> >Isn't there an epistemological problem here? How do we know
> >things about North Korea?
Brad De Long:
> 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...
Yes, of course. But the epistemological problem remains. In fact, it remains for all of these event systems, and many others, like (for example) Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan, Haiti. We know bad things are happening or are supposed to be happening, but even the larger details remain rather obscure, the smaller completely out of sight. On top of that, anyone who checks on the normal performance of the mainstream media (including books) knows that what's reported ranges from half wrong to all wrong. At least, this has been my personal experience in every single case where I have had or acquired direct knowledge of an event reported in such as the _New_ _York_Times_. Liberals are fond of condemning those who sequester or distort information, but they're quite willing to engage in the practices themselves. In deference to Doug, though, I'll attribute this to ignorance, stupidity and parochialism rather than malevolence.
In any case, it appears that North Korea is a sort of fantasy. Maybe it should always be written with quotation marks, pomo-style: "North Korea". The first step in dealing with "North Korea" would seem to be somehow penetrating this mystery, not arguing about its external features. And we know bourgeois institutions are not going to do this for us, because knowledge is power and power is not going to be given away by the powerful. It's not an easy problem to solve.