Vaclav Havel

Roger Scruton, writing on Vaclav Havel in The Times today, noted this: "In his penetrating essay on 'The Power of the Powerless' Havel shows how totalitarianism so enters the soul of its victims that it no longer needs force to maintain itself. People forge their own chains and display them obediently to their masters. They live within the lie, as things are comfortable there and nobody intrudes save liars, whose motives you share. It is not violence or oppression that holds the facade in place, but ideology, which confiscates the very language with which people might describe things as they are."
I cannot think of a better description of North Korea than that. One just had to witness the scenes at the death of the leader, Kim Jong-il, today on TV to realise what sort of a country that is; it is the sort of totalitarian country that is depicted by Havel in his essay. You could see that the people have been so brainwashed that they believe they are living in good times not in cloud cukoo land.
When a picture of North and South Korea is taken from space, the South is all lights giving the impression that, even in the night, people are free to enjoy themselves while in the North there are no lights at all, all is in darkness. They cannot afford to turn on the lights - except at the place where the leader lives.
I am not so sure that Havel is right when he says that "it is not violence or oppression that holds the facade in place" because the North Korean army looks to me a formidable force which frightens me let alone someone close to them, marching in perfect step very like those in the Nazi party and army, goose-stepping along with the crowd cheering.
But he is right in his overall view: there is no chance of a sort of Arab Spring there because the people there think that that is how human life is lived, they don't know that there is another kind.