RES: a trip to North Korea

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Sun Apr 23 07:09:48 PDT 2000



>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>> >> No, I'd criticize North Korea more freely, *if* I were a North
>> >> Korean, but I'm *not*.
>
>Dennis:
>> >I'll believe that the precise moment you can find me a North
>> >Korean who openly criticized their own government and lived
>> >to tell about it.
>> >
>> >As a general principle, First World radicals shouldn't nail their
>> >flags to the masts of Third World one-party states of whatever political
>> >provenance. That's not our job.
>
>Brad De Long:
>> Plus it causes most everybody else you talk to to conclude that you
>> are a monster raving loon...
>
>Isn't there an epistemological problem here? How do we know
>things about North Korea?

We know relatively little because the North Korean government tries hard to make sure that we know little.

Thus North Korea falls into the class of Communist-ruled regimes desperate to keep what is going on secret. The other members of this class are Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia...

Brad DeLong



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