Hey YouTube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top 10 Archive!
Today, we’re opening the vault of the Hermit Nation, also known as North Korea.
Apart from having its own time zone, it’s also withholding lots of secrets from the
world.
Luckily, reporters and survivors have uncovered many of these scary facts for us to see.
Here are the Top 10 Scary Facts About Living In North Korea!
10.
Prison Camps Since North Korea’s society is built on
the premise that you must behave or suffer the consequences, said consequences must live
up to the hype — and they really do.
If you’re caught misbehaving, you can get sent to a prison camp.
The worst crimes aren’t those like murder, but rather political crimes.
If someone commits a political crime, their whole family could be sent to the prison camp
with them.
This means even close relatives and acquaintances are always policing each other to ensure that
everyone stays in line.
So, why is everyone so scared of being sent there?
Mortality rates are through the roof with prisoners often dying of starvation, illness,
work exhaustion, and torture.
Former prisoners have come forward with their stories time and time again - though the government
denies all claims, saying it’s against their criminal procedure law.
But the testimonies of those imprisoned there speak for themselves, including stories of
hunger so dire that children were seen fighting over corn they found in cow dung.
9.
The Family Curse Probably not the "curse" you are thinking
of, but in North Korea they have a "family curse", which is a 3-generation punishment
rule that mandates if one person commits a crime, parents, grandparents, and children
are all sent to prison with them.
In this way, getting accused is as much a curse as anything I’ve read in storybooks.
In prisons like Kaechon, most prisoners are there for life, performing activities like
mining, textiles, farming, and raising cattle.
Prisoners suffer so much hunger they often eat rodents, frogs, and snakes found on the
premises.
8.
Closed Media While US media is abundant and varied, North
Korean TV has only three channels, all government-sponsored and created.
As far as online access, only well-off North Koreans can afford a computer with internet
access, and those people can only use 28 websites — for which you also need government permission.
North Koreans have such a small world of media, they only know what their government decides
to tell them about the outside world.
7.
Rigged Elections Instead of just keeping the people under one
rule without citizen participation, they hold elections with only one candidate.
Every election season, North Koreans are given a ballot with one sole candidate.
In the presidential elections, the candidate is from the same family that has ruled since
the 1940s.
Electing mayors, governors or local assemblies is no different, they only have one choice.
Technically, they can vote against them, but the ballot is placed separately and their
identity noted, so using your vote could be the reason you’re tried for treason.
6.
Deadly Border The border between North and South Korea is
one of the most deadly and militarized in the world, with about 1.2 million military
personnel from North Korea and 680,000 South Korean troops who stand with about 28,000
US soldiers.
North Koreans are also reservists in the worker/peasant guard and are forced to be ready to be called
to action until age 60.
In a way, to be North Korean is to have some connection to the military.
5.
Drug Abuse While everything else is highly regulated,
it appears that drug use isn’t.
They grow so much marijuana that they smuggle it to China for sale.
Around 30% of North Koreans use drugs, varying from weed to highly-potent meth, which they
use to suppress their appetite and work longer hours.
It’s so common that people use it as openly as Americans smoke cigarettes.
It’s even said that they’re largely unaware of the effects of the drugs and they consider
it an energy boost like a Red Bull.
This comes largely as a result of the internal meth production, which started in the 1990s
for export, and became government-sponsored and distributed locally in the 2000’s.
This all comes from reporting by Radio Free Asia, but the government denies all claims
that its citizens use or produce drugs.
4.
They Lack Sufficient Electricity The power supply in the country is so limited
that North Koreans have an official lights-out every night, after which the entire country
goes dark.
Their electricity generation and transmission equipment dates back several decades and hasn’t
been updated.
Their nuclear program doesn’t generate electricity and is used only for weapons.
Despite the shortage, they still export electricity to China, and earn money for their economy.
Unfortunately, the North Korean people still live with rolling blackouts.
This was previously unknown until a photo of the region was taken from space and showed
up entirely dark on the map.
If this were a dystopian novel, I’d say nights are the perfect time to run away from
the country that’s oppressing you.
3.
Informants Are Everywhere Similar to many dictatorships, North Korea
uses a system of informants to report intel on fellow citizens that have either committed
a crime or are suspected of one.
"Crime", meaning any behavior not approved of by the government.
This could even include unauthorized access to media from outside the country or not approved
by it.
Telephones are also wiretapped and microphones are placed outdoors to hear private conversations.
For any North Korean nationals stationed abroad, internet access is monitored remotely.
2.
Public Executions As if their other human rights violations
weren’t enough, they also go as far as to publicly execute their own citizens.
In 2015, Defense Chief Hyon Yong-Chol was killed with an anti-aircraft gun in front
of the public.
Crimes can be anything from embezzlement, murder, theft, rape, and vandalism, just to
name a few.
People have even been executed for trying to escape to China.
It's not just citizens, either.
Since Kim Jong-un came to power in 2011, more than 10 high-ranking officials have either
been executed or purged under his command.
1.
Famine In the 1990s, as many as 3.5 million people,
of a population of about 22 million, died of famine.
Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports
to decline rapidly.
A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis.
The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively
curtail the disaster.
Asia Press even reported that in a recent famine strike, some people resorted to eating
each other to survive.
Thanks for watching!
Probably the people of North Korea as a whole are a great people with a rich history prior
to the type of government control that has been exercised over the last decades.
What are some positive things you may know about the people of North Korea.
Let us know in the comments.
We won’t (actually can’t) force you to do it, but we’d be grateful if you’d become
a member of the Top10Archive nation by subscribing, clicking the bell, and giving this video a
like.