North Korean Dictatorship Is the North Korean dictatorship sustainable for the next century?

The torture started with questions about the conspiracy of Shin Dong-Hyuk's family to escape their political prison camp in North Korea. It continued for weeks; some of the favorite tactics of the guards were to hang the 14-year-old Shin upside down with his ankles cuffed and a fire blowing under his back while he could not even move due to a steel hook inserted near his groin. Shin was dragged from the torture cells after weeks of incomprehensible torture in order to witness the public hanging of his mother and the execution by firing squad of his brother. (Blaine)

The first man to have escaped the political prison camps of North Korea and lived to tell the world about the country's brutalities, Shin has worked towards raising awareness about what is going on in that country. From his own experience of being born in the concentration camp and raised doing hard labor, Shin adjusted to the life of the prison knowing only one skill- that of survival. After years of therapy and interviews, he has come to terms with the fact that he was actually responsible for the execution of his mother and brother. He called them out to a security prison guard in order to get some extra morsels of food. He had grown up seeing the people in the camps survive on crummy cabbage soup, hunted rats and insects. Food, for them, was the biggest reward they could imagine. It is scary to see that the lines between the victim and the aggressor are blurred. When he recounts the incident that led to the killings of his family member, he also admits that he did not have any regrets. He did what he had to do. This shows that he was brought up in such a manner that he did not even know what familial bonds were or what the love of a mother was. He outlines how his mother once brutally beat him up for having eaten her lunch.

The heart wrenching account of what life was like growing up in the concentration camp is an eye-opener. Although there doesn't seem to be much information coming out of the country, what does make its way out should be analyzed carefully.

To many, North Korea is an interesting landscape comprising of mountains and lush valleys as well as small plains. The fact that the country is so totally isolated from the rest of the world lends it an even more fascinating angle. However, from the stories coming out of the hermit establishment, and there aren't many, it is horribly depressing to imagine what lives people must be living in a country that has and still is, severely violating human rights on a daily basis.

According to Amnesty International, North Korea places tight restrictions on the freedom of association, movement and expression. It is common to find that people are ill-treated, tortured, detained for no reason and just executed for the most minor transgressions. Apart from the restrictions placed on civilians in the country, the camps where political prisoners are kept exist in the most inhumane conditions imaginable where the inmates are effectively slaves and brutalized to no end. (Human Rights Watch)

How has this environment been tolerated for decades? Why don't the people protest and form massive groups in order to rally for freedom or bring a revolution? These questions are the first that spring to mind when one reads about the unspeakable committed in North Korea. The answer is very simple and straightforward. Generations after generations have been mind controlled by a phenomenon known as Personality Cult that is perpetuated in the society actively by the government. The North Korean government exercises control over most of the nation's cultural artifacts. The cult of personality has been perpetuated surrounding the figure of Kim Il-sung, who was the country first and only president, and to a smaller degree towards his successor Kim Jong- Il. The two are revered to no end and there is not one person who can question the authority of the "Dear Leader" although he has been long dead since 1994. The cult began in 1948 when the President came into power and has strengthened and expanded since his death. Now the cult is marked by the intensity of the people's devotion to their leaders.

The way the people of North Korea have been programmed to believe their destiny is what they are born into and to submit without questioning it, brings to mind the...

The society has basically isolated itself from the entire world and eliminated all pain from their lives by achieving "sameness" which has also resulted in the elimination of any emotional depth from their lives. Hence, people are programmed when they are born to live and act a certain way with predetermined work waiting for them when they mature; afterwards they are handed over readymade babies and lead mechanical lives. (Lowry)
The novel explains beautifully how a population can be controlled and made to be a certain way through organized processes. What is going on in North Korea is the result of decades of conditioning and cult formation practices and the way people are living has been hardwired into their beings. In the book, the government can spy on the people and listen to their conversations keeping troubles at bay and since the people don't even know of a better life they are happy in their current states. It explores how people who don't know any better make peace with and in fact appreciate the way things are in their lives, no matter how horrible.

The current dictatorship is headed by The First Grandson of the Eternal Ruler, Kim Jong Un. There are alarming parallels between the ideological state of North Korea and Nazi Germany and the previous ambassador to the country to quick to point it out.

John Everard said: 'There are sad parallels between North Korea and Nazi Germany and although some people describe North Korea as a Stalinist state, it's actually much more accurate to describe it as neo-Nazi. It is deeply racially biased. Kim Jong Il [Kim The Second] was an unabashed admirer of Hitler and copied the Nuremberg marches that are staged in Pyongyang to this day.' (Sweeney)

According to Dr. Vollersten, there are horrifying parallels between present day North Korea and Nazi Germany. He asserts that North Koreans learnt from the mistakes of Nazi Germany and hence operate on a higher level of sophistication when it comes to organized evil. There is no information coming in or going out of the country. There is only one government channel on the TV and no newspaper. People don't know anything about life outside; they consider South Koreans to be savages and the ones in the U.S. To be starving enemies to be defeated. Just like Nazi Germany, North Koreans undergo ghastly medical experiments: some have them swallowing anthrax while in others they are tested to see how long they survive without oxygen. There is a difference in where the dead go though: in Germany there were crematoriums however, in North Korea the bodies are fed to the pigs and dogs. The corpses are used to build roads and no remains are ever left behind. People in the country are malnourished to an extent where they are feeding off on dead children and dead bodies of their grandparents. (Vollersten)

It is not surprising that the country doesn't want any visitors. Even if there are some places of interest that the world would like to know more about, more places are so appalling that they almost give you cold shivers, according to some undercover journalists who had the opportunity to visit the country. North Korea is the only country in the world where journalists are not allowed. They are almost always denied a visa. In theory, anyone can visit North Korea but it's not so simple. Tourists can be part of organized guided tours and cannot roam around freely on their own. There are designated tour-guide companies that facilitate travel to restricted regions in the country and are tightly controlled by the government. For official purposes, the visa granted is very selective and after a long and bureaucratic process. There are countless travel restrictions and rules that the visitors would only dare breach at their own peril.

From the way things are progressing on the foreign policy front, it only looks like North Korea is confused as to what it really wants. The position of the ruler is not as strong as his father's or grandfather's was and that is a source of anxiety for him.

In the interview with the head of Korea International Institute, Park Doo Jin, outlines some of the things he thinks will be crucial for shaping the future of the country five years from now.

The insecurity of the third in command is obvious from…