How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

Re:How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner by starik36 on Thursday July 11, 2024 @04:36PM (#40940400)

Oddly enough, Soviet Union had a thing similar to "Kimchi Harvest". I remember workers in my town having to go work at a collective farm for a week harvesting things.

They also had something called "subotnik", aka voluntary Saturday labor. This was a practice where citizens, including workers and students, participated in unpaid labor on Saturdays. These activities included various tasks like cleaning up the city (that's what I remember doing as a kid). There was nothing "voluntary" about it.

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Re:How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner by ZhongXina on Thursday July 11, 2024 @04:46PM (#40940480)

It was still the norm in Uzbekistan until just a few years ago, but with cotton instead of potatoes. Not anymore AFAIK.

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Re:How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner by gwbas1c on Friday July 12, 2024 @02:30PM (#40948168)

I really appreciate anecdotes like that. As I've gotten older, I've wanted to understand a lot of the details about what makes life in Communist countries ... frustrating.

IE, in school we only had a superficial explanation of what communism is; it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I understood the whole "cult of personality" thing.

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