A Fresh Spin on Slavery For Your Holiday Arguments
Sure, America has a dark past Uncle Daryl. Now do the present.
Despite increasing inflation, immigration, and crime rates, life has been relatively easy for Americans on average compared to places like South and Central America, Africa, and India.
Even for those living on the street, there are public and private organizations that ensure the needy receive basic necessities such as food, shelter, and controlled substances.
But for all the world's hunger, poverty, and corruption, whether at home or abroad, we don’t often see much about North Korea.
Why?
Isolation & Control
In 1945, the US and Soviet Union split North and South Korea at the 38th parallel following the end of World War 2, leaving the communists to run the north and the Republic of Korea to take the south. How’s it been working out? Let this satellite image tell the story.
While lacking the basic infrastructure to keep the lights on, this dark part of the globe consistently ranks extremely low on the human rights scale, according to Freedom House, EIU Democracy Index, and Reporters Without Borders.
The problem with North Korea is that much of the data is unclear, as the regime closely censors information and people crossing its border.
What we know about this mysterious land often comes from popular defectors such as Hyeonseo Lee, Ji Seong-ho, and Thae Yong-ho. Despite steep odds, they find asylum in places like Mongolia, Laos, or Vietnam, where they often eventually settle in South Korea or a Western nation where we hear their first-hand accounts.
In 2009 alone, almost 3,000 people did just that.
Unfortunately, the number of successful escapes has since dwindled following dictator Kim Jong Un’s ever-tightening grip.
One of the more popular defectors, Yeonmi Park, escaped at age 13 and made it to the United States in 2014 when she published In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.
In 2019, she gave a TED Talk, created a YouTube channel, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, and released her second book, While Time Remains.
Regardless of where you hear or read about Park’s experiences or those of her counterparts, you might find yourself kissing the ground and thanking God you live in the USA.
Daily Life
As a kid, it sucks getting out of your warm bed in the dead of winter to rush through a Toaster Strudel and schlep it to the bus stop.
But it would have sucked much more to get up in the dead of winter and do unpaid manual labor for a couple of hours before “breakfast,” consisting of rice and soup made of wild plants and roots (which is probably healthier than a Toaster Strudel) then walking not to the bus stop, but to school. That’s because in North Korea, only the elites have cars, and there is no school bus system for most kids.
Once arriving at class, the teacher spends the day cramming propaganda down your throat and telling you the obese guy in charge of a starving nation is a god. Maybe they’ll teach you some basic math, which isn’t of much use since most people don’t have anything to add up except maybe bodies floating in the river.
As an adult, you’ll spend the day at your state-selected job dictated by government needs and your family’s songbun or social credit score.
A higher songbun will get you a more desirable spot in government or business, while a lower ranking will likely put you in a factory, field, or on poop duty. More on that later.
Unless you are among the select elites, your family will likely turn to the black market or jangmadang to supplement income by trading or selling goods such as leather, metal, or alcohol.
In the evening, you’ll come home to prepare yet another “meal” consisting of rice and whatever you can find in the wild or on the beach that’s edible because gardens are illegal.
In the most desperate cases, many have turned to eating dead animals or neighbors to survive.
We Westerners like to say no matter how bad things get, at least we have each other.
But in North Korea, there’s a fair chance at least one family member among the estimated 200,000-300,000 people detained in a labor camp.
These people are not locked up for assault or theft but for much more heinous crimes, such as trading scrap metal for food or getting caught with contraband, such as South Korean music.
If you wondered what the opposite of freedom is, it’s North Korea.
Absurd Rules
For example, in North Korea, it's said to be illegal to fold a newspaper depicting Kim Jong Un's face. Once you’ve read the paper, you can’t throw it away-you must leave it lying around where those qualified to dispose of it can do so.
Need to get your hair did? Maybe a medium fade? Sorry, state-approved hairstyles only. It’s illegal to smile on the anniversary of North Korea’s initial leader, Kim Il Sung’s death. The state manages all forms of media. You may not make international phone calls, and Bibles are illegal.
Due to malnutrition, most people only go number two a few times a month. But of the little excrement you produce, you’re required to give to the government for fertilizer annually. Yes, as a North Korean, you have a poop quota, and if you’re not careful, your neighbor might steal yours.
If your house catches fire and the first thing you save is anything but your state-mandated portrait of Kim Jong Un, you stand a good chance of ending up in a camp or facing execution.
This portrait is subject to random government inspections, and some people were, you guessed it, put in front of a firing squad for having dust on the frame.
How do they handle so much execution? Defectors, satellite imagery, and the South Korean government suggest dissenters were commonly executed with anti-aircraft guns, typically in a soccer field where the public, including children, were forced to watch.
Earlier this year, Kim Jong Un reportedly executed 30 government officials for failure to prevent massive flooding and landslides that killed thousands over the summer.
In 2023, a toddler and his parents were sentenced to life in prison after they were caught with a Bible.
But it’s not just North Koreans at risk.
In 2016, Otto Warmbier, an American tourist, was arrested at Pyongyang airport after trying to steal a propaganda poster on his way out. He was detained for six months before they released him. But Warmbier arrived home in an unconscious state, and he died shortly after. The coroner cited a “severe neurological injury,” but the details remain a mystery.
You can’t tweet or talk about it as the internet is severely censored, and the few people allowed to have cell phones are subject to random inspections by government officials.
Smoke and Mirrors
Despite these reports, the North Korean government insists defectors like Yeonmi Park are only out for money and recognition, and all these ridiculous accusations are false.
Unfortunately for Kim Jong Un, it’s hard to explain the anti-aircraft guns lined up on a soccer field.
Still, the dictator will go to great lengths to maintain appearances, even building a fake city called Kijong-dong, more commonly known as “Peace Village” or “Propaganda Village. " The city populated by nothing more than timed lights and maintenance workers performatively sweeping the streets.
Similarly, while “Christian churches” are found in Pyongyang, the capital city, there is much speculation about their legitimacy since the state manages all churches and religions.
The US State Department has a Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory to North Korea, and the regime has a strict set of requirements for the select few Westerners permitted to visit the communist state, including not being allowed to go anywhere without their official government tour guide.
Check out vlogs like IndigoTraveler, Drew Binsky, and Life of Jord to see more of this insanity.
But even if ten percent of this stuff is true, why the secrecy among those who claim to stand for equality?
Selective Oppression
Given the mass concern for slavery and oppression among Westerners over the past decade or so, you would think North Korea would be a hot topic during drunken holiday feasts.
If you want to talk about the patriarchy, content creators could write a ton of articles about the North Korean regimes kippimjo, or ‘pleasure squads,’ which are sex slaves for Kim Jong Un and his inner circle.
Not 200 years ago, but right now.
Some people compare Trump’s agenda and conservatism to The Handmaid’s Tale, a fictional story about strict religious-based government enforcement. Yet Kim Jong Un basically rewrote the Bible with him as the supreme being. Due to strict censorship, nobody knows the difference. Under Kim Jong Un, there is no concept of loving who you want to love; the only term for ‘love’ taught to citizens is love for their leader.
However, there is a reason these atrocities fly under the radar, which is China and North Korea need each other: North Korea relies on China for support, and China needs North Korea as a puppet state to keep a cultural and physical barrier from the West.
Since many Western corporations, politicians, and celebrities are in bed with China, some literally, modern-day slavery is an inconvenient truth and, therefore, mostly absent from corporate media.
Support
While your blue-haired cousin calls you a colonizer, a North Korean child starves. As an NBA player kneels for the national anthem, a girl performs sex acts on a North Korean government official against her will. And when another celebrity leaves the US for fear of America falling to “a right-wing fascist state,” an infant sits in lifetime imprisonment because his parents were caught with a Bible.
But do tell us more about Native American oppression.
So what can one do?
According to people like Yeonmi Park, breaking the silence is the number one priority, so sharing this post is an easy, free way to spread the word.
To support refugees directly, check out Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), Crossing Borders, or People for Successful Corean Reunification (PSCORE)
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it. -Voltaire