REVEALED: How North Koreans Talk About Their Supreme Leader In Private
"This is the first time we're hearing directly from people inside the country."
By Sadho Ram — 06 Nov 2016, 02:34 PM
There is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion in North Korea, according to a U.N. panel's Commission of Inquiry, which was looking into the situation of North Korean's rights and freedoms
Writing in its report in February 2014, the Commission of Inquiry said: "State surveillance permeates the private lives of all citizens to ensure that virtually no expression critical of the political system or of its leadership goes undetected. Citizens are punished for any 'anti-State' activities or expressions of dissent. They are rewarded for reporting on fellow citizens suspected of committing such 'crimes'."
In fact, people who express dissent or criticise the state, even if unintentionally, are subject to harsh punishments and detention
If they are lucky they are executed because being sent to a political prison camp is worse than death, as these torture drawings of North Korea prison reveal the horrifying animal-like treatment they are made to go through.
Living North Korean prisoners being used as dummies for martial arts training.
Image via Kim Kwang-ilIn such light, the question — 'what do ordinary North Koreans think of their leader, Kim Jong-un?' — becomes an impossible one to answer. But that's exactly what this new survey is trying to do.
While minuscule in nature, the survey by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) does help shed a light on the lives of those living under a totalitarian state, where — if you're not professing wholehearted adulation for the Kim regime — you are potentially exposing yourself to a life of hell in a political prison camp.
This survey "gives us a window into what the average North Korean citizen is thinking", Victor D. Cha, chair of Korea studies at CSIS, who runs the "Beyond Parallel" project dedicated to Korean unification, told The Washington Post.
According to Victor D. Cha, chair of Korea studies at CSIS, "this is the first time we're hearing directly from people inside the country"
The survey results were published on Wednesday. It reveals:
1. Out of the 36 people surveyed, none of them said that the country's public distribution system of goods provides what they want for a good life.
2. ONLY 1 of the 36 people said that while the country's public distribution system did provide him with enough in the 1990s, it currently does not.
3. That 35 of 36 respondents' family, friends, or neighbours complain or make jokes about the government in private.
The fact that all but just 1 out of the 36 respondents surveyed said that they know people who complain and makes jokes about the government may not seem like that big of a deal to us in Malaysia...
...where we still enjoy ample amount of free speech and can be found cracking jokes at the expense of our government, it is, in fact, an extraordinary figure when you put in perspective the manner in which the Kim Jong Un regime responds to criticism.
