Maybe the situation has been improving there. I wouldn't be quick to call anybody unbiased. Andrei Lankov attended university in Pyongyang as an exchange student in 1985. He grew up and studied in Soviet Era Russia. His upbringing does not make him unbiased, it just gives him a different bias than an analyst from a Western nation. Nobody outside the country can actually have a clear, unbiased view of the place - most people aren't allowed to go around and just look. You can't go around interviewing random citizens. You get to talk either to the government or to people who ran away from it.
But here's the thing: If people were having an okay time in North Korea, they wouldn't defect in such large numbers. We know that a black market industry has formed specifically around getting North Korean defectors safely through China (which deports them directly back to NK, unlike several other countries which deport them back to SK). We know that enough North Koreans have successfully made the trip that the South Korean government continues to lessen aid to these people, and tighten admission requirements. We also know that Kim Jong-un has cracked down on defect attempts since taking power, and we have colloquial reports from the defectors that the North Korean government punishes the families of people they learn have successfully defected.
We are also aware that the citizenry of North Korea is divided into a class system known as Songbun, which may or may not be affecting who does and does not receive adequate amounts of food. It is the word of North Korean defectors against their government's. Though the Kaesong Industrial Complex managers were providing their workers with moon pies in lieu of cash bonuses (which would have been illegal). The moon pies are expected to have been sold privately by those who received them.
We also know that North Korea suffered an extreme peak in famine during the late nineties, which means the standard of living hasn't had anywhere to go except up. But since North Korea relies on foreign aid to feed its populace, we can only imagine a reversal, not an improvement, in the wake of their recent rhetoric.
I think that diminishing the level of poverty North Koreans are living in by claiming it is feel-good propaganda to validate a war is, in itself, feel-good propaganda. It's fun to poke at the USA's imperialistic tendencies, but it's not something that applies here, especially since the US is in no condition to actually go to war with that nation (they failed a war game based on a hypothetical North Korean conflict during the crisis), and they have made absolutely no indication that they plan to assault it. Even their government's opposition wants them to go to war with somebody else.
Let's not pretend that the North Korean people are happy, or that attempts to say otherwise are validification of armed conflict.
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Topic: Additional CIA japes [DPRK Thread] (Read 515007 times)