North Korea Is Not Crazy

It's also worth remembering the multi-generation punishments administered by the regime - some mid-ranking officer whose education leads him to realise how the place works and to question his orders still has family outside the armed forces, and knows they will all be imprisoned or executed if he falters.

Even more concretely, people working in the government likely live comfortably enough.

It's also not exactly simple to leave even if you want to. You can get to China, but they'll probably send you back. SK might want you but crossing the DMZ is tricky. I think there are also restrictions on movements within the country. Imagine if you work in some random city in the middle of the country. Good luck getting to a border, let alone crossing it.

And perhaps there aren't better opportunities outside.

Imagine being a NK sysadmin. You defect to South Korea, you probably won't be able to enter the IT market easily (no "real" diploma + realities of the job market) so you'll end up doing part-time at a supermarket or something. Not to mention that you'll probably suffer discrimination due to your background as well. Meanwhile you sacrificed your family.

The trade-off is not obvious at all.

> even making them believe in the divinity of their ruler.

I think this is more mythology that the silly westerners believe.

Many people across the world have "skills that would make someone very valuable on a Western market." But they don't all just up and leave. Why?... Home is hard to leave forever.

Also do they have good English/European skills, if not then no they would not be considered valuable in the west.

Plus who gets let out of the country. Bomb makers? Not really a valuable skill in the West.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoeryong_concentration_camp

Not first world by any standard but a lot of people there have an ok standard of living, especially in Pyongyang.

They also probably feel a mite threatened by the nukes that have been pointed at them since the 60s.

There are still a lot of defections though.

Generally, most people only care if they have more than their neighbors (re: materialism) and about their standing in the community they are embedded in (re: ideology).

This creates a self-reinforcing effect. For example, while most people will say that they [edit: the NK elite] are worried about their families being hurt, I would argue they are more primarily worried that their families and friends will disapprove.

Sure there is a real risk to dissenters, but you don't start out as a full-blown dissenter; you start out embedded in the society with maybe some innate doubts about certain things. It's the internalization of the projected negative reactions of those around you (basically your 'conscience') that makes people unlikely to ever allow themselves to mentally oppose the regime, if they have no strong incentives to do so (i.e. suffering unbearable hardships and oppression - and again this is often judged relative to what your neighbors are going through).

As a government scientist in NK you are part of the elite, so you're a pretty good position. You're essentially in equilibrium with your environment and I would imagine something would have to come in and shatter that equilibrium before you would consider going against everyone around you.

The purpose is to keep the USA off balance.

Which reminds me... recommended reading: The Dictator's Handbook by de Mesquita.

One of the scariest things about 1984 to me wasn't the weird specific details of that dystopia. It's that the system was completely stable. The system became so controlling and surveilling that revolution wasn't even remotely plausible. 1984's governments could go on for a thousand years until all the resources of the Earth were used up. Maybe it could keep going beyond that.

Real authoritarian regimes don't seem to last forever. Although usually it's divisions within the ruling class, not real revolution from the bottom. Which is why monarchies like North Korea's tend to be more stable, because there's a clear line of succession and less of a power struggle when the old leader dies.

And modern technology enables a lot of stuff that wasn't possible in the past. Extreme levels of surveillance, automated militaries and law enforcement, and anti-aging tech so the leaders never die, nuclear weapons so external invasion is impossible, etc.

I'm sure being part of the top 0.001% of a small poor country with power and prestige unimaginable to those living in countries with rule of law would any day beat making six-figure in San Francisco and complaining about human feces on the street. I mean in the United States or any other similar democracy even the President is treated like shit by the opposition, media, and common folks. Watch this 20-second video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMI4Z7ri8A

This is the central question of Orwell's 1984. The book goes a long way to create a setting where it's believable that people would knowingly walk the party line. It's a mixture of torture (and the threat thereof), distraction, disinformation, and rewards for the few near the top.