Summary Of Suzy Kim's Everyday Life In North Korea
What does modernity represent? There are various kinds of societies in the world such as socialism, capitalism, and communism, so each society must have different goals to reach and different political systems and would have developed in different ways. Thus, it is difficult to determine if a country is modern or unmodern. This question is one of the agendas in Suzy Kim’s book Everyday Life in The North Korean Revolution. To find the definition of modernity, she gains a deep insight into history of North Korea. When it comes to history, many people may come up with historical events such as wars or political movements. On the other hand, she doesn’t always look at these things, but mainly focuses on how everyday life in North Korea has changed
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Through land reform, confiscated lands were distributed to peasants for free. It was banned to sell these lands so that they could avoid feudal society that had two classes such as owners and labors. This reform made the society that everyone had the relatively same level of living. Moreover, rural committees played the role which gave peasants opportunities to participate in activities a society. However, reorganization of electoral system doesn’t prove that North Korea is a completely modern country. It is true that workers and peasants were able to have recommendations for election, but the number of recommendations from them was just one, whereas the number of people in upper class was two (Kim, 110). It is clear that peasants didn’t have the same right as other population, which was one problem of peasants and factor of unmodern country. They didn’t have equality, so it is not possible to say it’s modern. North Korea of today also has an issue of inequality because of different statuses. The economic gap between upper and lower classes has been wider. To be specified, Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, has three times bigger GDP than other areas (Shim, 2016). In addition, twelve percent of people who are 20-59 years old are unemployed (Shim, 2016). These facts make people in North Korea have inequality depending on the economic situations. To sum up, Even now people in North Korea have issues about the topic that was controversial in the past, so it is difficult to determine what modernity is and if North Korea has accomplished
Through land reform, confiscated lands were distributed to peasants for free. It was banned to sell these lands so that they could avoid feudal society that had two classes such as owners and labors. This reform made the society that everyone had the relatively same level of living. Moreover, rural committees played the role which gave peasants opportunities to participate in activities a society. However, reorganization of electoral system doesn’t prove that North Korea is a completely modern country. It is true that workers and peasants were able to have recommendations for election, but the number of recommendations from them was just one, whereas the number of people in upper class was two (Kim, 110). It is clear that peasants didn’t have the same right as other population, which was one problem of peasants and factor of unmodern country. They didn’t have equality, so it is not possible to say it’s modern. North Korea of today also has an issue of inequality because of different statuses. The economic gap between upper and lower classes has been wider. To be specified, Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, has three times bigger GDP than other areas (Shim, 2016). In addition, twelve percent of people who are 20-59 years old are unemployed (Shim, 2016). These facts make people in North Korea have inequality depending on the economic situations. To sum up, Even now people in North Korea have issues about the topic that was controversial in the past, so it is difficult to determine what modernity is and if North Korea has accomplished