North Korea has been a totalitarian state from the time Kim-Il sung and his son Kim-Jon Il took power in the country. They use many different tactics to rule. One of these tactics being an insistence that the welfare of the state be placed above the welfare of the people. The countries leaders also used totalitarian terror maintain control. There are, many ways that the totalitarian state North Korea uses totalitarian terror to seize power and maintain control over the citizens of the state. Some examples of this are using a secret police, jailing political activists, and putting down anyone who challenges or poses a threat to the regime.
It can be argued that North Korea has been a totalitarian state since the formations of the Democratic People’s republic of North Korea on September 9th 1948. In 1949 Kim-il sung became the chairman of the workers party of Korea. Throughout 1949 Kim-il sung’s power began growing rapidly, as he created totalitarian rule in North Korea and eliminated any other parties that stood in his way. Kim-il sung became the Prime Minister of North Korea from 1948-1972. In 1972 he became president and ruled as such until 1994. Finally, he was made the Eternal president of North Korea for eternity. Kim-il sung ruled as a cruel totalitarian leader using fear as a tactic to force other to believe in the false accusations he was saying. An example of this was that he said the diseases that were spreading across North Korea were intentionally caused by the United States. When people didn’t believe him he created a large purge to force people to accept his remarks. Kim-il sung also used prison camps to get rid of anyone who opposed him. When Kim-il sung died his son Kim-Jong il too up power of North Korea in 1994. ...
... middle of paper ...
... They are under the impression that the rest of the world looks the same as the camps their living in. Many babies are also killed right when they are born to reduce the growing population in the camps. These camps are all well hidden in mountains and hard to find. Another type of camp in North Korea is called a Re-education Camp. These camps work the same way as a political prison with just as much torture and abuse. However, these camps are for political prisoners and people who have committed regular crimes. Diseases also spread through the camps. Fevers and illness spread many times to tons of prisoners. In response to these outbreaks all the camp does it quarantine those that are sick. This does not solve the problem and usually the virus keeps spreading. On top of that, the medicine that is used to treat sick prisoners is either expired or just non-existent.
While government as an institution can be used for benevolent purposes, George Orwell’s novel 1984 contends that when taken to an excess in the form of totalitarianism, government becomes dangerously self-serving.
Officially and originally referred to as, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea has had a dictatorship since 1948. (DPRK) On September 9, 1948 the United Nations elected South of Korea to be the Republic of Korea. They then elected North of Korea to be the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea electing Kim Il- Sung as the Prime Minster. This started the dictatorship in North Korea that still reigns on today.
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
1984 demonstrates a dystopian society in Oceania by presenting a relentless dictator, Big Brother, who uses his power to control the minds of his people and to ensure that his power never exhausts. Aspects of 1984 are evidently established in components of society in North Korea. With both of these society’s under a dictator’s rule, there are many similarities that are distinguished between the two. Orwell’s 1984 becomes parallel to the world of dystopia in North Korea by illustrating a nation that remains isolated under an almighty ruler.
The supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il is a cruel leader. He rules his county with an iron fist. The prisons are full of political opponents. His people are kept isolated from the rest of the world. While his people are starving, his army is well-fed.
A totalitarian government is where one person controls everything and civilian rights are taken away. In George Orwell's novel, 1984, Winston lives under a totalitarian government. Throughout the novel, it is shown how the government controls everything and how the citizens of Oceania cannot exercise basic rights. Citizens in countries with this type of government, both past and present, are manipulated and every aspect of their lives are controlled. In the novel 1984, Oceania is controlled by a totalitarian government, which is similar to the system of Soviet Russia and North Korea because they use close monitoring and threats of war against their citizens.
To mitigate the risk of social rebellion, the North Korean government has started the social control. The social control is harsh and it should not be used in any condition or it will bring dreadful consequences. For instance, by controlling people in Waknuk, the entire society turned into one that was absolutely intolerable towards individual and unique. The culture of the community was surrounded by the beliefs of “ONLY THE IMAGE OF GOD IS MAN” and “WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT”, these beliefs brainwashed the entire society and lead to actions such as “slaughtering two-headed calf, four-legged chicken” and so on. The society of Waknuk represented the social control and implied countries such as North Korea who uses it as a way to rule the
In human history, the most famous prison camp is the Auschwitz concentration camp where millions of human beings spent the last of their days. The most notorious group from Auschwitz being the Jews who lost the greatest number of its people and also the most remembered from the concentration camp. A prison camp is defined as “a camp for the confinement of war or political prisoners” (“Prison camps,” Dictionary.com). Prison camps found in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPNK) have been found to treat its prisoners little more than beasts. The atrocities done in North Korea are unknown but the severity of the camps have left great scars on the people of North Korea. If left unknown, the prison camps in North Korea can mirror Auschwitz’s mass genocide on millions of people.
North Korea is notorious as the “Hermit Kingdom”. Defensive and secretive to the point of paranoia, its history as well as its present conditions remains shrouded in mystery. What little we do know can be murky at best. The central govern...
No one would ever think that a small country could create a controversy known the world over, but North Korea has achieved this goal. The North Korean genocide has claimed 2000 people a day before and these killings are from starvation and beating. Many people think communism is better than a democracy but it has its faults. For example, North Korea is Communist and whatever the leader’s beliefs the Communist citizen has to believe. What is happening and happened is genocide.
They do not have dreams or goals in life because they know that they will never come true (“How Do You Get a Job in North Korea?”). Even their parents know do not worry about their children’s future because there is nothing they can do about it, it is all up to the
In Animal Farm, one of the main causes of Napoleon's power over all of the animals was his use of propaganda, a classic totalitarian tool. He used it to manipulate the uneducated animals and made them trust the lies he was feeding them. In many parts of the book, he ordered Squealer to give the animals false information about the condition of the farm and he led the animals to believe they were living a good life. His use of propaganda was effective and none of the animals questioned his rule and they never saw the injustice being done to them. The same maltreatment occurs in many totalitarian governments, one of them being North Korea. The “Hermit Kingdom” is one of the terms given to North Korea because the country is literally in a world of its own. Kim Jong Un forbids any communication from outside his walls and the only news the Koreans are allowed to read is a government backed paper, similar to the Soviet Pravda. Each person in North Korea is fiercely loyal to Kim Jong Un, and that is exactly what he wants. The reason the people of Korea are so faithful to their leader is because they don’t know any better. A totalitarian government spreads propaganda and keeps its people in t...
Meetings were held with North Korea and the U.S. would always demand that North Korea remove those nuclear weapons, but every time they would decline. Kim Jong-Il’s health started to descend and that left him to give his power to his son, Kim Jong-Un. After his father’s death in 2011, Kim Jong-Un continued doing nuclear tests, even if that meant that North Korea wouldn’t be accepted into the international community. In conclusion, it can be said that dictatorship still exists to this day and that still many people aren’t free.
North Korea could be described as a dystopian society. For all of its citizens, the Internet is widely monitored and restricted, allowing only limited access. “One could speculate that it is more propaganda about the country, its leaders, or negative coverage about the US.... ... middle of paper ... ...
To understand this situation more fully, one must be given some background, starting in the early 1950s. Due to the harsh differences between the peoples of Korea, and especially due to the onset of Communism, the Korean War erupted and the nation split in half, with the Communist-supported Democratic People’s Republic in the north and those who favored democracy in the Korean Republic of the south (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000). The two separate countries of North Korea and South Korea went their opposite ways, and each has experienced different fortunes in the past half-century. The South Koreans managed to recover from the turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s to become an economic power and a democracy supporter. On the other hand, North Korea can be viewed as a retro country, based first on a Communist ideology, laid down by leader Kim Il Sung and inherited by his son, the current dictator Kim Jong Il, then evolving into a totalitarian state (Pacific Rim: East Asia at the Dawn of a New Century). Today North Korea holds the distinction of being one of the very few remaining countries to be truly cut off from the rest of the world. Author Helie Lee describes this in her novel In the Absence of Sun: “An eerie fear crawled through my flesh as I stood on the Chinese side of the Yalu River, gazing across the murky water into one of the most closed-off and isolated countries in the world.” (1)