"A young man Demick interviewed read 1984 after he escaped to [South Korea]. He was startled to learn that George Orwell, back in the 1940s, had perfectly understood the thinking of modern North Koreans."
Orwell was just predicting what the future would be like if Stalinism took over the world in 1984. He had plenty of experience with it while fighting in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the anarchists POUM and often in conflict with the Stalinist backed factions.
The government of North Korea was founded by Kim Il Sung who was hand picked by Stalin to run the country, so it's only natural that they would try to implement the model Orwell was talking about.
"A kindergarten teacher reports that the hardest part of her job was watching her pupils die of starvation. A pediatrician says much the same about her patients."
As it happens, my brother-in-law came into town today. At dinner, he asked my wife what it was like growing up in China during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (she was born in 1951). She told him the hardest part was the hunger. Once she was caught digging up and eating a sweet potato from a field. Her teacher punished her by putting here on an even more reduced ration. This was only supposed to be for a few days, but the teacher forgot and she had reduced rations for the rest of the semester. It was only because a staff member asked about the punishment at the beginning of the next semester that the standard ration was reinstated.
"A young man Demick interviewed read 1984 after he escaped to [South Korea]. He was startled to learn that George Orwell, back in the 1940s, had perfectly understood the thinking of modern North Koreans."
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/24/robert-fulfor...