How bad are things in North Korea?

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin used to send dissidents and political prisoners to slave labor camps in Siberia as punishment. Today, North Koreans think being sent to a slave labor camp in Siberia would be a dream job. Bryan Caplan interprets an LA Times article.:

The key to this story is that despite everything, working abroad is considered a good deal. It’s one of the few ways to save some money to help their families back home. And only the “most loyal” North Koreans qualify, with their families left behind as hostages:

By far the largest number of North Koreans working outside their country are in Russia, where they do mostly logging and construction in military-style camps run by the North Korean government. When the camps were set up in the early 1970s, the workers were North Korean prisoners. But as the North Korean economy disintegrated in the late 1980s, doing hard labor in Siberia came to be seen as a reward because at least it meant getting adequate food.

It follows, then, that as wretched as the lives of North Koreans working in Russia or the Czech Republic are, life in North Korea is far worse. In short, it’s pretty bad even by the standards of other Communist regimes.

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