CIA and WHO life expectancy estimates of poor countries differ a lot, I have no intention of arguing which is correct, however by both estimates of life expectancy, and by most other quality of life estimates, North Korea is far above most of Africa, in many cases including rich African countries like South Africa.
I think the reasons you and many other people think North Korea is so bad come from exposure to media. American and Western European media have political reasons to dislike North Korea, and no reason to care at all about most failed countries like Sierra Leone or Lesotho. And “evil oppressive government” is much easier to turn into a good sensational story than run of the mill “thousands of children died of diarrhea because they didn’t have access to clean water”—in North Korean story there’s a clear evil villain, in Africa there isn’t.
As far as I can tell, government oppression tends to be focused on small number of people who are considered (truthfully or not) politically dangerous, and quality of life of most people isn’t strongly affected—due to information scarcity I cannot be sure if that’s true about North Korea, but it was definitely true about European Communist countries.
Typical third world economic oppression (low GDP + high income inequality + no social safety net) affects larger number of people, and as far as I can tell causes a lot more suffering. And these are pretty much the standard living conditions of humanity for most of the human history, so considering them some sort of spectacular failure would seem rather weird.
CIA and WHO life expectancy estimates of poor countries differ a lot, I have no intention of arguing which is correct, however by both estimates of life expectancy, and by most other quality of life estimates, North Korea is far above most of Africa, in many cases including rich African countries like South Africa.
I think the reasons you and many other people think North Korea is so bad come from exposure to media. American and Western European media have political reasons to dislike North Korea, and no reason to care at all about most failed countries like Sierra Leone or Lesotho. And “evil oppressive government” is much easier to turn into a good sensational story than run of the mill “thousands of children died of diarrhea because they didn’t have access to clean water”—in North Korean story there’s a clear evil villain, in Africa there isn’t.
As far as I can tell, government oppression tends to be focused on small number of people who are considered (truthfully or not) politically dangerous, and quality of life of most people isn’t strongly affected—due to information scarcity I cannot be sure if that’s true about North Korea, but it was definitely true about European Communist countries.
Typical third world economic oppression (low GDP + high income inequality + no social safety net) affects larger number of people, and as far as I can tell causes a lot more suffering. And these are pretty much the standard living conditions of humanity for most of the human history, so considering them some sort of spectacular failure would seem rather weird.