Many overenthusiastic tankies claim that LGBT people are accepted in the DPRK, while your average lib will tell you that Kim Jong-Un will shoot you out of a cannon if you hold hands with the same gender. The reality is neither of these.

First of all, homosexuality is socially looked down upon by the DPRK. A simple search on KCNA will show homophobic comments about Michael Kirby. However, any such article from KCNA should be taken with a grain of salt since it has crazy articles once in a while that don't accurately depict the official position of the state. Rodong Sinmun is party-run while KCNA is more independent as a state-managed enterprise, so it's a better way to judge the government's position on a topic. Rodong Sinmun seems to be absent from any articles discussing this. However, this analysis from Kim Il-Sung university shows that being homosexual is frowned upon in academia; given the importance that social science academia plays in the governance of the DPRK we can understand this is likely reflected some degree in the policies of the government.

Another claim I hear is that while homosexuality is frowned upon in the DPRK, it is not legally punished. Indeed, the DPRK criminal code does not explicitly mention any punishment for homosexuality at all. However, the criminal code does have this rather vague article:

Article 194 (Conduct of Decadent Acts) >A person who watches or listens to music, dance, drawings, photos, books, video recordings or electronic media that reflects decadent, carnal or foul contents or who performs such acts himself or herself shall be punished by short-term labour for less than two years. In cases where the person commits a grave offence, he or she shall be punished by reform through labour for less than five years.

If being gay is considered a decadent act by the government, which it likely is, it is possible that one could face 2-5 years of jail time for this.

I am a big fan of the DPRK and consider it the best example and execution of socialism on Earth. But critical support is still critical, and we must be knowledgable about the DPRK's shortcomings.

A few months ago when I was sifting through the garbage dump r/EuropeanSocialists (Once in a while they have good translated DPRK resources otherwise very hard to find) I came across a mention of a site called Yaegihaja. The name means "Let's Talk" in Korean and apparently it was a forum which claimed you could talk with actual north Koreans. It also claimed to be affiliated with the DPRK government. The site has also been mentioned on a few youtube channels, such as one called "SunhiPlays" which posts music videos and one just called "Yaegihaja" which uploaded a DPRK movie. Apparently the URL used to be yaegihaja.com but the website is now shut down and the Wayback Machine's latest snapshot of the website is from April 2022, only showing the home page. Such a place existing is so bizarre and I can't find more information on what it actually was. If you've heard of Yaegihaja please tell me everything you know because I am very curious about this matter.

Also apparently Uriminzokkiri had a Discord server? The DPRK rabbit hole goes deep.

After studying DPRK wages and prices for a while, I wanted to make a comparison between the economic life of a north Korean coal miner in North Hamgyong Province compared to one in West Virginia, USA.

Working conditions

Workweek

DPRK: 6 hours/day, 6 days/week (36 hours) Source: Article 30, DPRK constitution caps the working day at 8 hours. For harder professions (like coal mining) the hours are reduced.

USA: 10 hours/day, 5 days/week (50 hours)

Paid Time Off

DPRK: 52 weekends + 71 national holidays + 28 PTO = 151 days

Source: 6-day workweek: The documentary My Brothers and Sisters in the North National Holidays: https://www.youngpioneertours.com/north-korea-holidays/ Paid Time Off: https://archive.org/details/DPRKTexts/Education/Secondary/6/socialist_morality

US: 104 weekends + 11 national holidays = 124 days

% unionized

DPRK: 100% (+ Taean work system giving extra worker democracy)

USA: 17%

Monthly wages & expenses

Wages

DPRK: 360,000 KPW

Source: Western Source: https://www.nkeconwatch.com/category/labor-conditionswages/

Eastern Source: https://www.66law.cn/laws/767918.aspx (1 RMB = 1200 KPW)

USA: 4,600 USD

Rent

DPRK: Free

Source: DPRK Constitution Article 25

USA: 600 USD (13% income)

Utilities

DPRK: Free

Source: SAO Documentary (Unfortunately I don't remember which episode, I think it's in Korea World 1 when they tour future scientist street)

USA: 200 USD (4.3% income)

Food

DPRK: Free (From PDS)

Source: DPRK Constitution Article 25. The rationing system is known as PDS.

USA: 710 USD (15.4% income)

Healthcare

DPRK: Free

Source: DPRK Constitution Article 56

USA: 1400 USD (30% income)

Taxes

DPRK: No taxes

Source: DPRK Constitution Article 25

USA: 750 USD (16% income)

Leftover Salary after monthly expenses

DPRK: 360,000 KPW

USA: 940 USD

One-time purchases

Television

DPRK: 22,000 KPW (6% of saved income, subsidized by state)

Source: https://www.38north.org/2020/12/mwilliams121620/

USA: 100 USD (11% of saved income)

Bicycle

DPRK: 250,000 KPW (69% of saved income, unreliable figure)

Source: https://www.dailynk.com/english/bicycles-still-main-driver-of-nort/ (Take a heavy grain of salt)

USA: 100 USD (11% of saved income)

However, most Americans cannot navigate with just a bike and need a car (15,000 USD) while DPRK residents only need a bike due to better-planned towns.

Aspirin, one bottle

DPRK: 600 KPW (0.17% saved income)

Source: Felix Abt's A Capitalist In North Korea states that aspirin at state-owned stores was 60KPW. Due to the wage reform which occured after he left DPRK prices have generally multiplied by 10x in tandem with wages.

USA: $8 (0.89% saved income)

Eating out at a medium-grade restaurant, per person

DPRK: 20,000 KPW (5.6% saved income)

Source: SAO Documentary eats at several DPRK restaurants and for a few seconds you can see the pricing.

USA: 25 USD (2.8% saved income)

Ski Vacation, per person

DPRK: Free (Paid for by government)

Source: DPRK Constitution Article 71

USA: 2,500 USD (278% saved income)

Long-term Expenses

Childbirth

DPRK: Free (Covered by healthcare)

Source: See free healthcare

USA: 20,000 USD (2200% saved income)

Tertiary Education

DPRK: Free (All universities)

Source: DPRK Consitution Article 47. The state actually pays you a stiped to go to university!

USA: 52,000 USD (4 years at WVU, 5780% saved income)

Funeral

DPRK: Free (Paid for by government)

Source: https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1781528061338351833&wfr=spider&for=pc

USA: 5000 USD (556% saved income)

Please tell me if I made a mistake or missed out on something crucial. Of course, there is no way to portray the increased workers' rights and enhanced democratic system in numbers.

Edit 1: Added Sources. Unfortunately most of these sources are from Chinese tourists so your lib friends might not be very willing to pay attention.

Edit 2: I don't want to give misleading information. Most locally manufactured goods in the DPRK are a higher percentage of income than in the USA, simply because it's a less developed country and doesn't have access to cheap imperial labor. However, I didn't put prices for a lot of consumer goods because the only sources for those are from DailyNK, whose prices make you think that north Koreans are selling organs for shoes and rice cookers. The only other source for prices is tourists goign to department stores which predominantly stock foreign-imported goods. Because of how badly KPW converts to foreign currency (most likely done to attract investment) Chinese-imported goods are insanely expensive in KPW compared to their locally-made counterparts.

Sources like RFA and NK Daily are pretty transparent in being funded by the CIA/NED. However, NK News claims to not have any government funding, despite the fact that most of the articles they put out are almost as bogus as those from NK Daily. Does anyone have good information on who's behind NK News and why they make Pro-USA propaganda?

Excerpt from "Report on 9th Enlarged Plenum of 8th WPK Central Committee", http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/5a9ffe6e4d6704ac1838b14785365295.kcmsf.

This entire article was amazing to read, but the economic report really stood out to me:

"The report reviewed the remarkable successes made in the overall national economy.

The 12 goals for the national economic development were all attained with 103 percent of grain production, 100 percent of electric power, coal and nitrogenous fertilizer, 102 percent of rolled steel, 131 percent of nonferrous metal, 109 percent of logs, 101 percent of cement and ordinary cloth, 105 percent of marine products, 106 percent of railway freight transport and 109 percent of houses under construction. And the overall economy witnessed clear production growth, including 220 percent of motor production, 208 percent of transformers, 121 percent of bearings, 140 percent of electric zinc, 121 percent of lead, 113 percent of paper, 110 percent of salt, 109 percent of cosmetics, 100 percent of flat glass and 104 percent of magnesia clinker, and plan discipline was established.

Compared with the total growth of the economic sector in 2020, the previous year of the 8th Party Congress, the production of important indices largely went up in 2023 by raising the production of iron trioxide 3.5 times, pig iron 2.7 times, rolled steel 1.9 times, machine tools 5.1 times, cement 1.4 times and nitrogen fertilizer 1.3 times and the GDP grew up 1.4 times.

The report estimated the over-fulfillment of the goal of grain production, the dominant height of decisive significance in the overall economic development and the guarantee of people's living, as the most precious and valuable success achieved in the economic work for 2023."

40% growth in three years is insane; that's something like 12% annual GDP growth which I don't think has any parallels in the industrial world. Piecing together KCNA reports on "industrial management software" it seems that the DPRK is currently in the middle of implementing some kind of computerized planning software akin to the one in "Towards A New Socialism", which would explain this insane growth. Cross-checking the figures with past growth rates and national priorities makes these numbers make sense. I think around the beginning of Kim Jong Un's tenure the GDP reports by Hyundai suggested a 9% GDP growth rate. Kim Jong Un has recently been stressing about the need to fix the DPRK's energy and most primarily oil problem, which has since the Arduous March probably been the biggest bottleneck to economic growth. Although tourism to the DPRK has been closed for a while now, the occasional KCNA report as well as DPRK tour videos recorded just before lockdown show just how insane the growth rate has been in the DPRK, with new modern buildings popping up everywhere, farmers making use of drone technology, the formerly desolate streets of Pyongyang now having regular traffic jams from all the new supply trucks, and the new factories popping up all over the country producing consumer goods and compensating for sanctions by producing things like major medical machinery. While the imperial core and the capitalist world as a whole has been deteriorating, the DPRK has never been better.

Kim Jong Un's Mallima is real!

This graph probably brings up a lot of questions, so I'll clarify some of the details here.

Yes, this bar graph shows wages in figures of present-day won. It's not specified by the graph itself, but looking at the figures you can see that these numbers do not match up with Korean wage and currency reforms. Most notably, in 2014 with the election of Kim Jong-Un there was a widespread wage reform, where wages were multiplied by a factor of 10 (and prices following suit, of course) in order to crack down on markets. We know from Minju Choson articles and the book A Capitalist In North Korea that wages during the Kim Jong-Il period were generally less than 10,000KPW a month, so the 50,000 KPW figure doesn't match up for the years 2006-2010. Korean "inflation" (Not really inflation, because socialist countries don't really have inflation, but whatever) doesn't match up with these graphs, so assuming these as "inflation"-adjusted wages is a safe bet.

You can see from the bottom right that this data is based on a collection of defector testimonies. Keep in mind that defectors are generally coming from the poorest, more mountainous provinces of the DPRK such as Ryanggang and North Hamgyong. As a result, we have a bit of noise in the data we need to look at critically.

Industrial wages for Ryanggang and North Hamgyong actually aren't significantly lower than other provinces; in fact, due to the prevalence of heavy industry and coal mining, the highest paid professions in the DPRK (excluding members of the intelligentsia), industrial wages in Chongjin might actually be higher. However, since defectors usually come from the poorest backgrounds of even these poor provinces, these wages do not accurately reflect the average wages of even these provinces, as it does not account for the high number of steelworkers and even intelligentsia in industrial hubs like Chongjin and Hamhung.

Be wary of the official/unofficial wage split as well, because as I mentioned before defectors are often from the poorest provinces of the DPRK. These provinces were the ones that were hit the hardest by the Arduous March due to their unfavorable terrain, and as a result state grain distribution systems are weakest in these areas. As a result, the poverty of these provinces along with their proximity to the Sino-Korean border leads to the black markets here being the most prevalent. Remember that Korea has a strong industry and in comparison to Cuba, where the black markets are often full of consumer goods, Korean markets are mostly food. Add this to the fact that defectors are unlikely to be working in higher-paying professions and you get an unrealistic inflation in the prevalence of unofficial earnings. Keep in mind that this data is also quite old and Kim jong-Un has been cracking down quite hard on markets.

All that being said, with the proper context this graph shows that the DPRK is in fact increasing real wages for state workers.