According to "A Year in Pyongyang" (written by a Brit, see http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang_1.html), in the 80s under Kim Il Sung there were plenty of people laughing in the streets. He describes many workers as having an attitude similar to playful children, and in particular he describes actual kids as "the pampered citizens of North Korea": always laughing, always playing, pampered by everyone. Keep in mind this was an account that didn't downplay the harsh realities of life in NK. It was also the 80s; things may have changed a lot since then.
So yes, I think it is confirmation bias on your part. Life in NK is probably not like we think it is. It is bizarre to us, yes, but the average person probably doesn't live in fear of soldiers raiding their homes, or in dread the Beloved Leader orders them killed. In all likelihood, regardless of how actual life in NK is, those are all fantasies on our part; preconceptions of how life in a weird dictatorship actually is.
I think I, a Westerner, wouldn't like living in NK. At the same time, I really do not think it's a living hell for its citizens -- certainly not in the movie-style dictatorship we sometimes imagine it to be.
> At the same time, I really do not think it's a living hell for its citizens -- certainly not in the movie-style dictatorship we sometimes imagine it to be.
> At a public hearing in London last week, Kim Song-Ju told of his four attempts to flee North Korea because of a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans during the 1990s.
> After crossing the icy Tumen river that marks the border with China in March 2006, Kim was caught by Chinese guards and forced back to North Korea.
> He described beatings in a North Korean detention camp and how he was ordered to search prisoners' excrement for money they were believed to have swallowed.
> North Korea's leadership is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world, crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded.
So yes, I think it is confirmation bias on your part. Life in NK is probably not like we think it is. It is bizarre to us, yes, but the average person probably doesn't live in fear of soldiers raiding their homes, or in dread the Beloved Leader orders them killed. In all likelihood, regardless of how actual life in NK is, those are all fantasies on our part; preconceptions of how life in a weird dictatorship actually is.
I think I, a Westerner, wouldn't like living in NK. At the same time, I really do not think it's a living hell for its citizens -- certainly not in the movie-style dictatorship we sometimes imagine it to be.