Considering today's discussion of euphemistic language and the manipulation of ideas, I'd like to read the New Yorker article titled "The Good Cook" found here. The article follows a N. Korean refugee's experience living in N. Korea and the propaganda machine of the N. Korean government.
Your responsibilities will be to look for connections between 1984 and the content of this article. How does the government maintain control of the country and its citizens? What is the condition of the country?
How does the N. Korean government attempt to manipulate citizens' perspective of the rampant famine?
PLEASE LIMIT YOURSELVES TO ONE COMMENT. I'LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN YOU CAN RESPOND PAST THIS LIMIT.
My answer:
ReplyDelete(Alexander Sosnovsky pd 1)
The systems in North Korea and 1984 are similar, but not exactly alike. North Korea depended on other countries for support, but in 1984, it seemed that Oceania was really not dependant on any other countries. This is most likely because Oceania was made up of a lot of continents and countries, while N. Korea is a small, cold country where not too much can grow. However, in both modern N. Korea and 1984, everything is at least moderately controlled by the government. Also, rations are in effect in Oceania and N. Korea. The government in North Korea is communist, but this is only inforced to a certain point, as shown by all the black markets. The condition in N. Korea is pretty horrible, with famine and poverty everywhere. The North Korean Government is mostly nonchalant about the famine, coming up with slogans such as "two meals a day". Not many citizens really believe their propaganda though. The government wouldn't hesitate to cover up terrible disasters and accidents, as shown by its reaction to the train wreck in which Mrs. Song was hurt. The newspapers (if they even have newspapers) didn't say anything about it. This is also similar to the Ministry of Truth's job in 1984.
The North Korean government maintains control of their country and their citizens by literally taking charge of everything. For example, the North Korean government controlled the amount of food each family should have. They did so in the beginning by having rations in effect, just like in the book 1984. The rationed the amount of rice, oil, and spices each member of the family should have. Also, when the author talked about the famine in North Korea, they said that when the citizens had to farm for their own food supply, the government had to confiscate their entire harvest, giving only a small portion back to the farmers. The country's condition is the worst. The famine and a large part of the population dying because of starvation can show that North Korea wasn't doing so well. The government there manipulated the citizens' perspective on the famine by putting up slogans saying "Let's Eat Two Meals A Day". This sort of propaganda in North Korea is trying to reassure the citizens on the famine. They also ran a documentary showing that a man's stomach could burst from eating too much rice. They do this to show that having much to eat isn't a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThis article and 1984 have a lot of a similarities, but at the same time, they are not the exact same situation. The government in North Korea maintains control of it’s citizens by forcing them to be completely dependent upon the government. This is exemplified by how Mrs. Song had to wait on her scheduled days to get the perfectly rationed amount of food for her family. The population of Oceania in 1984 is quite similar in the aspect that the government is in total control. In the book also the government is control of what you eat and when you eat. This is demonstrated by the scene of Winston at work and how he gets a rationed amount of food, as well as by the existence of the Ministry of Plenty. The Party, though, has other forms of control including telescreens and Newspeak or language. The condition of North Korea is not very good. There’s so much famine and it’s affecting everyone in the country in a negative way. There’s a lot of death due to starvation and at first, people did not know what was going on. The North Korean government tried to manipulate the citizens by not revealing what was really happening and not addressing the drastic lack of food. An example of this is how hospitals were not allowed to determine cause of death as starvation. This is similar to how the Ministry of Truth in 1984 controls everything that citizens of Oceania see and how they use false information to manipulate people.
ReplyDeleteThe North Korean government, like the Party in 1984, controls its people by lying to them about any problems that the country is currently facing. In North Korea, the government hardly ever addressed the famin, treating it as if it wasn't a problem. When they did address it, it was either to claim that the famine was intentional, that it was going to end soon, or that it wasn't a very big problem. Similarly, the Party tells people that large amounts of boots are being made, that the quota has been overfilled, and at the same time, "half of Oceania is barefoot." Both these governments try to make problems seem less important, or non-existant through lies and deceit.
ReplyDeleteThe Party, in 1984, and the North Korean government both control the citizens by using propaganda. The Party uses the slogan, "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." This manipulates the people of Oceania into believing that they already have all they need. The citizens of Oceania are persuaded to think that the war they are fighting right now will bring peace. The article stated that the North Korean governments manipulated the North Koreans by using posters of the US flag dripping with blood or pierced with bayonets. This makes people believe that the US is only affiliated with war. Another similarity between 1984 and the article on North Korea is that there are pictures of the authorities in the homes of residents. In Oceania, pictures of Big Brother are in the homes of all the citizens. In North Korea, Mrs. Song had pictures of Kim II-sung and Kim Jong-il on the walls of her house.
ReplyDeleteBoth the governments of North Korea and Oceania (in 1984) are able to maintain control of the control by greatly restricting what people are allowed to do and say, as well as their lifestyles. In 1984, the Party is control of virtually everything - they utilize euphemism to lie to the people of Oceania (ex: the Party lowers the chocolate rations from 30 grams to 20 grams, and claims that they actually raised the distribution amount). The Party also influences the behavior of people as they watch everyone through telescreens and 'vaporize' people who show signs of disagreement with the Party's rule. Oceania, as a result, has been molded into a country with voiceless and gullible (confused, rather) people. The North Korean government operates by a similar standard (but less extreme, to some extent). The government is able to successfully manipulate the citizen's perspective of the rampant famine because they censor what is said in the North Korean media. Due to the North Korean residents' lack of knowledge in regards to their famine, they essentially have no view on the matter at hand.
ReplyDeleteOceania and North Korea both operate on a similar basis. North Korea maintains control over its country and citizens by limiting the amount of media and criticism published about their government. Although the article gives little information on the media published in North Korea, there is no doubt it would be monitored and censored by the government. This also happens in 1984, when anyone threatens their perfect world; the party would have them “vaporized”. This can be linked to when the North Korean government used the slogan “2 meals a day” to sugarcoat their shortage on food (both examples of euphemism). The hurtful ways of the North Korean government would lead one to think that the citizens hated their great leader, but surprisingly not. The article mentions that although the citizens are starving, they still felt that North Korea is the greatest country in the world. Every morning, Mrs. Song would wake up and dust of the portrait of their great leader. This proves the success of the manipulative ways of the questionable North Korean government. This can go so far as to saying that the actions of North Korean government in the article can be seen as abusive towards their citizens because roughly 15% of their total population died due to the famine. This distortion of ideas is also seen in 1984, doublespeak’s main purpose is to convince them of the less pleasant truth of their troubled society to a point of patriotic love.
ReplyDeleteThe government in 1984 has a very close likeliness by George Orwell as "The Good Cook" and perhaps that is why the way that their society works is similar. Both governments restrict the citizens' knowledge of the outside world by not releasing any news on what is happening in other places or what the government used to be like, and not just the negative sides of the old government. This enables the two governments to control the citizens because the citizens do not know that people can live differently than they do and therefore they do not desire change as someone who might know that in other societies, people have enough food and clothing, and so the people blindly do whatever the government tells them to do, believing that it was the same for everybody. Because the government is in control of everything, the land is coming into pieces. In 1984, Winston says that he sleeps naked because he doesn't have enough clothes and everyone else has the same amount of clothes that is not enough. In "The Good Cook," it says "enduring hunger became one's patriotic duty" which means that the people did not have enough food. This indicates that the citizens of North Korea were not well-fed and happy, in fact the economy was slowly going down. Not only that, the North Korean government attempted to manipulate the rampant famine by claiming that "the government was stockpiling food to feed the starving South Korean masses" which is what I assume they expected the citizens to believe that the sole reason that they did not have food was because the government was selflessly giving it to other people in need. They also showed a "documentary" on a person whose stomach exploded from eating too much rice. I take it as the government trying to turn the desperation for any food to thankfulness that they do not have too much rice so that their stomachs wouldn't burst.
ReplyDelete-written by Janet Choi (Period 1 class)
DeleteGeorge Orwell’s 1984 and Barbara Demick’s The Good Cook can be perceived as similar to each other in the situation that citizens/inhabitants of the country experiences. For instance, in reference to what Abby said, the government maintains control through the people’s dependency upon them; however the degree of reliance on the government rations vary between the two societies; in The Good Cook, the Koreans receive rations twice each month near the food distribution center based upon the number of people within the family-the clerk would “calculate the entitlements” and “weigh out the rations”. Likewise, in 1984, the Party’s citizens were enabled to rations as well; they were given a certain amount of money to purchase clothes as shown with Winston’s minimal clothing (uniform) and rations in chocolate. However, whereas the inhabitants of Oceania remain in complete submission to the government, the Koreans, during the famine, “tapped their deepest walls of creativity to feed themselves”…in other words, they did not render completely dependent on the government as they found ways to survive on their own when the government is insufficient. Furthermore, both governments manipulate the citizens using “euphemism”; according to the text (1984), the Party uses: “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” in comparison to the North Korean government, which provides an explanation for the starvation: “Let’s Eat Two Meals a Day”, they were storing food to feed the starving South Korean masses, or the US put up a blockade against the country. (These choices of words manipulate the people in believing the government to be superior, virtuous, etc.) Meanwhile, the governments are eager to mask any mistakes or accidents as shown with the government not mentioning most disasters in North Korea and the specialized workers in the Party to correct or rewrite history-in the text it emphasizes: “It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech in such way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened”.
ReplyDeleteIn reference to the manipulations, the people of North Korea and fictionalized Oceania are somewhat brainwashed. In The Good Cook, we see that Song Hee-suk believed that North Korea was the best country in the world and frequently got out from her bed to dust the portrait of Kim II-sung, even though of the economic distress she had to undergo. Similarly, during the Two Minutes Hate, the inhabitants of Oceania cried out “Savior” when the face of Big Brother came into view in contrast to the negativity when they saw Goldstein (a lady threw a heavy Newspeak dictionary at his nose). Not to mention, the book also hinted that children are influenced greatly from the Party and Winston feared that those children will turn against their parents for symptoms of unorthodoxy.
The difference between the two governments is their degree of control of the people; in Oceania, the government instituted the Thought Police, which practically allowed the government complete control of people’s minds. We see that they place telescreens as surveillance to check on the people 24/7 and slogans/posters to enforce their power; although North Korea also present manipulation and false media, they do not have the resources or the capability to render the mind or the thought submissive to the government’s control. In some ways, we perceive George Orwell’s depiction of the society to be more extreme and totalitarian than that of the North Korea, even though both conditions in the economy are very static compared to our society. Also towards the end of the article, we find Song Hee-suk to have very contrasting perspectives of the North Korean government as she “professed certain nostalgia for the idealism that used to propel her out of the bed early to dust the portrait of Kim II-sung”. If the regime of the Party had ended, will the people be able to express themselves or will they render “soulless” or without feelings/emotions in this world?
I am cataloguing many of the ideas posted above:
ReplyDelete-Rationing food (Laura)
-Propopganda (Christy)
-Distorted information, news (Nino)
-Gov't control of information (Abby)
-Leader worship (Kyle)
-Janet (No connection to the outside world)
-Execution of dissenters (Christina)
- Gov't covers up disasters (Alex)
-Deification of the gov't, gov't is noble, virtuous (Jenny)
These are such strong details of a totalitarian regime. Can we now utilize these details to identify current/past totalitarian regimes in history? Let's follow Jenny's example and integrate quotes into our answers. Try to find articles on the web and direct us to those sites with a link ...
The government from both the book, 1984, and from North Korea are always giving out more and more lies and propaganda to the people they hold control over. The Ministry of Truth makes the population believe that Big Brother is good and that all those who oppose him are evil. The North Korean government makes use of the lack of imported supplies to say that, "the United States had instituted a blockade against North Korea" in order to try to gain more support for the government and turn its population against the United States. The Ministry of Plenty rations the supplies that the people receive, as did the North Korean government before the supplies began dwindling. Once they began running out of supplies, the North Korean began to give out lies saying that they were "stockpiling food to feed the starving South Korean masses on the blessed day of reunification" as a cover for the fact that they just had no food at all. Through these series of lies, the Korean government seeks to maintain strict control over its people by taking the bad incidents that had happened and twisting them so that people will see it as the fault of outsiders rather than that of the government.
ReplyDeleteSorry it took me so long to post, I didn't have internet since Saturday.
The governments of Oceania and North Korea were very similar. The main way in which this is apparent is that they both tell the people how great the country is and how much worse of everyone else is when the people are starving and just about everyone else in the world is better off. In both places the government forces nationalism into everyone's lives mainly through slogans printed everywhere that constantly remind the people about how great they are. And, when there is obviously a inadequacy in life that even the government can't cover up, they invent a way for it to not seem so bad even though the people are miserable. Such as "Lets eat two meals a day" or calling the falling apart dingy houses "victory mansions". And, while there does not seem to be as much silent kidnapping of nonconformists in North Korea as in Oceania, it was very unwise to speak out against the government in both.
ReplyDeleteThe conditions of Oceania and North Korea are similar but not identical. In both the people are hungry and miserable with horrible run down homes and very few pleasures but the similarities stop there. The North Korean people are not watched as the people of Oceania are simply because of the lack of government resources. And, while people are dying of starvation in North Korea, the people of Oceania at least have enough to eat.
In conclusion, Oceania and North Korea are similar in that the people are hungry and live in horrible conditions. They are in fear of the government while at the same time forced to recite its greatness through slogans which they see many times throughout their day. But, while the people of North Korea are dying of starvation the people of Oceania are decently fed, although if, while eating that meal they think badly of the government, they will be silently killed and erased forever from history, which does not happen in North Korea.
I found an interesting website that identified several regimes throughout history as totalitarian and there were some works of literature that included some aspects of totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_totalitarianism.html
The content of this article and 1984 have several connections. In both texts, society relies on the government for certain things, especially food. Mrs. Song's food is distributed to her twice a month and she is given exact amounts based on the size of her family. Winston is also given food provided by the government in the canteen. North Korea enters a famine quite rapidly. Food rations started fading away and Mrs. Song's shopping bags would always be lighter. The government no longer delivered cabbage to make Kimchi. Also, North Korea was in great national debt because of the strong dependency of its neighboring countries. Soon, the neighboring countries grew impatient of North Korea and demanded its money back, and the N. Korean government was unable to pay back the money. Instead of starving being a pain, "enduring hunger became a part of one's patriotic duty." In 1984, the people had several duties to the party, one of them to reproduce and create more party members. In North Korea, the government made several attempts to cover up the famine, stating the "government was stockpiling food to feed the starving South Korean masses on the blessed day of reunification " or that "United States had instituted a blockade against North Korea." This is similar to the way the Party uses Newspeak to deliver information to the public. Newspeak is used to confuse the readers and euphemize them.
ReplyDeleteNorth Korea has many connections to 1984. For example, in 1984 Big Brother is worshiped like a god, just like the leaders of North Korea, in the article, Mrs. Song says that the ideas of the county would propel her to dust off the picture of Kim Il-sung. Both societies allow for certain things that are supposed to be outlawed to keep the people happy enough that they will no rebel. In 1984, it is sex and prostitution, and in North Korea it is markets, both are supposed to be illegal, but the usually strict government allows for it so people will not think as much of rebellion. The conditions of both countries are relatively bad, there is a shorten ing of rations in both countries, in Oceania it was a shortening of chocolate, which was "increased" from 30 to 20 grams, and in North Korea, it is a shortening of most foods, which to government usually pretends is just nonexistent.
ReplyDelete