Shouldn’t the role be “advertised” to other people as well? Why is it following the Kim family line when that seems completely against ML thought?

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    In my view, it’s perfectly valid to criticize the fact that the Kim family has been in charge the whole time. However, I don’t think that’s at odds with having critical support for DPRK.

    • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      yeah I think disallowing immediate family (if not more) from holding public power is something every political system newer than “divine right of kings” should do. Hardly anyone whining about north korea gives a shit that the united states went bush - clinton - bush into another clinton being the presumptive candidate and our elections are probably less legitimate than the dprk.

      something something royal family something something usual decadence, two of them.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Completely disallowing a public official’s family from holding public office is undemocratic. If people want a specific person elected to a certain position, why shouldn’t it be allowed because of their family?

        This issue is resolved by making public office less of a privilege and more of a job, which as far as I know is what has happened over time in the DPRK.

        • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          you literally answered your own question lol

          . It’s not undemocratic to protect the candidate pool from nepotism and privilege. even if it’s “just a job” you make social connections and have access to people and institutions that normal people don’t.

          how many regular north koreans who weren’t the children of politicians are sent to foreign universities?

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            I still think it’s possible to have representatives who don’t necessarily amass wealth and privilege. If the problem is that politicians are distinct from normal people to the point of having this kind of privilege to share with their family, then restrict the amount of privilege afforded to them. Make them into more normal people.

            I think maybe we’re coming to a problem that exists in representative states in general.

            • zkrzsz [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              Being family with the politicians in power is already a kind of privilege, people from outside will want connections with the family relatives. Smooth promotions/contracts ect.

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              yeah i guess i don’t think you can really separate power and rank from privilege. at least not now or in the foreseeable future. if humanity outlives capitalism maybe they can revisit the issue.

    • ButtigiegMineralMap@lemmygrad.ml
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      I couldn’t agree more, I’m not a fan of lifetime leaders or nepotism, but their contributions to a better Korea are admirable and inspiring

      • Armen12
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        By a better Korea do you mean powering cars with wood chips and charcoal and dying of malnutrition at 40?

        • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          Do you know how internal combustion engines work?

          Are you aware of racial/ethic differences in life expectancy in western countries?

          • Armen12
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            https://apnews.com/article/d9d824f29b3b4128977e60117c2a11e0

            "UNITED NATIONS (AP) — An estimated 11 million people in North Korea — over 43 percent of the population — are undernourished and “chronic food insecurity and malnutrition is widespread,” according to a U.N. report issued Wednesday.

            "The report by Tapan Mishra, the head of the U.N. office in North Korea, said that “widespread undernutrition threatens an entire generation of children, with one in five children stunted due to chronic undernutrition.”

            A “better Korea” means starving half the population to death and having 1-in-5 children with stunted growth I guess?

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      The leader of the SAC (formerly NDC) is the “leader” of the country, voted on by the SPA, which is elected by the people

      It’s important to note that Americans also do not directly elect the president (that’s the Electoral College), and that most countries ~70 years into their democratic experiments were substantially less democratic than this.

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        Pretty much all the US leaders, whether political or economic, come from powerfully entrenched families, making the US a lineage-based feudal monarchy all but in name. This paragraph hits home:

        Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

      • Armen12
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        It’s important to note that the President is not the monarch of America. We have 3 separate but equal branches for this very purpose

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      Gonna show my dog brain here a bit but is there a visual somewhere that delineates this? I’ve never seen it put together in such detail. There was a nice infographic a while back floating around showing how chinas govt was put together and it was a really handy tool to deploy against libs

  • sinovictorchan@lemmygrad.ml
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    Are you sure that a family have absolute authority over North Korea and that the Kim family were not simply figure head or influential people with limited power?

  • Nemesis ☭@lemmygrad.ml
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    There is no family line or monarchy. This is just false. People voted for them lmao, they can always change at any time but the people voted for this.

    DPRK is a people’s democracy. Not a monarchy or whatever people like to claim. Kim Jun Un is a great leader and so were the other kim’s, they were all legitimately elected, they were voted because they are great leaders.

    • Armen12
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      No one votes in North Korea, it’s not allowed

      https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/wtf/shocking-laws-in-north-korea-556386.html

      “It is believed that about 200,000 North Koreans live in the camps. They were arrested for alleged political crimes. If a person commits a political crime, his entire family is interned. If a prisoner manages to escape, his entire family would be killed. 40% of prisoners interned in these concentration camps die from malnutrition. Many of them are sentenced to hard labor for seemingly reasonable terms, but more often than not they work to death.”

      Sounds like a dictatorship to anyone with 4 brain cells

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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        Sounds like a dictatorship to anyone with 4 brain cells

        Indeed. lmao. Bold of you to confirm it. 😂😂

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        Lmao, you’re a joke. The voting process in DPRK is well documented if you actually look for real sources.

        All men and women can only do one of 28 government-approved haircuts, 18 for women, 10 for men; other hairstyles are prohibited. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un introduced this law in 2013 and did not include his hairstyle on this list because he wanted to keep it unique and absolutely no one can dare to copy his hairstyle. It is assumed that married women should wear shorter haircuts than unmarried women.

        Do you sincerely believe this shit? Like are you, Armen12, on this day on Lemmygrad, declaring to the world that you’ve abandoned all critical thinking and choose to live your life with the cognitive capacities of a lettuce slug from this day forward?

        Nobody at the top level believes this crap lol. This is just gossip fodder for fashion magazines to print and remind people that the US and their made up state in the ROK are still at war with the DPRK and they need to keep up some war propaganda once in a while so that some day they can launch missiles at Korea and have people cheer for it.

        You can legit go on wikipedia, type up DPRK and go from bluelink to bluelink down into obscure pages that the CIA hasn’t touched too much yet and learn about all the state figures in the DPRK that are not Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un. All the state commissions, all the state positions and officials who’ve held those historically, shit you can even learn about the coalition that forms the Parliament composed of three parties including the WPK.

        Do you actually believe that any country in the world would last for more than 10 years if they were this comically evil? The reason nobody at the top level in the west believes this shit is because they know how hard it is to manage macro stuff like, I don’t know, an entire country. In the feudal past this ended with revolutions, but there has been no such thing in the DPRK in over 70 years. Why is that? Could it be that you’re ignorant and should admit you know nothing but war propaganda about the DPRK? No, it must be the Koreans who are brainwashed and kept on a leash!

        • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          Maybe there’s a typo. This makes much more sense:

          Kim Jong Un introduced Unintroduced this law in 2013 …

          Joking aside, this is, again, all projection. When I was in school… if you turned up with a shaved head you’d be sent home until it grew back. If you turned up with too long hair, you’d be sent home to get it cut. If you turned up with hair gel/hairspray or any other product, you’d be sent to the gym showers to wash it out. If you turned up with beads, braids, dreads, cornrows, a few too many bobbles or plaits, you’d be sent home to ‘fix it’.

          I’m led to believe that schools are marginally less racist nowadays. I’m not convinced. Is France not, right now, going through another wave of Islamaphobia sending muslim girls home for wearing religious/cultural dress over their hair?

          Now that I’m in work (and it’s been the same in every job), there’s a dress code, which includes hairstyles. It’s often unofficial. That doesn’t make a difference. If you turn up with anything you might call a ‘hairstyle’, you will be ostracised, bullied, and possibly lose your job. You won’t be given any public facing tasks, for a start.

          I’ve not even touched on the shit faced by LGBTQAI2+ workers, for whom a ‘non-confirming’ hairstyle will be used as evidence of something if it suits bigoted, transphobic, racist colleagues and employers.

          I just find it so mind boggling that liberals can live in the same world as me, put a quacky label on something that runs through every society in one form or another, and pretend it doesn’t exist under liberalism but does exist in a designated enemy country. And that it’s the worst thing ever. As if people in particular places and times don’t just wear similar hairstyles, because culture, fashion, religion, etc.

          fucking liberals

          • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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            Is France not, right now, going through another wave of Islamaphobia

            Yes, and OP shows how frogpilled they are because in another comment (I had to check if the fascism extended beyond just their takes on lemmygrad), they say “France doesn’t ban religious anything, only in schools”. You get turned away at public pools if you wear too much there.

            • Armen12
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              Everyone knows China and North Korea don’t ban religion (Protip: Religion is illegal in both countries and you’re sent to a concentration camp for practicing any religion)

        • Armen12
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          “The voting process in DPRK is well documented if you actually look for real sources”

          Great resources you didn’t provide within that wall of text

          • Armen12
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            No, I’m going to keep dunking on you and your fascist ilk 😜

            • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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              dunking on us by acting like lettuce slug

              You realize we can ban you at any time, we just choose to keep you around? And there would be nothing you could do about it except impotently rage against your computer if we did.

              • Armen12
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                lmfao, I actually have a life unlike you incels, it’s just fun to mock your stupidity

                • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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                  That’s great buddy but the thread is over now and everyone packed up so enjoy your ban and please don’t punch your monitor too hard when you find out, it deserves better

        • Armen12
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          Everyone outside North Korea probably knows more about the country than anyone living in it thanks to the fascist dictator in charge

  • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
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    It’s not unusual for people from certain political families to simply stand out and hold a special place in a country’s politics. It’s a consequence of the immense popularity that a particular leader may have had during their tenure, which can end up rubbing off on those who have the same name. Assad is another example of this, and for the United states you have the Kennedys as well. India is another example, with the Ghandi family (no relation to THAT Ghandi) has had multiple generations of leaders voted in as prime minister or as opposition leaders.

  • Vampire [any]@hexbear.net
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    This is the best read on this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230409194611/https://rolandtheodoreboer.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/2018-an-effort-to-understand-the-dprk.pdf

    Why is it following the Kim family line when that seems completely against ML thought?

    I think firstly, we’ve got to accept that it is real, the Kim family does hold a special place in that country. Trying to say, “Oh no, they were just legitimately elected”, or “They’re not special” is trying to deny the reality and impose some foreign image on the country.

  • MinekPo1 [She/Her]@lemmygrad.ml
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    not exactly what you are asking, but its worth remembering the Korean war when trying to understand DPRK. One in every five people died as a result of bombardment by the USA, which is one of the main reasons the DPRK hates the US so much.

  • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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    I agree. For a counterexample, Cuba passed the torch to an outsider after Fidel and Raul retired.

    There is a tendency amongst western communists of uncritical support for AES countries. Yes, I do support North Korean people and their right to exist outside of capitalism. Yes, I am critical of their incestuous leadership structure and the consequent corruption that arises from such practices.

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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      You make it seem like it’s inherently good to elect someone not related to the previous leader, but we need to take a step back and ask why is this desirable? As was explained in another comment, another chairman was elected before Kim Jong Un but he tried to stage a coup after he was retired for his right-wing reforms (speaking relatively here). Outsider does not always mean better.

      Also something I haven’t seen people touch on yet is that all three Kim’s have held different functions. Kin Jong Un is the general of the armies as well as the foreign minister of sorts (closer to the president but for foreign affairs). That’s why we see him meet with foreign officials and we see him at weapons tests. I think he goes to factories and such in his capacity as Chairman of the WPK (and leader of the coalition encompassing three parties in the DPRK’s parliament).

      • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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        Note that I didn’t criticize the Kim family specifically.

        The whole of North Korean military and governmental high level positions are much more closely related than CPC for example.

        Lineal succession of the Kim family is just a visible portion of the inner-circle domination. The Party itself has a problem.

        • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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          Lineal succession of the Kim family is just a visible portion of the inner-circle domination. The Party itself has a problem.

          But again, there is no lineal succession. All three Kims held different positions in government.

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              But then we are back to the first step comrade, what makes it undesirable that members of a family hold different government positions? Especially in socialism, there’s no question about capitalism.

              • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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                My belief is that in a fair socialist society, there would be a constant flow of outsiders because that is the natural order of things if everyone’s given fair education and opportunity.

                That has been seen in most socialist countries historical and current. If this state of affairs is not true, that implies the existence of formal or informal institutional mechanisms in which connected people are favored. I dislike such mechanisms inherently after decades of living in it.

                I don’t see how I would suddenly like such mechanism just because it occurs inside a socialist framework comrade. Equal distribution of material goods and services is not the only concern for me. I also favor socialism due to the fact that impoverished peasants can rise to high stations unlike capitalism. Favoritism towards Pyongyang makes such things less likely.

                • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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                  There are 687 seats in the Supreme People’s Assembly, of which Kim Jong Un is not a member anymore (having elected not to be on the ballot at the last elections). There are also countless generals in the army, several ministers, several members of the WPK’s central committee, and of course local officials as well as party leaders other than the WPK (there’s 2 other parties in the SPA forming a front for the reunification of Korea with the three of them).

                  Of all these officials, the Kim family had 4 members of their family fulfilling governmental positions. The DPRK even had one of the Kims executed for being a CIA insurrectionary.

                  I get your distrust of such mechanisms where family ties might get you somewhere, but the DPRK is not a capitalist country. I don’t think this is a clear-cut area that we can readily criticize the DPRK on. It only strengthens the “DPRK is a monarchy” argument in the average liberal and right-winger; Kim Jong-Un holds 3 positions (chairman of WPK, supreme commander of the armies and president of the state affairs commission). The title of president, which conferred powers as the head of state, was abolished after Kim Il Sung’s death (making him the “Eternal Leader” because he was the only one who ever held that title).

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Only western failson dynasties are allowed to do that because it’s just inherited greatness in the meritocracy. galaxy-brain

  • Armen12
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    Communists are just fascists just to pretend like the people have any rights whatsoever when they clearly don’t. China treats it’s own people like slaves and it’s the same in every communist country

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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      Communists are not fascists and I can prove it in two seconds, because I know you’ll be out there calling for the deportation of minorities in three years time, but you’ll never be out there protesting for the nationalisation of resources.

      • Armen12
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        China doesn’t allow minorities to have lives in China and they’re a deeply racist country, especially if you’re black. On the flip side, Japan and Taiwan are perfectly friendly towards outsiders and welcoming places. China is like the incel of countries

        • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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          so you’re just going straight for the goal and trying to troll now that you realize nobody gives a shit about your boring takes? You only make yourself look like an idiot, you realize that right?

          You’re a lettuce slug.

    • HerbalGamer
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      You didn’t have to say you’re an idiot, yet here you are.

  • Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml
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    The DPRK isn’t ML, and hasn’t been for like 40 years. They’re kind of doing their own thing.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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        Hey, if privileged westerners declare their version of socialism invalid, who are we to argue? They’re clearly world experts on this and everyone else should automatically defer to them when it comes to socialist states passing the purity test. (Not saying the person above you is like that, just that they’re channeling that energy)

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          The idea that the DPRK ‘abandoned’ Marxism-Leninism bugs the crap out of me. Marxism-Leninism is a scientific methodology that must adapt to suit the material needs of each nation. I remain unconvinced of any differences between the DPRK’s political economy and other AES states so drastic to warrant the claim that the DPRK is not a Marxist-Leninist (scientific socialist) nation.

          • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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            Yeah, it reeks of western chauvinism, there’s a lot of overlap between the “they aren’t real AES” and “I uncritically parrot western claims about their government being a monarchy”

            Or the standard ultra tactic of just dismissing them out of hand for not being “pure” enough because their material conditions aren’t ideal and they’ve had to make compromises.