Published April 12th, 2009 by Future Atlas
North Korea: Escaping the Cult
The Washington Post provided further evidence that North Korea is so out of step with the South — and the rest of the world — that dealing with a regime collapse might require something like cult deprogramming.
On top of the North Korean claims that they have a satellite orbiting the Earth (when the actual payload fell into the Pacific after launch on April 5th), the Post details how bewildered North Korean defectors are by life in South Korea:
- Life in the Stalinist North has left them paranoid and unable to trust anyone.
- They have learning problems, and are often weak in basic reading and math.
- The Korean of the South is puzzling, as it is infused with hundreds of words borrowed from English.
- They are often unwell, with health problems such as hepatitis and drug-resistant tuberculosis.
- They do not understand basics of consumer life such as credit cards.
These recent arrivals may be unrepresentative of the North in some respects, as they come from a particularly isolated and abject part of North Korea, but they still offer hints of what might come after change comes to the North.
This is also, it might be noted, an example of dyschronicity: in wealth, culture, and technology, the North is now 50 years or more out of sync with the South.