So…I did learn about them. I learned pretty much everything I could. Watched documentaries from many sources, interviews with escaped citizens, documents/images describing conditions and infrastructure, etc. Very little information comes out of the country, but I consumed everything I could find.

My conclusion? North Korea’s government really is pretty cartoonishly evil. I’ve followed the stories of many governments, and they seem to be just about the worst.

So…why and how are you so convinced they’re not? Have you actually seen any evidence, even circumstantial? If you have, I’d love to see it. If North Korea was really actually fine and the west is just lying about it, that would be fascinating.

I would argue the people in every case you just listed were far more aware of the reward of revolt, which is half the equation. All of those dictatorships had existed for less than 15 years before another revolution or similar event had taken place. The people remembered a better life.

North Korea has some of the most effective information control seen this century, and their government has held uninterrupted power spanning 50 years. They are arguably the single most extreme case in modern history of a population that is ill-equipped to revolt.

The people who live in DPRK are well-equipped to know what makes a happy and healthy life.

What a strangely intentional choice of words. I was talking about their awareness of how their government could/does treat them. You’ve changed the subject to their awareness of…happiness and health?

Part of living a happy life is not living in fear of your government. To deny that North Koreans live in fear of their government is to basically ignore all of the information we have from the people who lived there.

It seems like you assume there is a direct relationship between how brutal a dictatorship is and how often people revolt, but I don’t see why that would be the case.

An important factor in how people resist their government is the risk/reward of doing so. Do they understand that revolt can create change? Do they fear for their lives?

My understanding is that in North Korea, it is very likely that speaking out against the government will result in years or decades of jail time. Information there is also tightly controlled, so people do not believe such action would be productive anyway. I think a person would not want to revolt given those conditions, even if they are not happy with their government.

Simply put, they do not know things can be better, and they wouldn’t know how to make them better if they did.