Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

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The only state that I can think of that is remotely comparable to North Korea is pre-1992 Albania [1] - isolated and repressive, with a kind of leader-worship cult going on. After that all fell apart in the mid-nineties things didn't work out too well economically and socially, though I'm not sure that was due to mass psychological problems in the population. Survivors of cults such as Scientology that encourage isolation and obedience to a leader figure might also provide some pointers.

The problem is that it is hard to be sure about the state of mind of the general population. They could be mostly completely brainwashed and controlled; or going along with the charade out of necessity while behind the scenes there is widespread shared disgust at the leadership; or they could be living terrified, isolated lives unable to speak about their private thoughts to anyone, even their families, out of fear of police informers. People do attempt to escape the country, though, so there is some dissent.

Overall I'd say NK is unique, and when it disintegrates the social effects probably won't be like anything we've seen before.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albania#Communist_Albania_.2819...

I'd say you're right that it is quite unlike all we have seen before, however, there are more precedents (although you picked an excellent one with Albania).

One example comes to mind is post-defeat Germany in 1945. This is particularly interesting because here we have the total, absolute and undebatable annihilation of an entire worldview. North Korea will very likely also experience this "everything you ever believed is wrong" moment, so some parallels might apply. The Germans mostly kept their heads down and tried to ingore the past for a few decades. This might not be possible for the North Koreans, however, as they are not surrounded by rubble but by prosperity.

Another example would be the core-to-periphery of the Soviet Union when that collapsed. Around here there are many former inhabitants of the SU and they tell stories of chaos and desorientation with many people using their newly-recieved freedom to cheat others or be cheated. I think the Albanians experienced something similar with a snowball-scam of national proportions. It would be unfortunate if the economic reality of "the little man" in democratic post-North Korea were similar to this, since these things usually trigger a backlash.

Nazism didn't last long enough. With North Korea, we're talking about a system that lasted for multiple generations.

I'd say it lasted just long enough. 1933-45 was enough time for a generation of schoolchildren to have grown up knowing nothing else.

Also, you must remember that living in the Weimar Republic was pure hardship for many people. So there's a large part of the populace for whom "the movement" was the first time they had been on track for a better future. (Sounds horrible from our perspective, but remember that we have the benefit of hindsight.)

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