“From what I hear, which isn’t much, Iran financed it and North Korea supplied the bombs.” – Jericho

North Korea shows off it’s newly developed portable Internet device.  (All memes as-found)

Imagine living in a Korea where:

• a small group of corrupt elite wield godlike powers over the government and citizens,
• kids work in factories at the age of less than 10, or, toil in school for up to 18 hours a day to study for a chance to please that same elite who control the entire country,
• most non-elite live in drab, gray (or is it grey?) apartments with the main view of . . . other apartments,
• adults work long hours in a job that mainly serves to feed the elite,
• the fertility rate is 0.78, meaning life is so awful that parents don’t want to bring babies into it, meaning the population will be cut by more half each generation, and
• the kids listen to K-Pop.

Yeah.  South Korea.

You know, I know people love to call certain places hellholes while praising others as shiny beacons of progress, mainly due to one being capitalist and one being communist.

I get it.  I hate communism, too.

I had a horrible dream last night that Artificial Intelligence controlled our lives, and then, thankfully, the alarm on my Alexa® went off and woke me up and then Alexa® went through my to-do list.

But what if I told you that sometimes the “better” option of capitalism is just a prettier prison?

In South Korea, a tiny cabal of families runs the show like they’re the Sopranos, but with better electronics, worse haircuts, and no fear of the FBI.  These aren’t your average mafia dons; we’re talking about chaebols.  Chaebols are massive conglomerates that have tentacles that extend all the way through all parts of society, like the corporation you work for owning your fridge, car, and your grandma’s pacemaker.

Take the Lee family at Samsung®:  they’re not just peddling phones with spyware straight from the NSA, nope.  In South Korea, they have fingers in everything from shipbuilding to life insurance to health care to construction to hotels in about 80 different companies that comprise about 22% of the South Korean economy.

Hell, if you sneeze in this country, there’s probably a Samsung tissue waiting to catch it.  And when Daddy Lee gets nabbed for bribery and attempted bribery (again), does the empire crumble?

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

Is the guy who does security on Samsung™ phones the guardian of the galaxy?

Then there’s the Chung clan over at Hyundai®. These folks don’t just make cars.  Nope.  Hyundai builds cities, runs banks, and probably have a secret lab cloning K-Pop idols, Gangnam-style.

Power gets handed down generation to generation, and if there’s a whiff of scandal?  Poof, it vanishes faster than a North Korean dissident.

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

Those are just another boring Tuesday for these overlords.  They operate above the law, pulling strings in government like K-Y® covered puppet masters at a marionette orgy (I’m sorry I thought of that, but now you have to think of that, too).

I don’t know how to stop a killer sex bot, but I do know how to stop a hand puppet:  disarm it.

These huge conglomerates eternal, sucking up wealth while the average South Korean fights over scraps.  Capitalism is great at building stuff, sure, but when it goes full oligarch, it’s like giving all the Monopoly® money to the banker (drunk Aunt Betty) and listening to her tell everyone else to enjoy passing Go© without collecting $200 and then it’s the Thanksgiving from Hell and Uncle L.T. won’t stop talking about golf.

Excuse me.  Some past-life trauma.

I’m not against wealth concentration when it comes because people created actual wealth in society.  I think people should be rewarded for making the lives of others better.  But South Korea?  The top families make money because they control all the pathways of wealth creation and the government.

I’d bet they’re gonna make a move on religion, next.

Bold statement time: capitalism alone doesn’t equal freedom; and in South Korea it is just feudalism (which, I remind you, was also capitalism) with neon-colored LED lights.

And it gets worse.  What really inspired me to write this one was about the kids.  The South Korean economy is a beast that demands blood sacrifices, starting young.  Kids are out there hustling like they’re in a Dickens novel, but instead of cleaning chimneys, it’s cram schools that make American homework look like recess.

I’d make a joke but I want to be seen as mining my own business.

For the grown-ups, it’s worse: 60-80 hour weeks are the norm, turning humans into zombies shuffling through cubicles.  Monotonous?  Try soul-crushing, like being stuck in the Matrix but without the cool kung fu and hot chicks in skin-tight latex.  Adults are coding, welding, or staring at screens till their eyes cross, all for a paycheck that barely covers rent.  And that’s the lucky ones – the effective unemployment rate flirts on a regular basis with 25%.

And speaking of rent—everyone’s jammed into these towering commie-blocks, gray slabs of despair that make Brutalist architecture look inspiring.  Check it out on Google™ Maps© Streetview®.  It’s like The Sims® but with new Depression Mode enabled: tiny apartments where families stack like cordwood, dreaming of escape but too exhausted to move.

The place where it gets really grim is that they’re working themselves to death.  South Korean birthrates are in the toilet, flushing away the future one non-existent kid at a time.

It takes 2.1 kids per woman to keep a population stable.  In South Korea, it’s 0.78 kids per woman.  In about 100 years, that might mean that instead of 55 million serfs potential employees Samsung® might only have a just a few over 7.5 million left.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s societal suicide by spreadsheet.

You know what jokes about low birthrates aren’t?  Childish.

Everyone thinks it South Korea is all Squid Games and high-speed internet, but peel back the veneer, and it’s a dystopia where families (well, not all families) get ground to dust.  Sure, they’ve got flashy tech, but at what cost?

Their souls, apparently.

Now, let’s cross that fortified border to the hermit kingdom of North Korea, where the dystopia’s got a different flavor but the same aftertaste of oppression. Point by point, because why not?

• Corrupt Clique in Charge: Instead of chaebol families, it’s the Kim dynasty. Power passes from Kim to Kim like a Habsburg chin.  Voting?  You don’t vote on a living god.  The elite live like it’s a South Korean oligarchy, but make theirs communist, so, uniforms and marching and Soviet-tech.  So, tie.
• Economic Shackles on Steroids: Child labor? Oh yeah, but it’s “patriotic duty” with Nork kids harvesting crops or building monuments to Stalin instead of studying like their southern counterparts.  The system is a joke, with rations so meager you’d think calories were capitalist spies.  Families toil in state farms or factories, nukes, missiles, and spare MiG parts while the Kim family imports Twix® and Coors™.  The South doesn’t have death camps, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point, so, tie.

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

• Soul-Sucking Slog: Just like being at the Democratic National Convention, life in North Korea is a parade of propaganda and forced smiles, living in actual commie-blocks that crumble like the regime’s promises.  Monotonous work?  Try endless marches and indoctrination sessions.  It’s like 1984 but with worse food even than English food.  I’ll give this to the South, since they come here from time to time, and I’ve never had a North Korean visit.

What is this, a school for ants?

• Birthrates Below Replacement: Around 1.9 kids per woman, much, much better than the South, so eventually there will be more Norks than replaceable Samsung® assets.  Besides, who wants to raise a family when Junior might rat you out for humming the Brady Bunch theme?  This one goes solidly to North Korea.
• K-Pop Equivalent? Nope, just state anthems praising the Dear Leader.  I’ve got to give this to North Korea.

If black people move there, will they make K-Rap?

Point total?  To the North.

Okay, if I had to pick, I certainly wouldn’t pick the North, but let’s be honest, the South is awful as well.  I’ve been trying to make this point again and again:  capitalism is an economic system, and it’s only a useful economic system if it generates wealth and supports families.  When capitalism captures the systems of government the people begin to look like property, exactly like people look to communists.  In Korea, people are either cogs or convicts.

The Founders didn’t mention capitalism or socialism, they just turned people loose with guns and a few rules and let them figure it out.  In the West today, business wants to import foreigners to become better cogs, and the GloboLeft wants to import hordes of foreigners who are used to their government treating them like convicts.

Though on the bright side, my Samsung™ phone has lasted for years . . .