Having just read an amazing piece of journalism from the BBC intitled, “Inside North Korea: ‘We are stuck waiting to die’”, totalitarianism is on my mind. Regimes such as this are all about power. They obtain this power through control and isolation.
It never ceases to amaze me that a regime can think that terrorizing their citizens, and pitting them against one another as well as torturing and starving them, is a worthy pursuit. Granted, there is money in being in control. Leaders and those who prop them up may get to live in the lap of luxury for their twisted efforts, but they will still be surrounded by that toxicity every time they step out the door. They will never be safe again, and carefree vacations abroad will be out of the question. They will become more despised with each passing day. It seems neither sustainable nor desirable to me.
In North Korea today, it is rather common to see your neighbors starve to death, and you often have to step over dead beggars on the street. Since the pandemic, citizens have been prevented from leaving their towns. Men make an average of 50 cents a day in their compulsory state jobs, so women are forced to come up with other, usually illegal, ways to feed their families.
The border is not only closed, but much of it is now fortified by a double wall so that no one can escape. If you’re caught trying to leave the country, you are executed. Since the country can’t produce enough food for its own people, and no food is coming in from outside, everyone is hungry and grateful if they manage to eat one meager meal a day. Most people have had to resort to eating grass at some point. The average citizen has no idea what’s going on in the outside world, and if they attempt to find out, they’re sent to prison.
Can you imagine being caught between the choice of slow starvation and attempting to escape into the unknown, only to be shot if you fail? Most people reading this post have probably never even gone to bed hungry, let alone risked execution. And if you are one of the few people who succeeds in escaping North Korea, how would you manage, when you are destitute? As a basis of comparison, according to the United Nations, as of 2021, the USA had a per capita gross domestic product of US$69,185, whereas in North Korea it was US$654. Essentially, we are 105 times better off than they are, but I’d argue that our good fortune is exponential rather than a simple math problem.
There are so many laws and rules restricting North Korean freedoms now that it’s hard to know what is allowed anymore. In 2020, according to the BBC article, the government passed the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act. They are so afraid of their people realizing how much they’ve been lied to that anyone smuggling foreign videos into the country can be executed. If you are caught watching one of them, you can be sent to prison for 10 years. The government has told its people, “The perverted and animalistic pursuit of South Korean and Western culture is a dangerous poison.”
People who are steeped in ignorance and who don’t trust each other find it all but impossible to form a resistance movement. Toward that end, everyone is required to attend a weekly Life Review Session, where they must rat out their friends, family and neighbors, and admit to their own mistakes and failures.
While North Korea is not the first country to suffer under totalitarianism, since their current system has lasted for 75 years, it has the dubious distinction of being the longest lasting one. The runner up would be Albania, which lasted as a totalitarian state for 39 years. North Korea won’t be the last regime of its kind. Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism are on the rise worldwide.
What are the criteria that cause a country to be considered a totalitarian regime? The general consensus seems to be as follows:
One political party, with an elaborate guiding ideology. The state has a monopoly on information and communication, and rules by a system of terror which often includes secret police. The state controls the economy, and turns economic or professional actions into crimes, which, if violated, subject you to prosecution and ideological persecution.
Currently, there are 4 other countries besides North Korea that meet all those criteria: Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea, and Afghanistan. There have been at least 22 other such regimes in the past 100 years. For a relatively comprehensive list, check out this Wikipedia page. If you look at the list of Authoritarian regimes, both present and past, which are, comparatively speaking, less restrictive than totalitarian regimes, but just as undesirable, the list becomes much, much longer. Where you are born is the primary determining factor of your fate.
Do you think America is safe from becoming a totalitarian state? Think again. Our voting rights are being chipped away. We have also demonstrated that if one political party doesn’t like the results of an election, it can cause an insurrection, and many of our citizens still don’t understand why that is a problem. Republican politicians are doing their best to block any investigations of wrongdoing, because they are complicit and increasingly outspoken about that complicity. They wear it as a badge of honor. Many Americans are eager to re-elect a president who is willing to incite violence amongst the citizenry.
Americans are becoming increasingly polarized and distrustful of one another. Many think that building a wall is a great idea, forgetting that walls work both ways. There is an increasing demonization of education, and books are being banned. Misinformation is being given equal weight to mainstream news, and journalists are being vilified. Women’s rights are on the decline as well. The overturn of Roe v. Wade means that our wombs are once again controlled by the state.
We are all tired, but now is not the time to take a break in defending democracy. Please vote. Otherwise, those clouds on the horizon could mean that there will be some very dark days ahead for all of us.
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