The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of his high school teachers

Re:The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of hi... by tikhonj on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @06:12AM (#3372999)

I think saying that they need communism--or even that they would be worse off without it--is a little much. While the state provides everything, that's just a relative measure: in an absolute sense, it does not provide very much at all. I think that they would be better off without communism even in view of the inevitable difficulties transitioning.

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Re:The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of hi... by RyanMcGreal on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @07:18AM (#3373135)

Russian life expectancy plummeted in the decade after the fall of communism. Don't downplay the extreme difficulty of transitioning from a command economy to a functioning liberal market economy.

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Re:The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of hi... by dinkumthinkum on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @12:16PM (#3374205)

Russia and North Korea are completely different. I don't think North Korean life expectancy has very far to plummet.

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Re:The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of hi... by tikhonj on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @07:20PM (#3375819)

Thank you, that's exactly my point: since the government isn't doing much anyhow, going over to a different system is almost definitely going to be an improvement.

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Re:The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of hi... by dalke on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @06:50AM (#3373070)

The North Korean constitution (2009) "officially rejects North Korea's founding ideology of communism." (Quote from Wikipedia, and I've heard it elsewhere.)

It's better to say it's an absolute dictatorship, or absolute monarchy (with the Divine Right of Kings thrown in for good measure).

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