As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens

Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by petre on Monday May 01, 2017 @12:29AM (#14235578)

Democratic elements does not equate to true democracy. There weren't enough safeguards. It took a motivated Austrian less than ten years to undo them and turn Germany into a totalitarian state.

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by nl on Monday May 01, 2017 @03:51AM (#14236164)

Ten years is actually a pretty long time for it to take a popular leader to destroy a functioning democracy.

There are numerous examples of democracies collapsing from what seemed a stable state much quicker than that.

The collapse of the French Fourth Republic in 1958 is a good example[1]. In that case it led to another democracy, but that is only because the army wanted de Gaulle, and de Gaulle was happy to be president in a parliamentary system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fourth_Republic#Algeria...

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by allendoerfer on Monday May 01, 2017 @02:40AM (#14235976)

> It took a motivated Austrian less than ten years to undo them and turn Germany into a totalitarian state.

I agree, that the Weimar republic was weak. Main problem was a missing election threshold, resulting in a divided, weak parliament. But some other minor things happened, too. For example several militaristic regimes packed on a small continent were competing to divide the world resulting in a world war, for which Germany was made solely accountable for and had to give up territory and pay huge reparations.

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