"What part of the north having been dependent on the trade that the US cut them off from are you struggling with there? Most of the arable land land is in the south, and DPRK had to figure out how to produce food in the mountains. The fact that you call that mismanagement exposes that you’re a just a troll."
This is a spectacular attempt to shift blame. No serious historian blames the US trade embargo for the famine's death toll.
The Cause of Death: The Soviet collapse (their main sponsor) and catastrophic internal mismanagement (specifically, the centrally planned Juche farming system) were the real killers. Food was hoarded for the military and elite in Pyongyang while regional populations starved.
Arable Land is a Red Herring: Yes, the South has more fertile land, but the North's system of collectivization and its reliance on chemical fertilizers (which stopped coming from the USSR) led to soil depletion and systemic failure. The regime's insistence on self-sufficiency (Juche) over efficient trade is the definition of mismanagement, regardless of US sanctions.
"From the fact that people are actually having children in DPRK unlike in the south... Since the early 1990s, the birth rate has been fairly stable, with an average of 2 children per woman..."
This is cherry-picking the least bad statistic to deflect from a humanitarian disaster.
Fact Check: A birth rate of 2.0 is right on the cusp of replacement level, which is better than the ROK's 0.72. You are right about that number.
The Crucial Context: A stable birth rate doesn't mean a healthy population. North Korea faces chronic malnutrition, which leads to stunting and long-term health issues in its young population. The quality of life for those children is drastically lower than for those in the South. A starving population that maintains its birth rate is not an economic win; it's a social tragedy.
"Trying to use GDP to measure the quality of the economy is sheer idiocy and no serious economist would suggest doing that. In fact, GDP was never meant to do that."
This is a classic defensive move when your system has an objectively pathetic GDP.
GDP and GDP per Capita are the standard, baseline metrics for comparing economic output. While they don't capture happiness or inequality perfectly (that’s what the Human Development Index, HDI, is for), they absolutely measure the size of the pie a country has to divide.
HDI Check: When you use the HDI (which accounts for life expectancy, education, and standard of living), South Korea ranks high (usually top 25). North Korea's data is so poor and unreliable that it is often excluded, but estimates place it among the lowest in the world, comparable to Sub-Saharan Africa.
"People in DPRK have guaranteed housing, jobs, food, healthcare, and public transportation. None of these things are available to people in the south by default."
This is outright false. The DPRK guarantees these things on paper, but the quality is nonexistent for the vast majority of the population:
Food: Food security is a yearly crisis. "Guaranteed food" often means a subsistence ration (if that).
Housing: Housing is often provided, but apartments frequently lack running water, reliable electricity, and proper sanitation.
Healthcare: Healthcare is theoretically free, but hospitals outside Pyongyang lack basic medicine, power, and equipment. This is why the DPRK has a life expectancy over 10 years lower than the ROK.
In the South, while not "guaranteed" like a socialist state promises, universal services are available and functional:
Healthcare: South Korea has a universal, mandatory health insurance system that is ranked among the best and most efficient in the world.
Public Transit: South Korea has world-class public transportation.
Housing/Jobs: While expensive and competitive, these sectors are functional and vastly superior in quality and choice.
"Meanwhile in the real world https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/asia/north-korea-defectors-return-intl-hnk-dst"
Citing one CNN article about a handful of defectors (who usually return because they struggled to adapt to the ROK's hyper-competitive capitalist society and faced extreme loneliness) as evidence that the system works is the definition of statistical noise.
The Total Scoreboard: 34,000+ people have escaped North Korea for the South. Less than 30 have publicly documented returning.
The "L" (loss) is firmly on the side of using the DPRK as a socialist success story. You can critique the ROK's challenges without rewriting history for the North.
"So did you just miss all the material conditions for that famine you’re so concerned about... or are you just ignoring those parts..."
No one is ignoring the shock of the Soviet collapse or the fact that the Korean peninsula's best farmland is in the South. But here's where the logic fails:
The System is the Condition: External shocks (like the USSR collapsing) expose the fragility of a system. When that system is designed around the Juche farming philosophy—which prioritized ideology (self-sufficiency) over sound agronomy, misallocated resources to the military (Songun policy), and was reliant on Soviet chemical fertilizers—the ensuing catastrophe is internal mismanagement. A competent state adapts to external shocks; a failing state collapses internally.
The Blame Game: You're arguing that because the terrain is bad and the Soviets left, the state is excused from letting millions starve. That's a moral and political failure, not just a weather problem.
"So did you just miss all the material conditions for that famine you’re so concerned about... or are you just ignoring those parts..."
No one is ignoring the shock of the Soviet collapse or the fact that the Korean peninsula's best farmland is in the South. But here's where the logic fails:
The System is the Condition: External shocks (like the USSR collapsing) expose the fragility of a system. When that system is designed around the Juche farming philosophy—which prioritized ideology (self-sufficiency) over sound agronomy, misallocated resources to the military (Songun policy), and was reliant on Soviet chemical fertilizers—the ensuing catastrophe is internal mismanagement. A competent state adapts to external shocks; a failing state collapses internally.
The Blame Game: You're arguing that because the terrain is bad and the Soviets left, the state is excused from letting millions starve. That's a moral and political failure, not just a weather problem.
"their “authoritarian state” is so brutal as to be “worse than the disease” that has more and more resulted in south koreans having so little hope for the future that they’re ceasing to bring children into the world."
You're trying to draw a false equivalence between two completely different types of suffering:
South Korea's Suffering: Financial, psychological, and existential stress driven by hyper-competition, inequality, and high cost of living. It leads to a demographic choice (not having kids).
North Korea's Suffering: Physical risk, poverty, chronic hunger, and total political repression. It leads to desperate, life-risking flight (defection) or starvation.
You cannot logically argue that a society where people choose not to have children because of economic stress is fundamentally "less hopeful" than a society where people starve to death or risk execution to leave. The South needs serious social reform, but the North needs systemic human liberation.