Peace pups: North Korea gives two dogs to South Korea - Polidicks

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/30/asia/north-korea-moon-kim-dogs-intl/index.html Named Songgang and Gomi, the dogs were transferred via the truce village at Panmunjom on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the Koreas on September 27, along with three kilos (6.6 lb) of food to help them adapt to their new home.

Are they nuclearised versions of these? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nvfQw8UCDE

When they bark they're actually saying "Marx, Marx!"

along with three kilos (6.6 lb) of food Even dogs get more food than North Koreans.

I think it's really nice tbh Peace in Korea could be a highlight of this decade.

I remain sceptical, but it certainly seems much more promising than previous efforts of the last two decades, and I have read that Jong-Un is less insane than his forefathers.

They're darn cute! <3

It will take a couple years to remove my scepticism.

Korea has largely had peace for 60 years, with a few incidents flaring up every couple years. What I'd like to see is FREEDOM in North Korea. Human rights have 100% taken a backseat to the nuclear security of Japan and South Korea; nobody has been holding Kim Jong-Un accountable for crimes against humanity because of a bit of handshaking and good will, and nobody has EVER held China accountable for their treatment of North Koreans either.

Kim and China should be held to account but is it realistic? (especially with china) Maybe I'm too optimistic but think change will come from the people of Korea itself. North will see the southern lifestyle and demand it themselves, already North Korea has a growing middle class of consumers. The people will demand those improvements and North Korea will have to supply them; and will be able to supply them because hopefully they can begin trading with other countries. If more people cross the border so will tastes, technology, skills, culture. It might take a while but it beats marching in there with guns or further isolating them with sanctions. Hopefully NK will be able to spend less resources on military and will begin investing in infrastructure, possibly (hopefully) with joint projects between north and south. Also I'm not sure about Kim's role in the leadership, he does what he does with support of other people in government, you wanna hold him to account because of principle then to be consistant you gotta hold them to account to. Then you're looking at an entire government change.

I quite like the attitude of NK lately I hope its not been all for nothing

Orion and Mister Miracle?

Kim is absolutely at the head of it all; North Korea is a monarchy (albeit with political factions), with Kim in charge. There are factions within the government which are pro-Chinese and could lead to a gradual internal Perestroika/Glasnost, but Kim Jong-Un purged much of this faction since taking over. And yes, I'm looking for an entire government change. Communism needs to be eradicated from North Korea (and the world at large)

NK hasn't pretended to be communist for two decades, and even if it did it's a pretty poor form of communism if it has an aristocracy, a middle class and, like you say, a monarch. I don't know about the structure of the government there but I remember the purges a few years ago. I understand why you want entire government change, they're awful and nobody deserves the injustice which has been done to the North Korean people (same could be said about china) but how dya go about that? The government isn't just gonna pack up and leave, trying to intervene diplomatically will just result in a continuation of the status quo with artillery aimed at Seoul and military intervention would be... not good. If a thing is impossible then there's not point in mucking up the next best thing just on principle, that gets you nowhere.

I'm not a foreign policy expert, but I'm sure there are ways to hold NK accountable in some way. I just wish that there was ANYONE AT ALL advocating for the North Korean people. As it is, each party is advocating for their own country's security, which I understand, but North Korea has been the most repressive state in human history for about 60 years and the United States hasn't started to do anything about it until the very end of the Obama administration through some sanctions which are currently being peeled back. Literally nobody has EVER done anything about the human rights situation in North Korea except the catholic church and an underground railroad of Chinese missionaries.

''Communism needs to be eradicated from north korea(and the world at large)'' What an ignorant comment, what disregards what millions of people the world over believe in as an ideology, and one which fails to realize what the basic principles of communism is whatsoever. Class based command economies where a small minority of people have executive power over the population like what happened in the Soviet Union, North Korea, china and Vietnam was never communism in the first place, just because someone or something calls itself a certain thing does not make it so. By that logic the Nazi's were socialist. Why don't we eradicate capitalism? which world over continues to make the lives of the working class nothing more then a cog in a machine, to the benefit of a small minority of people, and is further degrading the working conditions, wages, and lives of the average working class person all in the name of profit. and what has caused the deaths of millions. Living in a former coal mining community i have seen what privatization and capitalism has done. It has caused massive drug problems, unemployment, poverty and desperation. The only possible work what is available is to work at the warehouses such as amazon which are glorified sweatshops, which treat you like dirt with poor wages and you are punished if you try to speak out. So i will continue to to believe in communism until the working class gets the treatment it rightly deserves. That is all i needed to say.

Communism has never worked and will never work. Additionally, I wouldn't want to live in a world where it DID work and the maximum extent you can achieve for yourself is "worker"

Well, dogs are food in North Korea.

As a backup for this point - while lenin was rising to power a number of communists criticised him for being authoritarian and calling him a state capitalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism As Ossinsky in particular argued, "one-man management" (rather than the democratic factory committees workers had established and Lenin abolished) and the other impositions of capitalist discipline would stifle the active participation of workers in the organisation of production. This tendency within the 1918 left communists emphasized that the problem with capitalist production was that it treated workers as objects. Its transcendence lay in the workers' conscious creativity and participation Many members of the Workers' Opposition and the Decists (both later banned) and two new underground left communist groups, Gavril Myasnikov's Workers' Group and the Workers' Truth group, developed the idea that Russia was becoming a state capitalist society governed by a new bureaucratic class In the USSR (and china) the means of production are not owned by the workers they're owned by the state. The soviet state (and PRC state) have very little worker representation. This reduces workers to a commodity the same as they are in an industrial capitalist society (as marx described). So the soviet state was not much different from (and arguable actually was) state capitalism. Communism would have worker councils controlling the means of production is that way so the workers are empowered. The soviet union absolutely did not have this. It was not communist in that sense. That worker councils system is also "bottom up" rather than "top down" organisation. Also marx described the state withering away because it's no longer needed, forming a stateless society - the soviet state authoritarian, all comprising and with absolute power - was certainly nothing like marx outlined. Not communist in that sense. Then one gets into a semantic arguement "if they called themselves communists and we called them communists then they must be communist!" but one could say the same about democracy - countries with "democratic" in the name being utterly undemocratic. One of the issues is marx never outlined what it was exactly, only how to get there (capitalism collapsing turning a centralised system run by exploitative bosses to being run by workers) I think people associate communism with the shit that happened in the USSR and China because it's an easy/lazy argument against an ideology they don't understand. Those criticisms above were made by communists at the time, seeing their ideology being hiijacked by an authoritarian (lenin). I don't advocate for communism but I am marxist in the sense that I believe someday in the far future it will be possible to have a decentralised society where workers are self governing and people work because they want to, with machines doing the stuff we dont want to. But that won't happen in my lifetime so I'm more a social democrat, help people where possible and redistribute wealth via taxes and public spending, I don't think people should try to force something thats no currently possible, it's self defeating.

You obviously have little knowledge of communism actually is, you go back to the same old bullshit argument by referring to failed states which were only communism by name. It hasn't actually ever existed in it's true form. Communism is a stateless and classless society, no nation can suddenly become ''communist'', in an hypothetical communist society people would not be restricted by class society and would be more free to achieve what they want personally, be it artistically, expanding the mind or other pursuits, you wouldn't be allowed to exploit others but if you want to do that you are a bit of a cunt anyway. Capitalism only really works for a small minority of people, for everyone else it is the daily grind of slaving away in a factory or warehouse, some people do become better off, but the mass majority spend there lives working in a job they hate for pittance. Go and tell the unemployed, the homeless, the drug addicted that capitalism works.

No, I used to be super into all that communism stuff and used to argue the exact same shit here on Facepunch. Then I turned 18

And other countries. In the UK and US "the workers" live a fairly nice lifestyle because we "export poverty" via outsourcing to other countries like using Chinese slave labour. This creates a "labour aristocracy". It makes it very easy for our workers to endorse capitalism because were the ones benefitting most from it. (or at least more than the workers in other countries) On that note though I think Marxism has become less relevant today, it's no longer bourgeoisie vs proletariat. We have middle class, service economy etc. As a web developer I'm not alienated from my work and there is a drive (in the US and UK) to increase worker empowerment, I'm empowered to question managers judgement, to speak up, to have a say in where things are going etc. It's not the same in every job (and every country) but times are better now than in Marx's day and the world has developed differently from what he theorised. I think the solution isn't about some monolithic ideology but taking the best from different ideologies, and that involves learning lessons and not, as proboardslol did, dismissing an entire ideology without knowing a thing about it.

I am quite a bit older then 18 and i still believe in communism, mainly from an experience of working many traditionally blue collar working class jobs over the years and from the experience of the society i live in. I am not the stereotypical 18 year old communist student. And of course the living standards of the average working class person is better then in the east etc but it is still not a nice way to live, any honest person would tell you this.

So make things better for the working class without completely throwing out the system

Everyone wishes it was that easy, but the working class had to fight tooth and nail to get even basic rights, ones which have been eroded in this country for the past 30 years, and continue to be eroded. Capitalism is a global system which is in my opinion, beyond the control of any ''democratic'' institution. you can get compromises, but the ultimate foundation of capitalism is exploitation, and will always be exploitation.

Some people argue that agricultural society (not the agriculture part but the part that sees some toiling fields to feed others like priestesses, kings, scribes) itself is about exploitation. We can't easily get rid of exploitation (if at all) but we can make the world better in the mean time. We can't give up hope and frankly if we can't pass stuff like worker board representation to improve the current system then there is no way to make the kind of changes required to get rid of exploitation in absolute. A nicer capitalist system might not be the ultimate goal but its a preferable step along the way and might be an ends in itself - if we "accidentally" make a capitalist system fair to workers, that people are happy and healthy then we've done a good job. There's not perfect system, best we can do is build on what we have and keep tweaking

https://youtu.be/7eQwAilMWtE?t=10s

Again, what fucking timeline are we in and is it the right one?