this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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From the very early period of the USSR, wealth inequality was dramatically lowered despite high rates of economic growth. Further, essentials like healthcare, education, and childcare were free, and housing inexpensive.
As for the DPRK, income inequality is not really known. We do know about a relatively large urban/rural divide, but overall inequality stats are unknown. We do know that essentials like housing, healthcare, etc are free, though obviously there's practically no access to Western luxuries. What would be best for the North Korean people is to lift the sanctions and embargoes on them.
They all send their kids to school in Switzerland.
Sure, we still don't know hard stats or metrics. We know inequality does exist, what we don't know is to what degree or how the people are actually faring. It's a hermit country with little reporting going in nor out, and a developed defector industry that regularly pays for increasingly outlandish stories (see Yeonmi Park's career as a grifter), further calling into question the accuracy of defector testemonials, which are our primary source of information.
If we lifted the sanctions and embargo, which clearly are not damaging the legitimacy of the DPRK's government and only hurting the people, we could get a better view of what actually goes on there and how we can best help the people of Northern Korea.
I’m sure they hide information because they don’t want to share the secrets of their utopia with the outside world.
Suspicions aren't a substitute for data, though, which is why there's such a huge industry in the media surrounding making things up about the DPRK for clickbait. We know they are doing better than in the 90s, during the Arduous March, caused primarily by the dissolution of their largest trading partner, the USSR, but we also know they aren't doing great either.
That's why lifting sanctions and normalizing relations would be the best for the people in Northern Korea. If they didn't fall in the 90s, they likely aren't going to, period, except by millitary means, which would amount to the same genocide the US inflicted upon them in the 50s in all likelihood.