Totalitarian Brutality In North Korea

As evident through the striking similarities between the totalitarian government of 1984 and the Communist regime of North Korea, it really is as if Kim Il Sung obtained an early copy of George Orwell’s 1984 and used it as a blueprint for his system (Hitchens n.p.). George Orwell had been exposed to various types of imperialism throughout his early life, leading to a realization of his resentment for authority. Orwell produced the novel with the intent of warning future societies of the dangers of totalitarian governments, yet North Korea epitomizes a flawless depiction of the very authority that Orwell yearned to avoid through providing a detailed illustration of the ramifications of submitting to a tyrannical government (Merriman n.p.).

There are daily examples of discrimination and oppression throughout the world, but one of the most substantial examples is in North Korea. North Korea is an Asian country ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship, although it calls itself a socialist state. The Jong family has ruled North Korea for three generations since the Korean War. The country is said to be a cult as the country’s citizens are forced to worship the countries leaders, discouraged from holding religion and often punished from doing so, and are not allowed to leave the country. Additionally, in North Korea there are no human rights. People are killed or sent to labor camps for even the smallest infractions. North Korea remains one of the most repressive authority’s states on the world. A 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in North Korea stated that systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations committed by the government included murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortion, and other sexual violence, and constituted crimes against humanity (McCurry,2017). Under international pressure North Korea always denies these allegations, but through defectors and satellite images the evidence is clear. Time and time again North Korea has violated human rights. North Korea is a superior example of oppression and discrimination because of the countries laws and judicial system, and the treatment of North Korean citizens.

Also the lack of jobs has led to the majority of the people to be below the poverty line. And the ones with jobs do not get paid much or at all due to government corruption. For example, “Men are forced to work long hours for the government, often without pay, and those that don’t show up for work risk imprisonment”. Which has led to men working worthless jobs and women becoming the breadwinners of the families but still not having the same respect as men. The North Korean government is forcing these men to work for free while their families have no food to eat. Brainwashing and propaganda are also major aspects of the regime to keep the people scared of the world outside North Korea, namely the United States, Japan and South Korea. As shown, “Ak (evil) may be the single most commonly used word to describe Americans. The derogatory term nom, similar to calling someone a bastard, is inevitably attached to the end of any word referring to Americans”. Children from a young age are taught to refer to Americans in such manner to install fear in them to always distrust Americans and their aid. Americans are the worst of the worst type of people, according to the Kim regime, because they prevented the reunification of the two Koreas. Followed closely behind by the Japanese, since there is still resentment from the Japanese colonial rule. South Korea is not as

Since the year 1948, we, the people of North Korea have endured intolerable human rights abuses by the hand of our very own government. As individuals in this world, we are enervated with the governments unmindful treatment of its people. We demand an authentic democratic nation free from the reign of Kim Jong-Un. Must we rely on foreign nations to administer aid in times of famine while our “supreme leader” misspends funds formulating weapons of mass destruction? Must we live in a constant state of fear if we make one selves concerns heard? No, we must take the government into our own hands to better guide North Korea's political, civil, and monetary

George Orwell’s 1984, gives readers a glimpse of what it would look like to have a future with a totalitarian government. A future where one person will control everybody through manipulation and fear. These types of governments continue to exist in certain countries today, one of them being North Korea. North Korea’s government is similar to the Party in 1984, in which their government is a totalitarian dictatorship where Kim Jong Un, their singular leader, controls everything. Both governments in North Korea and 1984 are led by dictators, “Big Brother” in 1984 and Kim Jong Un in North Korea, who are similar in many ways. Their similarity is due to the various techniques they use, which include mind control, propaganda and deprivation of freedom. It is clear that both governments use a variety of different methods of manipulation to control to their citizens.

In fact, North Korea does not run on free labor. All of the country’s economy is based on labor camps and forced labor. Marzuki Darusman, a special rapporteur on human rights, told theguardian, “the workers are being used as a new source of income, with North Korea facing a “really tight financial and economic situation” (theguardian, 1). Because of North Korea’s forced labor, they are earning up to $2.3bn in foreign currency. Thus, North Korea is slowly relying on its forced labor more and more. North Korea’s forced labor is helping its economy greatly. However, the forced labor is killing many of the citizens and forced labor is being too heavily relied on. Many of the North Koreans are being killed off because of the forced labor. If the forced labor continues, many of the laborers will die, and the economy would start to fail because they have less of a labor force. Either way, North Korea is too dependent on forced labor, but it is killing thousands, which causes the economy to fail. Forced labor in North Korea helps its economy greatly, but it can also be the horrific downfall to its

In his article on “Forced Labor”, Scott Johnson informs to the readers the terrifying truth about labor camps that reveals an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 families are kept as prisoners in these camps scattered in North korea, and there is only so much food to feed the people. With the intentions of punishing citizens of North Korean for what he thinks is necessary to stop protests against him, citizens of North Korean people have been rising up and choosing whether they want to expel Kim Jong Un from his throne, or be expelled by him.

North Korea’s regime has a tight grip on its citizens. The surveillance system is oppressive as well an invasion to the citizen’s human rights. But in North Korea the words “human rights” don’t exist, because the regime has such a harsh oppressive grip on them. There’s a stark contrast between the oppressive grip of North Korea and their bordering neighbor of South Korea because of their prison camps that are installed into their society. In comparison, North Korea is becoming eerily similar to the Soviet Union during Stalin’s reign.

Evil is a subject on which most tread lightly, saying what they think is true and not questioning what it is. Who decides what is evil? Perhaps no one thing is completely evil. Perhaps each person decides what is evil in his eyes. One person might believe that someone is evil, and another person might believe that the same someone is good. This would mean that evil is relative depending on where you live, who you are, or what you believe. For example, Kim Jong Il, the dictator of North Korea, is evil in the eyes of most Americans, but those who live under his rule praise him above nearly everything. But then, are some things truly evil? If those in North Korea would see the world from our eyes, would they not think the dictator evil? So maybe

It's one thing to know that third-generation strongman Kim Jong Un maintains an iron grip on North Korea's 25 million people. It's another thing to read the horrifying particulars of how his regime wields its control — through starvation, torture, rape, summary executions and the disappearance of tens of thousands of citizens into an extralegal prison labor-camp system.

Unlike the government system we are familiar with today, Hannah Arendt describes totalitarian governments as, “operating according to a system of values so radically different from all others, that none of our traditional legal, moral, or common sense utilitarian categories could any longer help us to come to terms with, or judge, or predict their course of action.” In a dictatorship like North Korea, the actions of Kim Jong-ii is very unpredictable and the people are expected to react accordingly without challenging his

“Three Generations Of Punishment”, a 60 Minutes interview conducted by Anderson Cooper, is a thought provoking look inside North Korea’s political work camps. In this interview, we speak to Shin Dong-hyuk, former resident, and escapee of one of said concentration camps, Camp 14. One hundred and fifty thousand people inhabit Camp 14, which lies fifty miles outside of the city of Pyongyang. This camp, as well as many others, follow the ‘Three Generations of Punishment’ policy institutionalized by former leader of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung. This law decrees that if someone commits a political wrongdoing, he, and the two generations after him, will live in work camps for their whole lives as a form of punishment. Kim Il-Sung put this system

The North Korean government keeps on requiring constrained, uncompensated work from specialists, including even schoolchildren and college understudies, Human Rights Watch said today. In late meetings with Human Rights Watch, North Korean defectors say they have confronted years of work for either no wages or typical remuneration and either needed to pay fixes or confront extreme disciplines in the event that they didn't report for work at alloted work environments. Defectors answered to Human Rights Watch that they were required to work at an allocated working environment in the wake of finishing school. The viable breakdown of a great part of the North Korean economy implies that a large portion of these occupations are either unpaid or give

History has shown mankind that war often makes or breaks a nation, and in the instance of North Korea, one could question which of these it did. World War II and the Korean War in the mid-twentieth century led to the formation of North Korea, as well as to the demise of Korea as a whole. A once peaceful state, the Northern portion of the Korean peninsula has become a suffocated land of dictatorship. The wars left Korea in tatters, and in doing so left an opening for the formation of and domination by the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP). No nation is perfect, so there were inevitably revolutionaries who were displeased with the state of Korea prior to these events and had many small revolutions to gain rights or bring about change. However, since the formation of the KWP revolutionaries have had no effect at all, imprisoned or murdered for even the slightest offense against the government. The revolutionaries are a courageous political group in North Korea. The single-party state in the nation has impacted the revolutionaries in a negative way, suppressing and mistreating them to an unimaginable degree.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (Article I of UN constitution). Aren’t North Koreans human to the United Nation? Such human rights are denied to the people since their birth. With so much restricting and strict laws,