Is Life In North Korea Good?

Is Life In North Korea Really Not That Bad? -- Washington Post

North Korea is so insular that tales from defectors are some of the few glimpses the Western world gets. Books such as Blaine Harding’s “Escape from Camp 14” or Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” are filled with former North Koreans’ accounts of innocent people toiling away in gulags, scrounging around train stations for food and living in complete darkness thanks to nationwide energy shortages.

But Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in North Korea for years, says these and other widely read accounts of life in North Korea tell far from the whole story. In a recent opinion piece on GlobalPost, he makes the incredibly unusual argument that North Korea isn’t as destitute and oppressed as its escapees would have you believe.

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My Comment: Being one who has lived under communist regimes, I can say with great confidence that life for many is very good. I can also say with great confidence that life for many is horrible. Swiss businessman Felix Abt is probably living the same life in North Korea that I was living when I was in China in the mid-1980s .... I was with the political elite, and their life is good. When I ventured away from my "hosts", I saw a different portrait of China .... and a more realistic one. It appears to me that Felix Abt never really left the "safety" of his hosts.