By: Alek Cerne
With all the political campaign drama in the United States, everyone is taking a side. People with very different opinions are trying to get their points across and change America the way they feel is best. With all the different values and opinions flying around, it can be difficult to realize that this ability that seems normal to us may not be so normal for others, like the people of the Republic of North Korea.
The ability to think freely is an ability we usually take for granted. We almost never realize that many people in this world don’t have the power to do that. When most people think of North Korea they usually think about an isolated, militant country, a country that is the black sheep of the Asian family. While this is true, North Korea is in a much more dysfunctional state than we could ever imagine.
In the cool climate of North Korea, children gather outside for their gym class. In front of each of them are targets. Not normal targets you might use for archery, these targets are pictures of people with white skin. Each target has a caption, “The cunning American wolf”. These children take turns throwing wooden “grenades” at their targets. Without realizing it, these children’s mind are being trained, their personality being folded and manipulated. From such a young age, the youth of North Korea are being formed into the perfect future citizens that embrace the values and opinions that the government of North Korea wants them to hone.
This is not the only example of brainwashing that North Korea uses, and most of their efforts to manipulate the public’s mind are focused on the children of the nation. This strategy takes advantage of the developing minds of the youth. This plan appears sick to those of us outside the mine-surrounded sovereign state, we want our children to be able to choose their own opinions. In some ways the children of North Korea don’t even know that they are being manipulated into obtaining the opinions the government would want them to have such as being oblivious to the government’s oppressive rule.
Brainwashing the adults of the country requires a different strategy to be employed by the government. In reality, most of the adults are fully aware of the tyrannical rule of the government and the leader Kim Jong Un. But, unfortunately, speaking out is not an option. Challenging the leader’s rule is an instant death penalty to the offender and even the entire family of the perpetrator. Punishments are very strict in North Korea, creating mass fear among the middle to lower class adults. This fear is what brainwashes them, as their actions are ineffective against their own wall of fear. In other words, the government of North Korea is using fear to rob the public of rational and free thought.
I’ve talked a lot previously, in the last few paragraphs that is, about how the North Korean government brainwashes the people to embrace certain values; I have not actually specified what values and opinions the government want to embed. It revolves around Kim Il Sung, portrayed as an anti-Japanese revolutionary hero and founding father who remains North Korea’s “eternal president” more than two decades after his death. His son, Kim Jong Il, was, according to North Korean myth, born on a sacred mountain, under a bright star at night. Kim Jong-un has made a great show of being a progressive young leader, introducing new freedoms including letting people eat fast food, allowing them to own mobile phones and permitting women to wear pants and jewelry and ride bicycles. But the regime continues to exercise control over these changes. These absurd beliefs are the bread and butter of life in North Korea, refusing to acknowledge them results in death.
Now I’ve said earlier about how the death penalty is handed out to those who do not function by the North Korean opinions, set in place by the oppressive leaders; this isn’t completely true. The use of Gulags was made famous during the regime of Stalin in the Soviet Union; functioning like concentration camps, these horrific prisons are made to contain and slowly exterminate a certain group.
This idea of Gulags is utilized to great effect in North Korea. People who openly do not agree with the standard North Korean values can simply disappear from the public, disappearing only to reappear in a Gulags. North Koreans are most commonly imprisoned in these internment camps for their alleged political defection, which includes the happenstance of an individual’s lineage or ancestry, flight to China, or for any perceived challenge to Kim Jong Il’s regime. Entire families may be abducted and imprisoned because of their biological relationship to an alleged defector. Once abducted and imprisoned, the accused are held for an undetermined period, often for life.
Conditions within the camps have been that of near- or total-starvation, particularly in times of national food deficit. Prisoners are given just enough food to hover over starvation and death or they receive no food and scavenge the campgrounds for plants, grass, tree bark, rats, and snakes. The detained victims are forced into hard labor, such as mining, logging, and wood-cutting. Such intense and forced labor is nearly impossible for the detained victims, given their extreme malnutrition and hunger. Slowness of work or an inability to complete one’s task will increase a prisoner’s punishment.
Similarly, any attempts to escape are met with torturous ramifications, including: additional reduction or elimination of food rations, public execution by hanging or firing squad, and prolonged detention in boxes so small that prisoners cannot lie down or stand up, causing loss of circulation that often leads to death within weeks.
Unfortunately, there isn’t an abundance of solutions to the problems of this country. Invading North Korea would just result in more death occurring on both fronts. Not to mention what Kim Jong Un would do with his people if he was under attack, but a child military vividly comes to mind. It is possible for people to defect from North Korea, but that is incredibly dangerous. Many people think that the best way to defeat the oppressive government would probably be a coup de tat. If the United Nations could provide aid to the people, they might be able to overthrow their rulers.
Now these possibilities are all very violent, but I that there is one strategy that might be able to halt the oppressive rule of North Korea over its people, a strategy requiring no violence. Simply waiting out North Korea is this strategy, like waiting for an isolated bomb to go off. With the limited food source, it only a matter of time before North Korea collapses on itself. Unfortunately, many of the public will die if this happens by starvation. This is where the United Nations could help by being prepared to swoop in once North Korea collapses and try to save as many dying people as possible.
North Korea and its people can still be saved from without violent intervention, and the oppressive rule of the government can be put to an end.
