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“They literally are, and plenty of studies have been done on the subject. Everybody with even a shred of intellectual honesty knows that sanctions are a modern form of siege warfare designed to starve the population.”

Sanctions are not a siege: They target trade and finance. While they hurt the general population (that’s often the point), they are not the primary cause of famine when food distribution and production are controlled by the government.

The Primary Cause: The DPRK famine was caused by the failure of centralized agricultural planning (Juche), the loss of Soviet aid (fuel/fertilizer), and the leadership’s choice to prioritize the military (Songun) over feeding its citizens. This is the consensus among virtually all UN, NGO, and academic reports. It’s a failure of distribution and system design, not just external pressure.

“Wave a magic wand”: No, the leadership could have chosen to reform the collectivized farm system or redirect military resources (food, fuel, transport) to the starving regions. They did not. That is the definition of a deadly political choice, not a lack of magic wands.

“Buddy, any economist will tell you that GDP is not a measure of standard of living… Here, go educate yourself… https://hbr.org/2019/10/gdp-is-not-a-measure-of-human-well-being”

Yes, we agree that GDP is an incomplete measure of well-being (happiness, environment, etc.). But GDP is the most basic measure of a nation’s capacity to produce wealth.

Your argument requires us to believe that a country that produces 60 times less wealth than its neighbor (ROK vs. DPRK GDP) somehow provides a higher standard of living because of “guarantees.”

This is why we use Human Development Index (HDI), which you chose to ignore after raising the issue yourself. The HDI factors in life expectancy and education—and South Korea is top-tier, while North Korea is comparable to the poorest nations. A guarantee of poverty is still poverty.

“Ah yes, defectors are obviously a reliable source of information who have no ulterior motives. Your intelligence continues to shine bright.”

You’re rejecting:

34,000+ Defectors (the only non-state witnesses).

UN/WFP Reports (non-partisan global bodies).

Bank of Korea Estimates (standard economic methodology).

Meanwhile, your evidence for the DPRK’s supposed economic success is an article about South Korean food insecurity and unsubstantiated claims about guaranteed, high-quality welfare.

When you dismiss every source of information that contradicts the premise of a socialist utopia, you are not engaging in an honest debate; you are simply asserting an ideological fantasy. The evidence of systemic failure is overwhelming. Take care.

“Yeah, no possible way being cut off from trade could affect the food supply… Amazing how this basic detail escaped your genius mind.”

Nobody said sanctions have no effect—that’s a straw man. The point is that sanctions are not the primary cause of mass starvation. Sanctions reduce external trade, but when a regime prioritizes the military over its citizens and uses an ideologically rigid farming system (Juche) that fails regardless of external trade, that is mismanagement.

The Killer: The Soviet Union collapsed and cut off aid, which meant no more cheap fertilizers or fuel. That exposed the structural weakness of the North’s internal system. The leadership decided to let millions starve rather than reform or appeal for help until it was too late. That’s a political choice, not just a matter of “the US cut them off.”

“[Food was hoarded for the military and elite…] [citation needed]”

Sure, here’s the citation: Every major human rights report, account from defectors, and serious historical study of the famine points to the regime’s Songun (Military First) policy. Food was prioritized for the military and Pyongyang elite, leaving the provinces to starve. This is a consensus view among specialists.

“Except that north is no longer starving, while food insecurity is a real problem in the south…”

You’ve successfully compared apples to nuclear warheads. This is the ultimate false equivalence.

North Korea: Faces chronic, life-threatening food deficits every single year. The UN’s World Food Programme regularly reports on the urgent need for aid. “No longer starving” means they aren’t dying en masse like the 90s, but they are still malnourished and food insecure on a systemic level.

South Korea (Your link): Your linked paper discusses household food insecurity in a high-income country, meaning people worry about access to nutritious or preferred food due to cost. This is a poverty and inequality problem, a tragedy of capitalism. It is not comparable to the physical risk of starvation and widespread childhood stunting seen in the DPRK. Zero South Koreans have died of famine in the last 70 years.

“GDP is not a measure of quality of life as any economist would tell you. There are actual measures like PQL for that.” “Economic output has fuck all to do with the standard of living.”

You’re swinging hard against standard economics here.

GDP is the Base: GDP measures the total value of goods and services produced. A high GDP means a country has the resources to fund better healthcare, education, and infrastructure. High economic output is a prerequisite for a high standard of living. South Korea’s massive GDP allows it to fund its universal healthcare system (one of the world’s best) and its world-class infrastructure.

PQLI vs. HDI: You mentioned the PQLI (Physical Quality of Life Index). That index was mostly retired in the 1990s and replaced by the HDI (Human Development Index) because PQLI was too simplistic. As previously stated, South Korea ranks high on the modern HDI; North Korea ranks abysmally low. If GDP doesn’t matter, why is North Korea’s HDI so low?

“What the south doesn’t have is guarantees of access. You do not have a job guarantee and without a job you have nothing. That’s the elephant in the room that you artlessly danced around.” “People in DPRK have guaranteed housing, jobs, food, healthcare…”

This is the central ideological fantasy: A guarantee of low-quality, insufficient welfare is better than the risk of high-quality capitalism.

North Korean Guarantee: The “guarantee” of a job is often meaningless labor in the fields or factories for zero pay, contributing to a non-existent pension, with substandard “guaranteed” food. The guarantee is a guarantee of poverty and subservience.

South Korean Safety Net: The ROK has unemployment benefits, welfare programs, and universal health insurance. The South doesn’t guarantee you a job, but it does guarantee you access to essential services and the freedom to start your own business, organize, or pursue a better life, which is why people are flooding out of your guaranteed system.

You are confusing a piece of paper that says “guaranteed” with a functional system that actually provides a high standard of living.

“Sure little buddy. You keep on believing that.”

I’ll keep believing in the hard facts provided by the UN, the Bank of Korea, and 34,000 eyewitnesses who risked their lives to escape. You stick to the fantasy.

“So did you just miss all the material conditions for that famine you’re so concerned about… or are you just ignoring those parts…”

No one is ignoring the shock of the Soviet collapse or the fact that the Korean peninsula’s best farmland is in the South. But here’s where the logic fails:

The System is the Condition: External shocks (like the USSR collapsing) expose the fragility of a system. When that system is designed around the Juche farming philosophy—which prioritized ideology (self-sufficiency) over sound agronomy, misallocated resources to the military (Songun policy), and was reliant on Soviet chemical fertilizers—the ensuing catastrophe is internal mismanagement. A competent state adapts to external shocks; a failing state collapses internally.

The Blame Game: You’re arguing that because the terrain is bad and the Soviets left, the state is excused from letting millions starve. That’s a moral and political failure, not just a weather problem.

“So did you just miss all the material conditions for that famine you’re so concerned about… or are you just ignoring those parts…”

No one is ignoring the shock of the Soviet collapse or the fact that the Korean peninsula’s best farmland is in the South. But here’s where the logic fails:

The System is the Condition: External shocks (like the USSR collapsing) expose the fragility of a system. When that system is designed around the Juche farming philosophy—which prioritized ideology (self-sufficiency) over sound agronomy, misallocated resources to the military (Songun policy), and was reliant on Soviet chemical fertilizers—the ensuing catastrophe is internal mismanagement. A competent state adapts to external shocks; a failing state collapses internally.

The Blame Game: You’re arguing that because the terrain is bad and the Soviets left, the state is excused from letting millions starve. That’s a moral and political failure, not just a weather problem.

“their “authoritarian state” is so brutal as to be “worse than the disease” that has more and more resulted in south koreans having so little hope for the future that they’re ceasing to bring children into the world.”

You’re trying to draw a false equivalence between two completely different types of suffering:

South Korea’s Suffering: Financial, psychological, and existential stress driven by hyper-competition, inequality, and high cost of living. It leads to a demographic choice (not having kids).

North Korea’s Suffering: Physical risk, poverty, chronic hunger, and total political repression. It leads to desperate, life-risking flight (defection) or starvation.

You cannot logically argue that a society where people choose not to have children because of economic stress is fundamentally “less hopeful” than a society where people starve to death or risk execution to leave. The South needs serious social reform, but the North needs systemic human liberation.

“What part of the north having been dependent on the trade that the US cut them off from are you struggling with there? Most of the arable land land is in the south, and DPRK had to figure out how to produce food in the mountains. The fact that you call that mismanagement exposes that you’re a just a troll.”

This is a spectacular attempt to shift blame. No serious historian blames the US trade embargo for the famine’s death toll.

The Cause of Death: The Soviet collapse (their main sponsor) and catastrophic internal mismanagement (specifically, the centrally planned Juche farming system) were the real killers. Food was hoarded for the military and elite in Pyongyang while regional populations starved.

Arable Land is a Red Herring: Yes, the South has more fertile land, but the North’s system of collectivization and its reliance on chemical fertilizers (which stopped coming from the USSR) led to soil depletion and systemic failure. The regime’s insistence on self-sufficiency (Juche) over efficient trade is the definition of mismanagement, regardless of US sanctions.

“From the fact that people are actually having children in DPRK unlike in the south… Since the early 1990s, the birth rate has been fairly stable, with an average of 2 children per woman…”

This is cherry-picking the least bad statistic to deflect from a humanitarian disaster.

Fact Check: A birth rate of 2.0 is right on the cusp of replacement level, which is better than the ROK’s 0.72. You are right about that number.

The Crucial Context: A stable birth rate doesn’t mean a healthy population. North Korea faces chronic malnutrition, which leads to stunting and long-term health issues in its young population. The quality of life for those children is drastically lower than for those in the South. A starving population that maintains its birth rate is not an economic win; it’s a social tragedy.

“Trying to use GDP to measure the quality of the economy is sheer idiocy and no serious economist would suggest doing that. In fact, GDP was never meant to do that.”

This is a classic defensive move when your system has an objectively pathetic GDP.

GDP and GDP per Capita are the standard, baseline metrics for comparing economic output. While they don’t capture happiness or inequality perfectly (that’s what the Human Development Index, HDI, is for), they absolutely measure the size of the pie a country has to divide.

HDI Check: When you use the HDI (which accounts for life expectancy, education, and standard of living), South Korea ranks high (usually top 25). North Korea’s data is so poor and unreliable that it is often excluded, but estimates place it among the lowest in the world, comparable to Sub-Saharan Africa.

“People in DPRK have guaranteed housing, jobs, food, healthcare, and public transportation. None of these things are available to people in the south by default.”

This is outright false. The DPRK guarantees these things on paper, but the quality is nonexistent for the vast majority of the population:

Food: Food security is a yearly crisis. “Guaranteed food” often means a subsistence ration (if that).

Housing: Housing is often provided, but apartments frequently lack running water, reliable electricity, and proper sanitation.

Healthcare: Healthcare is theoretically free, but hospitals outside Pyongyang lack basic medicine, power, and equipment. This is why the DPRK has a life expectancy over 10 years lower than the ROK.

In the South, while not “guaranteed” like a socialist state promises, universal services are available and functional:

Healthcare: South Korea has a universal, mandatory health insurance system that is ranked among the best and most efficient in the world.

Public Transit: South Korea has world-class public transportation.

Housing/Jobs: While expensive and competitive, these sectors are functional and vastly superior in quality and choice.

“Meanwhile in the real world https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/asia/north-korea-defectors-return-intl-hnk-dst”

Citing one CNN article about a handful of defectors (who usually return because they struggled to adapt to the ROK’s hyper-competitive capitalist society and faced extreme loneliness) as evidence that the system works is the definition of statistical noise.

The Total Scoreboard: 34,000+ people have escaped North Korea for the South. Less than 30 have publicly documented returning.

The “L” (loss) is firmly on the side of using the DPRK as a socialist success story. You can critique the ROK’s challenges without rewriting history for the North.

Haha sure, OK I’ll bite:

“The DPRK successfully weathered the Arduous March in the 90s.”

This is arguably the most insane sentence in your post. Estimates range from 600,000 to 3 million deaths during that famine. A state that cannot feed its people to the point where 5-10% of the population starves to death has not “successfully weathered” anything; it has failed its most basic function. Framing mass starvation as “resilience” against US imperialism is incredibly disrespectful to the victims of that regime’s mismanagement.

“The North is seeing real growth and an optimistic mood… They are building a resilience that the South… completely lacks.”

Where is this data coming from?

South Korea GDP: ~$1.7 Trillion (13th in the world)

North Korea GDP: ~$25 Billion (roughly the size of Vermont’s economy)

Even with “growth” from selling artillery shells to Russia, the average North Korean lives on a fraction of the income of a South Korean. You talk about the “dirt spoon” class in the South—the poorest South Korean still has access to modern medicine, the internet, and a caloric intake that the average North Korean does not.

You are correctly identifying the symptoms of late-stage capitalism in the South (inequality, demographic collapse), but your proposed cure is worse than the disease. Pointing out that the South is a stressful “rat race” doesn’t change the fact that the North is an impoverished authoritarian state.

There is a reason 34,000 people have defected from North to South, and basically zero have gone the other way. People vote with their feet.

I’m not sure what the downvotes are for but I don’t think you proof read what you posted. Two of the paragraphs are almost identical.

I appreciate your responses and I did read some of the article you linked, though it was very dense!

It’s refreshing to see something constructive other than the usual topic derailment or personal attacks, so thank you.

I think your AI got stuck in a loop there.

I don’t think that’s true. He inherited the role from his father, as his father did before him. People who oppose him sometimes appear to die in mysterious ways, and he lives a very lavish lifestyle - not something you’d associate with Marxism.

Although his communist actions should be applauded, I don’t believe his heinous acts should be overlooked.

In my opinion, this dictatorship is not true Marxism.

I don’t think Kim Jong Un was elected.

Is North Korea democratic? Because it looks like a dictatorship.

Wasn’t Marx pro democracy?

Thank you.

So there are no bad things about China?

Exactly, glad we agree to not stand up for the US.

Great, thanks for picking all the best bits. Now do all the bad bits too, for both countries if you like, I have no bias.

Imagine standing up for either of these countries.

Read the article, Labour are reducing the number of middle managers put there by the Tories.