Video: The Most Closed Country in the World. North Korea as it is
2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55
North Korea is the most closed country in the world and the most unpredictable. They live here according to the Juche calendar, where the year of birth of Kim Il Sung is taken as the starting point, so now this state is only a little over a hundred years old. North Korea has legalized acceptable hairstyles: 18 for women and 10 for men.
You cannot buy Coca-Cola, Choco Pie and blue jeans here, as these products are considered a symbol of imperialism. Let's take a look at what is hidden behind the facade of a country with an ever-smiling leader. Let's start with a story five years ago.
American student Otto Wombier visited this country in 2015, where he received 15 years in prison for stealing a propaganda poster.
At the suggestion of the "Brilliant Comrade", "Genius of geniuses" and simply the leader of the Labor Party of Korea, it is believed that the locals do not need money, since the state fully meets their needs. The monthly salary in the public sector for ordinary workers is 1,500-2,500 won. At the state exchange rate, it is 12-25 dollars. The peasants work on a completely different principle: they receive earnings in kind as a percentage of the harvest. Such a meager income does not even cover nutritional needs. According to the UN, about 70% of the population is chronically food insecure. The average North Korean's diet consists of rice, wheat and corn, and at best he gets a small piece of meat for the holiday, the main ones being the birthday of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. Under these conditions, most North Koreans are looking for additional income, but only in their free time from work. There is 100% employment in the country, for parasitism you can thunder into labor camps, so people work their whole life, including retired.
The retirement age is 60 for women, 65 for men. It is known that the pension in North Korea is approximately $ 30 for almost 85% of residents. The state "takes care" of pensioners and does not let them get bored: in villages, old people are assigned allotments of land for sowing and part of the harvest to the state, in cities they are assigned courtyard or public territories for voluntary-compulsory service.
In the country, with the official absence of private business, there are quite a few large private enterprises belonging to those close to the country's top leadership, which are formalized as state-owned. Here workers have a completely different income level - about $ 300 a month. These are mainly residents of Pyongyang and several large cities.
At first glance, it may seem that there can be no inequality in North Korea, but in reality the gap in living standards between the top and bottom is very high and continues to grow.. Premium goods are sold in stores for the elite, for the "top 1%", in the so-called "Singapore shops" - in "Puksae" or "Ryugyon". There are rich people who shop there, for whom it is not a problem to spend several hundred dollars on a Chanel handbag.
One of the signs of North Korean well-being is the opportunity to go to a plastic surgeon. Among the most popular operations is blepharoplasty. But changing the shape of the eyelids and giving the eyes a European look is not so easy. Plastic surgery in the DPRK is prohibited, so North Koreans are forced to go to clandestine surgical rooms.
Education is also a luxury: about 15% of all high school graduates go to institutions of higher education, mostly from privileged families. It is difficult to enroll in a North Korean university. As a result, the tutoring industry flourished. A course with a good tutor costs between $ 10 and $ 30 per month, so his income is quite high.
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