Korea / 조선

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A community about anything related to Korea, such as news about the countries (DPRK and south), discussion, photos and videos, the language, etc.

See also: !juchegang@lemmygrad.ml, which is intended for memes rather than serious discussion of these topics.

The picture of this Lemmy community is magnolia (목란), the national flower of the DPRK. The background picture is a scenery of Pyongyang.

Rules:

No imperialist apologia. The DPRK didn't start the war. US imperialist invasion was not justified. Neither are their army bases in south Korea. The sanctions were and are not justified.
Be respectful. The imperialist media likes to describe the DPRK people as completely brainwashed, and that it'd be fine to completely destroy that country in an invasion. Don't act like the imperialist media.
Be skeptical of your sources. Don't trust the media that has been known to report many falsehoods about Korea already. (You may still link to them if they write something interesting / worth reading, just be careful.)

founded 5 years ago

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If North Korea is undemocratic, what is the USA? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by SovietReporter@lemmygrad.ml to c/korea@lemmygrad.ml

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[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But the fact that nobody can predict the outcome of the next election though means in my books that it’s pretty close to a free election. In contrast, I can with great certainty predict who will be in charge of NK next year, even though I don’t know anything about their electoral system.

Most likely you think that way because you're so used to the government not doing shit for you that you're in disbelief at the idea of people wanting to willingly elect the same person over and over.

[+] jsomae@lemmy.ml -10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No. I would think that in such a scenario, other parties should copy more and more from the winning party until (in the limit) they're indistinguishable. Of course, at some point before that, they'll get elected. This is IMO the reason why the democrats and republicans are so similar.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But why would they get elected in that scenario? When people in the US talk about elections and different candidate, they aren't going "I really like the incumbent party, but the other party is saying similar stuff and I'd like to give a shot to somebody who could be similar but hasn't proven themself." They are going "I don't like the incumbent and want different."

[+] jsomae@lemmy.ml -6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Admittedly, "hasn't proven themself" is quite a disadvantage. But not everyone cares about if they've proven themself if they are offering a change that matters to them.

Everyone has different ways they'd like the current party to change. This is why as another party approaches the incumbent's platform, some people will jump to vote for the new party. Some people are one-issue voters and if the ruling party wronged them then they will change their vote to the next best party no matter what.

Still, I can't argue with the idea that the incumbent party might be truly optimal and most everyone likes them. Seems implausible to me as a Canadian but you could be right. Nonetheless, you must surely agree a constantly changing ruling party in the U.S. ought to be sufficient proof of a (relatively) fair election.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 3 months ago

Nonetheless, you must surely agree a constantly changing ruling party in the U.S. ought to be sufficient proof of a (relatively) fair election.

This is more or less how I view that: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7781901/6329586

In particular, this part:

The concept [of US as "free elections"] doesn’t materialize when votes are suppressed, when rich donors spend more on a single election than you’ve ever seen or will see in your lifetime, when candidate choices are filtered through two parties thoroughly owned by such rich and corporate interests, when the electoral college and the supreme court hangs over any fading remnant of a notion that populist will could take control of the system from within, and so on.

In other words, I see it as this:

The US is, at best, “democracy for the rich” and the donor contributions you can find on how much billionaires spend on elections helps show that.

It might be called "fair" as a contest between rich people if you are wealthy and can lobby sufficiently to sway the outcomes, so that if one party is failing to do what you want, the other might. But since neither represents working class issues well, much less issues of marginalized groups, and there is nothing to hold either party accountable to those groups, the average person isn't really getting an experience of fairness.

A critical difference you see in a socialist state, like the DPRK (what some call "North Korea") is the existence of a vanguard party, who represents the working class and works to ensure not only that working class issues are truly represented in policy, but that the capitalist class cannot gain control of the political system. And they do this by force when it comes down to it because if they didn't, there would be nothing material stopping the capitalists from taking over.

In contrast, a system like the US ensures that the capitalist class is in control, by force, suppressing any attempt at a challenge to the capitalist class's hold. Some examples of this force in practice being COINTELPRO or the vilification of, and violence, toward the historical Black Panther Party.