- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has selected his daughter as his heir, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday.
Kim Ju Ae - who is believed to be 13 - has in recent months been pictured beside her father in high-profile events like a visit to Beijing in September, her first known trip abroad.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it took a “range of circumstances” into account including her increasingly prominent public presence at official events" in making this assessment.
Ok, now, can you conceive that the Kim family’s role is more representative than it is de-facto monarchical power? I’m not saying that the DPRK’s parliament is democratically elected, I’m questioning whether we can, with the information at our disposal in the west, affirm that the politics of the DPRK are controlled by one particular family and not by, say, the cadres of their communist party.
Firstly, to say that Kim family is merely ceremonial mean you have to proof that someone else is running the show, that hatched all the plans, that have the final say. We don’t have that information. What we have is he is the single most powerful person in North Korea, that rule and guide the country, that inherited the power from his father.
Of course, a king need a general and a treasurer, whether they are the one in control or not is not a known fact, and that will remained a mystery until someone close to them speak.
So yes, with the information the world have, we can safely say North Korea is run by a single family.
I don’t doubt this, but you could have said the same about Queen Elizabeth before she got in a box
This requires more evidence. What’s your evidence for this? What material reasons do you have to believe that the decisions come from Kim personally and not from the communist party?
I absolutely would not have described Queen Elizabeth as the most powerful person in our country at any time of her reign.
The Queen/King is quite literally above the law in the UK. So yes.
Influential? Yes. The current clown not so much.
What non-democratically-chosen capitalist owner would you have chosen then?
I’m going to invite you to go ahead and rephrase that in a way that is not completely nonsensical. Cuz I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to say there or what it had to do with anything I said.
I can also say the same for all prime minister and president in country without monarch and with constitutional monarch. That is exactly what a leader of the country are. What is exactly your point here?
Let me do one better: what is your evidence that say otherwise?
A society whose results don’t match those of a personal monarchic dictatorship. For example, Saudi Arabia, a widely known example of a monarchy with absolutist power, has 80% of the population composed of immigrants without rights who get stripped of their passports and get treated as slaves. There’s no public healthcare, no infrastructure for poor people (trains, public schools, people-centered urbanism…), etc.
In the DPRK, there’s widespread public transit infrastructure with trains and trams, public education for everyone, public healthcare, good workers’ rights relative to their level of development, people-centered urban planning, collectivized agriculture… You wouldn’t expect any of these things from an absolutist monarchy.
I would love to have source for your claim on north korea, because your claim on saudi arabia is all but nonsense, and is really easily dispelled with a little bit of internet search.
And across the history, some king are known to have build a lot of public infrastructure, while others don’t. That isn’t a sign of governance type, that is the sign of the competence of the leadership.
About Saudi Arabia:
Demographics in Saudi Arabia:
When 40%ish of the population is without basic human rights, idk what you’re claiming false about my arguments
You:
Also you:
Wanna try again?
Then you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Saudi_Arabia
Then you also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Saudi_Arabia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Mashaaer_Al_Mugaddassah_Metro_line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riyadh_Metro
There are several other line being planned.
The 80% figure I mistook for the one of Qatar originally, which has a similar system but 88% of their population are immigrants without rights.
Every service you pointed out leaves immigrants without access, 40% of Saudi population not having access to healthcare is exactly my point. Wikipedia explicitly says this healthcare is for citizens, and when 40% are non citizens, it’s a de-facto apartheid state with half the population being immensely exploited
Why are you running defense for authoritarian monarchies in the Middle East?
I thought it was 80% migrants? Also, except for the bit about permission to leave country (crazy, imo) that sounds like a normal work permit in many conventionally democratic countries, where employer also uses it’s power over migrant workers. It might be worse in practice, of course, that depends on courts
Sorry, mistook it originally for the Qatar figure, which has a similar system and 88% migrant population.
When immigrant workers aren’t given access to basic rights like healthcare, it’s an apartheid state. You could read about it instead of speculating about the extreme levels of exploitation of those poor people.
Yes, we can definitively prove that the NK political theater is run by the Kim family. Watch any video of their “congress” meeting, and it’s just a group of NPCs clapping mindlessly to everything Kim Jong il says.
“Political power comes from televised claps”
-No serious political analysis ever
Being intentionally obtuse doesn’t make you look smarter.
Your entire knowledge of the DPRK comes from western propaganda, I’m not the obtuse one here.
Ah yes, South Korean interviews of North Koreans that have managed to flee the country- classic western propaganda. Fellate yourself less, maybe?
Unironically yes. Russia literally does this with the right wing US émigrées that move to Russia because gay rights are shit there and “they have no woke”, these people literally get paid to do such propaganda.
You talkies are a different brand of stupid, aintcha?
South Korean media reports of North Korean defectors are notoriously not trustworthy. North Korean defectors suffer from a lot of stigma if they go to the South and usually struggle to find a job. Tabloids pay them for their stories. Obviously, the taller the tale, the more likely they get a paycheck.
The fact that NK is so closed off means it’s hard to disprove a lot of the claims, but we can still know that they’re false when they’re contradictory. For example, some NK defectors have claimed having KJU’s haircut is illegal, others claim it’s the only haircut men are allowed to wear. Some claim that abortion is totally banned, others claim that the state forces women to get abortions.
Probably the epitome of this phenomenon is Yeonmi Park. Are you really gonna die on the hill that NK defectors like her are trustworthy sources?
If not uncritically swallowing Radio Free Asia propaganda makes me stupid, I guess I am. Go on believing your fairytales of forbidden/mandatory haircuts, multigenerational prisons and belief in unicorns
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