I mean it's this spot on earth where the nightmare reality of total authoritarianism lives today. We can look at it from without, to whatever extent possible, and remind ourselves that every generation earns the freedom that it has. Having something concrete like North Korea is much more powerful than a book like Nineteen Eighty-Four, a work of literature about some hypothetical place.

What's interesting about total authoritarianism is that it never stems from one person but actually depends on a whole large group of people to perpetuate the social order that makes it possible. Authoritarianism is as much a collective phenomenon as the maintaining of free elections in free countries. Once organized in a certain way, people seem to maintain that inertia of organization no matter who or what is served by that mode, interrupted in their organizational mode by revolutions that shift societies from track to track.

Strong disagree. North Korea is a disastrous country run by a truly evil government. However, it does not perform the role you suggest. We merely look on it from the outside in, with all of our small and little prejudices, and selectively picked historical knowledge. From such a vantage point, authoritarian always seems wrong. From the outside, it's trivial to understand and trivial to criticize. From within, from a perspective where authoritarianism has hijacked our own cultural values, our own patriotism, our own media, our cultural history, and historical stories, where the truth is always disputed and considered unpleasant to discuss in social gatherings, where friends and families really believe in it, criticism becomes far more difficult. What we need is both fictional and nonfiction insight into what it's like to experience authoritarianism firsthand, not picture-book,elementary school level accounts of how evil North Korea is. I recommend Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism, Orwell's Politics and the English Language, and the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco as starting examples.

My grandfather was head of the main construction "trust" in Kiev and a member of the communist party. Thus he was head of all construction in the city. He was part and parcel of the system that all together constituted what really was rightfully called the Evil Empire. A true prison. Was he evil? No. For him it was his job. He had a passion for construction and building. But he did nothing to subvert the Soviet way of life, derived benefit from it, and most likely thought it was correct. Multiply that by millions and you get your average society, whether individuals are contributing to a Soviet Socialist State or a Western Society. You can't just run a country by fear. Many people must be on board, from the oligarchy to the top level beaurocrats to the mid level apparatchiks to the common man. Society is ruled by broad social currents. Mao didn't personally kill 65 million people. He and many other people set up an environment that manipulated common human features—cult worship, paranoia, herd mentality—and steered them in an evil direction. But the mob, the herd mentality was the grand perpetrator. And you'll find that common to all groups everywhere. That's why the Federalist Papers are so beautiful. Any group can slip from a civil society to a nightmare wreck.

PS Thank you from the recommendations. I've tried some of those and couldn't get in to them. Will try again maybe it's the right time.

PSS > However, it does not perform the role you suggest.

I think that depends on who's looking, and at what. The OP is what really got me. Can't imagine having an app called "Trace Viewer" on my phone. Really brought me in to that day to day. And maybe my perspective on NK is different because I was born in the Soviet Union, and despite leaving at age 5, that has been the backdrop to my entire life.

That's very interesting- Thanks for the response.

Thanks for your responses. I'm not often moved to make long comments but this "tablet computer" and the apparatus that was necessary to create it really hit me hard for some reason. So real.