previous post backwards, I'll take a stab at it. /wiki/List_of_countries_by_Social_Progress_Index lists countries by "social progress", which they define as basic human needs, foundations of well-being (whatever that means), and opportunity. (I didn't cherry-pick the source; this is the first one I found that included North Korea.) The data are from 2015. On this ranking, Denmark is 8th, with a score of 86.63, the US is 16th (82.85), South Korea is 29th (77.7), and North Korea is 134th and last, with a score of 20. (Something like 60 countries didn't supply enough data to be ranked at all.) North Korea is 11.42 points behind second-to-worst (Central African Republic). So by this measure, (Denmark - US) = 3.78, and (South Korea - North Korea) = 57.7. So, yeah, I'd say that my statement that " the difference between Denmark and the US is massively less than the difference between South and North Korea" is quite accurate.

You could also look at the Satisfaction with Life Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index), except that it doesn't seem to list North Korea at all...

My fault: I read your comment in the context of the two comments directly above it visually, which were talking about differences of culture, rather than in the context of the comment you were directly replying to, which was talking about standard of living. I certainly agree that Denmark and the US are closer in standard of living than North and South Korea are.

Sorry for making you pull that data, but thanks for responding with data.

Culturally, a Communist nation will be significantly more different from a Capitalist nation (compared to U.S. vs Nordic capitalism)

Arguably there is a difference - Castro regime do not have half of Cuba with people of the same culture living in a drastically better conditions and most of population unaware of that fact.

Is this really the same culture at this point?

Castro has people with the same culture living in much better conditions 100 miles away and everyone is aware of it. It's not quite the same, but if anything, the difference would make Castro more likely to fall, not less.

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